RE: Internet Brands-Owners of RCU-Everyone Send complaint - link here
[quote]ORIGINAL: FenderBean I guess its time for another forum to replace this one, maybe I will start hanging around the jettruth forum. [/quote] Same here. My "had-enough-of this-nonresponsive BS" switch just flipped. You can't abuse people's goodwill like this and expect them to keep accepting it forever. RCU is getting deleted from my bookmarks. I may check back every 3 months or so to see if things ever improve, but that seems very unlikely at this point. The lack of communication from management about the problems and protracted duration of the problems indicate they simply don't care and intend to milk whatever ad cash they can before the user base completely collapses and advertisers wise up. I've been in the computer business for decades, and these symptoms are all too familiar to me. There is no happy ending to this story. The day the ad revenue dips lower than hosting costs is the day the plug will be pulled and the site will just suddenly disappear.
Posted on: 3/6/2012 9:12 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "RC Jets"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10988714

RE: Twisted tail on foam corvalis
Its not a fatal flaw - it will fly like that, but wouldn't track true through thing like loops and 8's and will probably have a slight bias favoring one turn direction.
Posted on: 3/2/2012 10:00 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Beginners"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10984455

RE: Determining AWG of silicon wires (using four, 4 cell 5800mAH LiPo)
A million lipos in parallel won't increase the current draw of an attached load. Any given motor, with any given prop, at any given RPM will only draw in watts what it takes to maintain the load. Parallel packs may actually reduce voltage drop under load, which could (slightly) reduce the amp draw compared to hammering a single pack. Parallel packs also double the available short circuit current should something go haywire.
Posted on: 3/2/2012 7:05 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Batteries & Chargers"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10984331

RE: Help! Sanded a pinhole in my Kovall, gotta start over
Unless your finish is clear or translucent, a small silkspan patch will sand/feather out to the point where its virtually unnoticeable.
Posted on: 2/26/2012 2:13 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Tips & Techniques"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10976228

RE: How to cut wing ribs
If they have any thickness to them, I use a router table(s) - the "poor man's laser cutter". Make one really good template out of 1/4" ply, then tack glue a stack maybe 1/2"-3/4" high (too high and the stack starts to get tippy). A straight trim router bit is what you want. I've found the templates seem to last a bit longer when the edges are hardened with CA. The smallest I've seen is 1/4" diameter which is OK for typical spars notches, but dulls fast and tends to tear out a lot. I have a couple of router tables with different diameter bits. Normally, I'll rough the stack on a bandsaw to within about 1/16" of the stack, then use the router to finish what's left. This makes the router cut a lot easier as less wood is being removed. For lightening holes, I rough them with an ancient dremel scroll saw because the blade is removable and lets you get into the center of a lightening hole by drilling an access hole.
Posted on: 2/25/2012 4:33 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Questions and Answers"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10975731

RE: Kadet Mark 2 Wing Ribs
The K-Mk2's general rib profile differs only in the width of spar notch and tiny LE/TE shortening to account for any LE/TE/spar doublers. The wing is flat bottom, constant chord and thickness out to the wing tips. With a sheeted and cap stripped wing of this type, the profile of all the ribs will wind up being very similar. If you have one rib, you pretty much have what it takes to generate something workable from. Consider recutting any ply in your kit if its fairly old. A K-Mk2 I built recently was early 80's vintage and the plywood was de-laminating in spots. I recut all the ply parts from fresh stock.
Posted on: 2/25/2012 4:20 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Beginners"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10975712

RE: Electrics and Glow Airplanes
[quote]ORIGINAL: dirtybird The electricity cost me nothing. Its a by product of operating my car. [/quote] TANSTAAFL. You paid for the electricity in increased fuel costs to constantly bring your auto battery back up.
Posted on: 2/22/2012 4:55 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10971301

RE: Prop tutorial?
You'll also want to look at the general configuration of the plane to get a sense of what end of the available pitch/diameter spectrum you'll be wanting to sample from. ex. - a draggy biplane with flying wires and a lot of scale junk would fly like crap with a small diameter high pitched prop and a lot of RPM's, but that same prop might be ideal for a small/clean fast racer, even though both planes might be using identical motors/ESC and battery.
Posted on: 2/22/2012 8:18 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Beginners"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10970630

