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Yes, a lot of people have been buying the cheap’er electric choppers and thinking they can fly them in a few minutes. Bzzzt !
RC choppers are harder to fly than a real chopper, except for those little single channel foamies 🙂
If you do want to seriously learn how to fly them, then there is some simple steps.
1> buy a simulator. Some of the dragonfly packages even have one included.
2>practise, practise, pactise and when you think you’re good enough on the simulator, then start logging your flying times on it and get 2 hours worth of full on simulator time and then you’re ready for the real thing.
3> train landing gear. Without the silly looking landing gear you’ll be replacing the main rotor blades in about 60 seconds. If you can have somebody like an instructor teach you, it’ll save some pain.
4> baby steps. You want to be able to lift the chopper 10cm of the ground and hold it there just hvering and level. When you can do that, without crashing, then you can take the beast higher. 2 or 3 metres. hover fly foward a couple of metres, hover and land.
5> You keep practicing that until you’re blue in the face and then put down two sheets of plywood and practise flying from on to the other and back.
New fly in wind, never fly into the sun and never believe that you you can autogyro on a flat battery ! You’d never fly a real helicopter and let it run out of fuel, don’t do it to a model aircraft, the results are the same. Crash & Burn ! 🙂
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I can always use a new element for the collection Z-beam. What can I offer you in return ?
There must be something around here that could be good for a swap.
Hmmm .looks like one of these mystery metals is Gallium. The stuff is a solid, but it melts in hot water… it seems to have some sort of temperature hysterisis, because it doesn’t solidify when I put it in cold water. It does freeze when I put it on ice, but it seems to be such a poor conductor of heat that it still takes several minutes to solidify. I can even melt it in my hands. If forms an alloy that is liquid at room temperature, like mercury.
Making explosives is something that is very dangerous. I can remeber kids at school trying to make them with stupid things like a hammer. Encasing them in metal. Natural selection usually catches up with them.
Making fireworks is not about explosives, it’s about getting things to burn slowly with colours. Some simple rules, safety first, make only tiny amounts and test them first. Outside.. always outside. Fumes and fire are killers. Never enclose anything. Do not put your material in a tube. Test it on an open block of wood. A tube is just like a barrel of a gun, even if it is only cardboard. You don’t want hot metal sprayed out the end and landing on you.Remember, always small amounts and lots of distance between you and your test.
Having said that, you can imagine all the stupid things we used to do as kids. Tape a crazy jack to matchbox cars and let them rip. Matchbox JATO !
Penny Bungers. How much electrical tape did we use on those things ! Put them in a storm water drain and you would hear them in the next suburb. Roman Candles … a kid’s portable welder ! Skyrockets.. they were often more fun underwater. Throwdowns.. ouch, they hurt when they hit you, but you still couldn’t stop laughing.
My absolute fav was getting a whole bunch of helium balloons and loading them up with a payload and watching them drop stuff from 1000ft. Whole boxes of crazy jacks on 3 minute fuses. Catherine wheels were amazing, a cople of them tied together even more so.
An the Bon Fire …. there was nothing that you were affraid of throwing into a bon fire. One party we had one year out in the styx, the base for the fire was a house. We packed it so full of wood, tyres, petrol, diesel, sump oil, fireworks, railway dets, fertiliser. It was like a little woodstock. Everybody brought along a pieceof something to burn. 🙂
molybdinum. Lets see… I’m sure I have some lying around here …. umm
Indium, Gold, Carbon, Magnesium, Palladium, Silver, Bismuth… nope.. not in that box 🙂
Mercury, Berylium, Aluminium, Cadmium, Arsenic… Hmmm… here’s an unlabeled metal ? . Damn… no molydbinum.
Lepidolite. I had to look this one up.
K (Li,Al)3 (Si,Al)4 O10 (F,OH)2
So, you have a soup of elements in there .. Parts 1 Potassium, 3 Lithium, 7 Aluminium, 4 Silicon, 12 Oxygen and 2 Fluorine.
I think I’d just have a go at heating (melting) it with Sodium Carbonate. I haven’t got a clue how to attack this one since it looksrather solid.A lot likeMica which is exceptionally heatand acid resistant.It looks a lot like Muscovite or Mica.
Green fire …. do it the simple way. Copper. If you burn copper filings they will burn green. This really isn’t practical since it doesn’t burn fast.
Copper Chloride burns faster, but you have to make it. Normally disolving anything in Hydrochloric Acid will form the chloride salt, but This acid won’t eat copper. It will however eat copper oxide. So we have to oxidise the copper. Burning it is the usaly way, but that’s a bit hard to do under water/acid, so we add in some Hydrogen Peroxide from the chemist. 4% is good, but 2% is ok. This stuff bleaches, but generally it’s safe to handle. The HCl isn’t and it reaks, the fumes are toxic. Use it outside.
