Well, hasn’t the weather been rather trying, to
say the least? In my part of Oz just finding a field
that’s not under water or too boggy and is flyable
has been a bit of a task. Fortunately model helicopters don’t need all that much space, but at least
it should not be raining. There’s a bit to cover this
edition, with a brand new OS engine for model helicopters, plus some interesting products to check
out, and a bit of an innovative training aid. Without
further ado, let’s get stuck into it.
It’s nice to know people actually read my column and occasionally get in touch, as one of my
readers sent in a photo of a training aid he had developed, for “L Platers”, as he put it. So I’ll hand it
over to Mike Smietana to explain in his own words.
Dear Sir,
As can be seen from the photo I have made a
set of floats and the results have been very successful. I am a learner and am just about mastering hovering and to date only one set of bruised rotor blades
occurred in about 20 flights. No more nose, side and
tail tip overs, no more snagging in tall grass. Soft
landings as the floats are quite forgiving.
Hope you will find this interesting and I can
supply more info if need be!
Yours Sincerely Mike Smietana
It’s good to see someone having a bit of a go.
For some of you old hands, you will have seen
floats being used for training before, and reckon
Mike’s just reinvented the wheel. However, when I
68
Airborne
talked with Mike, it seems he’s been quite innovative! Ah, sorry about that pun, but for those of you
with a keen eye will have noticed that the model
helicopter he’s using to learn on is a Thunder Tiger
Innovator MD530 combo package. (I reviewed this
package some time ago, and it’s brilliant for beginners and upwards).
Model helicopter floats in the past were very
balloon like, in that they were filled with air. What
Mike has done here is get a pool noodle from his
local “cheapie” shop. The type he used is solid, IE
without a centre tube/hole. According to Mike, this
material cuts and sands easily. So after he cut the
float to suit his MD530, he simply sanded the front
and back to shape. Thick balsa dowels were used
to join the 2 floats together, and be a mount for the
MD530. To finish it off, Mike simply spray painted
the floats to match his MD530 colour scheme.
In use, Mike found that if you used them on an
abrasive surface, eg concrete or bitumen, the bottom of the floats would wear. So he added a wood
strip along the length of the float to overcome this.
Added advantages were that this stiffened the
floats, plus they could be used either way up. For
grass, he turned the floats up so that the strip was
on top, and vice versa if used on concrete etc.
I reckon Mike’s done a pretty good job, and
should be highly commended. If you have a new
slant on doing something, drop us a line so that we
can all