RE: 30 second countdown clock,anyone got some plans?
[quote]ORIGINAL: davidgeorge212 i am working with my friend in our electronics lab at school. He is pretty good when it comes to electronics and we are trying to build up a countdown clock circuit as we speak for this exact purpose. I told him to make it beep at 30, 20, 10, and 5-4-3-2-1. He has got it working good right now. The only downfall to this setup is that there will be no visual clock to look at. Its all done in circuitry and will only be able to be heard when it sounds the horn. I dont know how well this will work or not for our club 40 races. We may have to go to a mechanical clock design. David G. [/quote] It seems to me a standard 8-bit count up/down latch (with preset capability), tickled by a one half of a dual 555 timer setup for cyclic 1-sec intervals, with comparators on the latch outputs for 30/20/10/5/4/3/2/1/0 values, would do it. When a comparator pops, it hits the other half of the dual 555 setup as a 1-shot timed for 1/4 sec (or however long you want your audible signal to sound) driving the horn. With the countdown's outputs latched, fed through a 7-segment decoder, then fed to line drivers/amps you could use that output to drive relays/contactors that would be able to drive a countdown display of any magnitude/power/brightness
Posted on: 2/22/2012 8:08 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Club 40"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10970617

RE: Norvel 049 engine
$20-$25 or so...maybe. You gotta find someone who wants it and is willing to take a risk on a used engine of indeterminate origin, level of abuse, etc. The Norvel's are common enough that they're not a high priced collectors item.
Posted on: 2/21/2012 8:43 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Questions and Answers"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10969052

RE: Where to live?
[quote]ORIGINAL: Dale Gribble California's budget woes have no impact on the quality of life here... [/quote] Ummm...the amount of money you're allowed to keep in your pocket directly affects quality of life. I fled CA back in the mid-80's. Don't regret it at all.
Posted on: 2/16/2012 5:51 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Off Topic Forum - Cars, Trucks, Buggies and more"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10962364

RE: New Planes For Sale That Have Never Been Flown
[quote]ORIGINAL: BobbyMcGee ...I think there's a good reason as to why those ''built but never flown'' planes are being sold. The build is poor, the wings are twisted, something is wrong with the plane to begin with... [/quote] That's OK. The people buying planes like that don't know the difference either.
Posted on: 2/16/2012 5:48 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10962358

RE: New Planes For Sale That Have Never Been Flown
[quote]ORIGINAL: gwweber A used or never flown assembled plane usually takes just as long to get ready to fly as a new one.  I find that every nut bolt and gluejoint needs to be checked. [/quote] Indeed. You can't trust anything on a plane obtained from elsewhere NOTHING.
Posted on: 2/16/2012 10:06 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "The Clubhouse"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10961686

RE: Texas R/C Planes Drastick .60 Size
[quote]ORIGINAL: SpinnerRow I plan to put a DLE 20 with an ES Composites tuned pipe spinning a Vess 18x6. I'm going for across the runway take off runs and ''Stupid Vertical'' here. [:D][/quote] The plane won't last long if you do this. They are VERY light, and VERY fragile.
Posted on: 2/16/2012 8:02 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "ARF or RTF"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10961559

RE: Taper Cuts on Light Ply
If its something like a fuse bottom on a box fuse, I usually rough cut'em glue everything up, then use a router table with a trim bit. The fuse box sides guiding the trim bit will make a flush cut.
Posted on: 2/15/2012 5:12 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Crash & Rebuild"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10960838

RE: Minwax Hi Performance Wood Filler
I've been using Gorilla glue lately as a filler "base" for small dings. Put a dab on, rub it in a bit with a pop sickle stick, let it set for about 1.5hr or so, then trim/sand. The resultant exposed air pockets in the trimmed off foam glob will grab onto spackle or ordinary wood fillers pretty good and the gorilla glue "base" will actually stick to the wood. If you get lucky and the foam glob has very fine grained air pockets after trimming, then you're probably done. I haven't determined what variable causes some applications to result in very fine grained bubbles, and other to result in large puffy ones. 1.5-2.0hr seems to be optimal for trimming easily with a razor blade, and the stuff sands like chalk at that point. If you wait several hours it gets a lot harder.
Posted on: 2/14/2012 6:22 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Questions and Answers"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10959275

RE: Conversion to Glow
[quote]ORIGINAL: flycatch Can someone explain why you would do this. The intent of the electric revolution was to get away from glow fuel was it not. [/quote] I find the trash cans full of trivially repairable electric planes their previous owners had no clue how to fix.
Posted on: 2/14/2012 6:13 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Electrics to Glow Conversions"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10959261

RE: How do you teach?
[quote]ORIGINAL: Hossfly ...and they have no concept of how raising the ailerons 3-5 degrees can prevent those proverbial snap rolls on take-off... [/quote] ^^^^ Indeed ^^^^ Lotta trash cans are kept employed due to ignorance of aerodynamic concerns.
Posted on: 2/14/2012 6:10 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Beginners"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10959257