HCl + H2O2 will eat copper, the result is copper chloride and chlorine gas (green). Which is very toxic. Lucky there won’t be very much of it and it may be invisible. Etch the copper outside. When it is done, you can leave the solution to evapourate somewhere safe in the sun. What is left should be some blue looking crystals. A bit like copper sulphate (which you can also burn green). You can then scrap up the dry Copper Chloride crystals and mix them with a little bit of water and mix them into magnesium powder and let it dry. If you use gun/blackpowder, the yellow/orange from it will overwhelm the colour of the copper. The magnesium is white, so it doesn’t wash the colour out unless you use too much magnesium, then it will just look white.
Magnesium is hard to get it started, so if you pack it right with either some very slow hot burning powder or even phosphor from match heads. You’re best way to test it is line it all up on a block of wood and light one end and watch it burn across slowly. If it burns too quick, then you need to pad it out. If it stops burning, then you need to give it a little bit more fuel. Graphite is a good medium since it burns in a linear fashion and isn’t dangerous.
Be very careful if you ever pack anything into an enclosed space. This is when things can explode, even in cardboard. Learn to make long fuses with fine black powder and tissue paper. You want to get so good at it that you can make a 10 cm fuse burn for exactly 10 seconds.
Rocket motor ignitors on really long pieces of wire are a nice way of testing dangerous things from a distance. The object of the game is NOT to make things go bang. Any fool can do that and usually without trying.
I also remembered another way we used to test for things in chemistry at school. The salt disolved in water, you take a piece of wire in a loop. Dip it into the solution and then hold the drop into a candle / bunsen flame. This will clearly show you the colour you are going to get.
A file ! 🙂 Collect the filings on some paper The finer the file, the finer the filings and the quicker they will burn. If you want to slow them down, add some aluminium or titanium.
I think we’ve already crossed the ‘dangerous’ line. Ask for help from you dad kiddies.
Salts are easy to make. Hydrochloric Acid, Nitric Acid, Sulfuric Acid. We all know how nasty these acids can be. I don’t believe saying ‘don’t do this’ will stop anybody …. ask for some help from an irresponsible adult. They will probably want to help anyway. Ask yourdad for help 🙂 Let him cop the acid burns instead of you !
Hyrdochloric acid won’t reduce most of the metals, but if you addthe acid tohydrogren peroxide (slowly) it will work well. Sodium Carbonate (baking soda) will then help produce carbonates etc if you need that particular salt. It also helps neutralise the acid.
Oh… when using Hydrochloric acid and Peroxide, it produces poisnous gas (Chlorine). It is only a small amount, but the shit is nasty and it can burn your lungs …. use it outside.
Salts are: Chlorides, Sulphides, Oxides,Hydroxides, Flurides, Carbonates, Phosphates, Nitrates,Borates. (most common)
Yep, I still have a nice collection of fireworks, even a packet of genuine throwdowns.
People freak when they see them…. ah, so many memories !!!
Fireworks in Australia really suck. You can get a few good ones, but nothing beats the roman candles and skyrockets and bazooka’s that you can get in places like Mobile Alabama or Pedro’s in SC. South of the Border … Heeehaaaww !!!
Even Tijuana bottle rockets kick arse, and M80’s …. these are septic shakers. When you feel the ground rumble in southern California it’s more often an M80 than an earthquake.
I used to take the fireworks out to area-51 in nevada when I was passing though. You wonder where most of the UFO sightings come from ?? hehehe … my favourite was slowly sneaking up on the seismic sensors they have around the desert and placing an M80 on a really long fuse and then trying to make an extra slow getaway. 15 minutes later … BOOOOM. heheh … classic to see how fast the spooks can get their arse over that hill !! hahahaha.
It’s not too hard to get a permit to legally let of some fireworks in NSW, it’s more just a bullshit workcover insurance. That’s the problem with the world today… everybody wants to sue everybody else and not take responsibility for their own stupidity. I remember when you used to have kids blown up to serve as an example of what happens if you play with fire. Nothing like the baptism of fire you got from loosing a bit of skin from a crazy jack. You then instant got an education on safety that haunted you for the rest of your life. Now young people are entering the workforce without this scar on their hands and they expect the law to pre-empt lack of thought. Bring back fireworks. Queens birthday was an australian tradition. bon fires that sent the polution index to new highs. How else do you think the dept of met calibrated their meters 🙂
But I moved on … if I could not buy them, then I WOULD make them. Having a gun licence it’s piece of piss to buy black powder, but I pesonally think it’s a bit more fun making it yourself.
Potassium Nitrate 60% as the oxidiser, 35% graphite as the fuel and 5% sulfer as a moderator. Makes excellent sky rocket fuel. Zinc podwer and Sulfer is another in an aluminium tube … oooh, stand back… it goes like a bullet. Potassium Permanganate and a hydrocarbon is another good fizzer. It gets hot, but you have to pack it right and carefully to get good results in rockets etc, I prefer not to use it unless you’re good at building reliable triggers. One false move and there is going to be some missing skin !
