Category: Remote Control

More Monster Truck Fun!

My repair to my monster trucks manifold was not good enough and it simply became detached again. This time I used permanent threadlock to seal the nuts to the manifold holding it in place. The only way you are supposed to be able to get threadlock off is with a heat gun meaning the engine vibrations will not loosen it.



I took the truck out for a good run along the beach which was a great test of its off road capabilities. Unfortunately I cracked an exhaust coupling on my second tank of fuel!

Repaired my monster truck, its running faster than ever!

Last night I repaired my Sledgehammer S50. I took it out for a test drive today and its running faster than it ever has before.

The scorched manifold

About a month ago my exhaust somehow become detached from my engine. I can only think this happened after my monster truck flipped while turning at speed. Because of the great performance of the S50 I do tend to drive it quite fast!

The Sledgehammer S50

There was no actual visible damage to the car except some scorch marks on the manifold and one of the screws holding the manifold to the engine had come out. I tried to order a manifold set from Modelzone but surprise, surprise they had none readily available. So for the second time I tried phoning up Modelzone spare department. As with the last time I contacted them they said they would have the part in 1 – 2 weeks and they would phone me. As expected I have still heard nothing from them. Thankfully my dad being an adapt ebay user managed to track down some screws that fit it and the total repair bill come to less than £2.

 

It dwarfs other rc vehicles.

I re-tuned my engine after re-attaching the manifold and now its got the best performance I have seen so far. Its fast enough to pull wheelies just like in the promotional video.

A Second Sky Spy

Modelzone have been selling their Sky Spy stock at half price so I thought it was a good time to replace my wobbly old one. The one I got was an ex display model so I got an extra tenner off.

Here is a short flight of it with the charge it already had.

Today was a great day for flying

I had great fun with my Blade 120 SR today. There was pretty much no wind and between two batteries I advanced my flying skills tenfold. I am getting pretty good at flying around for a bit, coming to a hover and then choosing where to land. It sure beats the wind choosing where I crashed landed last time.

Not my finest hour but I did manage to capture a bit of footage today.

Learning to fly the Blade 120

For the sake of the helicopter I wanted to wait for a nice day to start flying it. However the weather has been crap and I decided to fly it in the wind anyway.

Here are some clips fronts first proper flight. It was a losing battle against the wind but fun none the less.

Tamiya 1:35 Cromwell

Probably my favorite build so far. Experimented a bit with weathering on this one.

Never find Tamiya kits too frustrating to build.

A tank needing a little TLC

At this year’s tankfest I picked up a new rc tank from the market.

It’s a Heng Long Panzer IV with metal gearbox and tracks.

The metal upgrades are what attracted me to the model. I have an all plastic Heng Long Pershing but it would cost more to upgrade it than the asking price of the Panzer.

I haggled the price down further so it was a real bargain. Unfortunately when I tried to get it going it was dead.

imageIt started working intermittently when playing about with the channel select switch so it seemed like there was a loose connection somewhere. After some googling I found Heng Long’s soldering skills were not highly rated. Eventually I found out that the component next to the switch was causing the problem. The component was re-soldered and the tanks now working fine.

Below is a video of the repaired tank in action.

Plenty of spares ready for the inevitable crashes ahead.

If there is one thing I have learned when it comes to R/C, its to give spares a thought before you purchase your new vehicle.

I know look at the avaliability of spares before making a purchase and pick up a few of the most common bits to break while I can get hold of them.

Its very easy to fall into the trap of buying a (often discontinued) model that is reduced in a store, only to find you break it in 5 minutes and can not get hold of the parts.

The first thing I did after picking up my Blade 120 SR from model zone is buy a load of spares from rsbspares.com

If you are wondering what the blade 120 SR is then watch this.