RE: .074 powered
I've lost a few over the years due to the lines snagging on a weed I didn't spot.
Posted on: 2/14/2012 5:52 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Control Lines"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10959234

RE: Combat/Stunt for Fox 35
Before slow combat was dropped as an official event a while back, there wasn't much difference in performance between a slow plane and a fast one. Both were very fast and high performance. The only significant difference was slow didn't use pressurized fuel systems. What used to be slow has been locally morphing into "speed limit" combat events. Run any engine/plane/fuel system you want just don't exceed 70 or 80mph in timed laps at the start of the match. Planes with cheap/common .25's or a Fox stunt .35 can meet the 70mph spec and be competitive. Slow had become just as esoteric and expensive as fast, perhaps even moreso and attendance had fallen off. The speed limit notion is an attempt to make combat more accessible to people who don't want to spend cubic dollars getting a competitive airplane/engine.
Posted on: 2/13/2012 7:06 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Control Lines"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10957811

RE: EVO .60NX muffler gaskets
[quote]ORIGINAL: Oberst No matter what anyone thinks how good the tight tolerances are- and don't use a gasket, oil [i]will[/i] leak through. If you were to look at it through a microscope you'ld be amazed how many imperfections are on the smooth surface of any engine.[/quote] The old air cooled VW flat 4 beetle engine used no gaskets, O-rings, or sealer of any kind between its crank case halves. They were machined flat, bolted to spec, and didn't leak oil. I've lapped cylinder heads to sleeves and discarded the gaskets to raise compression. They don't leak compression.
Posted on: 2/13/2012 6:58 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Questions and Answers"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10957795

RE: How worn is this piston? Updated w/pictures
I've got ABC's with 20+ hours on them that aren't that discolored. That engine obviously has more than one tank through it.
Posted on: 2/13/2012 12:57 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Glow Engines"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10957225

RE: Bad glow fuel?
[quote]ORIGINAL: sonerai Is there a way you can remove the water or somehow refresh it by adding new fuel to it? [/quote] No. Water, methanol, and the glycol based synthetics are miscible. Without a chem lab you won't be able to separate them. I routinely add splashes of old/unknown fuels into new stuff to get rid of it. Just don't go too heavy and spread it out over many gallons.
Posted on: 2/10/2012 11:42 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "RC Fuels"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10952960

RE: Remember This?
Dude seriously needs to back away from the crack pipe. A saw a new Avistar at a LHS for about $120.
Posted on: 2/10/2012 11:34 AM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Beginners"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10952942

RE: High wing incidence
If you breaking 0012 ribs, consider using slightly heavier balsa or just doing a 1/64" ply lamination prior to cutting them. I've found gorilla glue to be outstanding for this sort of rib lamination. After setting for about 90 minutes its hard enough to start shooting through a router/sanders/bandsaw. I do this all the time with center section ribs. I've also had success using gorilla glue to fab 3/32 "balsa plywood" ribs out of 3 layers of 1/32 balsa. With one of the veneers oriented vertical, any cracking tendency is virtually eliminated.
Posted on: 2/8/2012 5:40 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Aerodynamics"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10950466

RE: A 4 SKYHAWK AIRFOIL
If you're cutting new cores and want decent turn and stall characteristics, consider going progressive, with say the 9% at the root transitioning to a 10 or 11% towards the tip. With sheeted foam its easy. You'll feel a stall approaching with this scheme - it won't hit you like a hammer suddenly.
Posted on: 2/8/2012 5:33 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Aerodynamics"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10950449

RE: aerobatic plane for g75
The GP Revolver really isn't suited to 3D, and it has a lifting airfoil, not symmetric.
Posted on: 2/8/2012 5:22 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "ARF or RTF"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10950429

RE: New (to me) internet myth
I hear newbies insist that a glow engine won't run without nitro methane in the fuel. Tell'em that international FAI competitions use a spec fuel with 0-nitro and they won't believe you.
Posted on: 2/8/2012 5:12 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Gas Engines"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10950414

RE: Another L/E Sheeting Idea
I'm liking the pipe idea....a length of 1" or 1 1/4" EMT conduit would probably be about right, and EMT has a nice smooth exterior.
Posted on: 2/7/2012 4:22 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Tips & Techniques"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10948719

RE: How to remove old monokote?
It may take a couple of applications of the acetone before the glue gets soft enough to work. I've had pretty good success using single edge razor blades as scrapers. Its a tedious process. The acetone dries quick and the goo will start to harden up again.
Posted on: 2/7/2012 4:09 PM by Author "cutaway" in the forum "Kit Building"
http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=10948691