Different chemicals give different results. Salts of compounds are often used, you can use raw elements like copper dust or zinc dust to get results. Nitrate salts I find work the best.
Lithium will give you red, Potassium Pink, Sodium Yellow/Orange, Calcium Red, Mercury Green, Copper Green, Magnisium white, Thorium bright white, Manganese Yellow, Strontium Bright Red, Molybdinum Green, Arsenic Blue.
I have a spectrometer, so just burning and element in a candle givesme a good idea of what colours it can produce before I make up a salt to burn in acharge. Mixing magnesium with the salt isa good simple way to make some prettyand bright colours. To much salt and it may not burn, too much magnesium and it just looks white.
KL is actually very expensive, even more so than Australia. I wouldn’t even bother. About the best you can hope to find is one of the hobby shops in Pentronas. He’s still expensive, but cheaper than any others I’ve found in Malaysia. Nikko Stuff is made in Malaysia. It is the cheapest. Everything else out of china and HK/TW gets a markup.
Singapore really isn’t in the running either. To get the good stuff, you got to go to HK, TW, Japor China.
I m not much up on the micro’s that can crry camera’s. All my planes are far too light for the job, though I can get them to carry a micro 2.4GHz camera, it’s battery still weighs it down. Kero has is the man. I do have a plane on the drawing board, but it will carry a high power television camera and downlink the video to a VCR on the ground.
Have a look at how the nikko bikes do it. The front wheel is free floating. It’s not connected to anything. The rider weight shifts for the steering. There are photos on my webshots and gallery.
Have a look at how the nikko bikes do it. The front wheel is free floating. It s not connected to anything. The rider weight shifts for the steering. There are photos on my webshots and gallery.
Got any more pics of Maldon kero? I ve been meaning to fly my Paraglider there for a couple of years but have never got the chance to get off the hill. The West side of the hill is probably where I’d launch from. Aerial photo’s are always useful because you can see good take off points and landingareas that you can’t see from the ground. I’ll probably be doing a lot of work in Bendigo later this year so I’ll have a lot more chances to fly there. yippee.
cool.
I have a lot of aerial pics, but hey are from 1:1 scale planes.
I’ve been moving house so I have not had the chance to arm my park fliers with some cameras yet. Won’t be long though.
I WILL TAKE YOUR SOUL !!!
I’m damn jealous of these awesome photos.
I will be building a park flier ICBM now, complete with onboard camera. I’ll be posting a series of photos of kerosene’s untimely destruction on this forum !!! 🙂I tells ya we nned another ausmicro competition.
Kero’s entry would be so damn hard to beat.
I’m brewing the most awesome micro project seen since Tim the toolman’s hovercraft.We must kill him now ! Those photos are too good.
I’m outragously jealous, I’m going to have to get my ATV transmitter out and buy another weather balloon just out of spite !! 🙂
LEGEND !!!!
they are awesome pics.
fire it up and give it a go 🙂
A bit of NZ was coming in during the day and melbourne again tonight.So what are the controls ?
Is the rudder a control surface or is there some internal weight shifting ?hehe, I was there for the small stuff. As much as I’d like to own a Catalina, I’ll have to stick with the under 500kg catagory 🙂
Somebody has a good photo of me with the paraglider and an F16 taxing behind me.
I might get a little more involved in it with the HGFA next year. They had a small display and managed to get a few people seriously interested in it.Mars plane looks cool, never seen one in real life though. The A40’s are $66. I haven’t bothered to import a batch for over a year now so check on ebay to see if you can get them cheaper.
Next time I get a batch of them they will come surface mail which will make them cheaper.
I have about 3 left. I haven’t checked since I only just got home from working the past 8 weeks.
I have HEAPS of spare wings and chassis. I over estimated how bad my friends and other people would fly. 🙂Did anybody get out to Avalon Airshow and have a look at some of the model planes out there ?
I can think of a vehicle that does 15000kph.
commonly called a “space shuttle”. 🙂When BMW goes nuclear, I’ll buy one !
Cavo’s pretty much said it all. I don’t sell anything on ebay, I’ve been meaning to see a few odds and ends. I’ll get around to it one day.
The dragonfly and yellowbee are better thermal fliers than the A40, which is a better plane for stunts and manouvorability. They’re more fun to fly. I’ve also been meaning to make a new model I call the A44. 🙂 Basically An extra set of wings and motors grafted onto the plane so that it is a bi-plane with 4 motors and a bigger set of batteries to power it all.
I haven’t built it yet, will get around to it one day too.Their $12, they come with the motors, props and also the tailplane horizontal stabiliser.
The fuselages are the same price, but I can’t remember if they have an RX board in them. They’re at home in a box and I’ve never had to replace a fuselage.
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