Monday Afternoon: Cold, wet, dark and horrible 17C. I haven't written for a couple of weeks, but during that time the weather has taken a definiate turn for the worse with lots of rain and wind as well as plumiting temperatures.... I did a lot of work on miniatures in the previous week.

This range is my own design, I also made a brick suuround similar to this one for the kitchen of the dolls house.

Beccies friend Jo came out to stay last weekend, fortunatly the weather cleared up on the Monday, but the rest of the time it rained. Tuesday was a national holiday, weather OK, Wednesday I went to Calpe to pack up and collect the Victorian street, which has been on exhibit for a month.....

We went shopping on Thursday, On Friday we both went to Beccies Salon in Javia for haircuts, the rain was so hard the road turned into a raging brook outside the shop for about half an hour.....

The weekend has been wet cold and windy too, but i have been working on the miniatures inside.

Today we went to town to the post and two micro helicopters and some parts for the bigger one have arrived from Hong Kong.

The little "Avatar" style helicopter is a wierd one, it is 4 ch infa red but is more like a 3.5ch set up with buttons for left and right on the side, bit like a nintendo controller,  but it does fly well once you get used to it, quiet docile, not particularly acurate, but for £15 landed in Spain it is worth it.

The other one is the ESky fixed pitch micro... Wow and I thought Antonys helicopter was a hand full This one is very sensative and you need to "fly it" all the time, it would definitly benefit from being in a larger room, but once it's trimmed it's smooth enough and very quiet compared to the Hughes. I need some practice with this one for sure, it just makes me think even more that the Hughes is the best and definitly the most enjoyable to fly....

Of course the new one is the most similar to what the 450 will be like, so really this one will keep me on my toes and get me ready for it. The motor and ESC have also turned up today, the big helicopter has arrived in Spain with the couriers, so that may be here tomorrow and the rest of the order is on the way from HK including the radio. Bearing in mind the heli only took 5 days to come, maybe the rest will soon be here......

I am looking forward to flying these with the new radio, there will be rates,  as well as the option to have all the models stored models on the one transmitter because it has 9 a model memory... 

Sunday Afternoon: Cloudy with showers, 19C. I just went out for a fly with the Tiger Moth, but it started to rain again and I had to land, it's foam and electric, rains no good, apart form the fact that I didn't want to get wet. Before that I had watched the Rugby World Cup Final, that gave me a stonking headache, talk about stressful! But it only ever gets like that when you have an emotional attachment, so I guess having spent half my life in NZ, I have one. What a tense and stressful 80 minutes that was, all except the last 2 minutes it was anybody's game!

The rest of the week has been much cooler too and it rained a lot on Friday night and there were showers yesterday.  On Wednesday evening we all went to Ondara because Antony wanted to look at the helicopters there, but were unable to find one suitable for the right price.... I felt crook Thursday and totally crashed Friday... good old shopping centres, but sometimes you can't avoid going and this was one of those times.... I did get a Big Mac though.

Squadron! The second little helicopter arrived and has been set up for the first transmitter, but other than a very short test flight, this was only it's second outing and after the picture it has been put back in it's box as the back up.....

Tuesday Afternoon: Cooler, 21C, partly cloudy, breezy from the south east. I went to town this morning and was surprised to find that the helicopter I had ordered from Hong Kong had arrived already. I had however already realised that I had made a mistake and ordered the model in mode 1 instead of mode 2.

At first I thought it would be easy enough to reconfiger the transmitter to mode 2, but there is no way, it's all soldered and sealed.... Bugger.... So I thought I might be able to fly it in mode 1 and had a go.... Hugh, there's no way, it's not possible for me to do that, I even had it in my lap a couple of times and realised I needed to give up that idea fast or break it..... My flying is simply too instinctive and with the throttle/elevator switched I was useless.....

But then I made a discovery. My first helicopter was bought here in Spain and the instructions were only in Spanish, but the new one has arrived with English instructions and in there I noticed that they included how to bind the reciever to the transmitter.... It was worth a try and OH my God it worked! So I have two helicopters on the one transmitter.... Needless to say that these models are identicle bar the box and fly exact;y the same.....An evel part of me wants to fly them both at once, but I'm not that stupid fortunatly... it could have been a laugh though!

Monday Night: Sunny, some cloud, 24C calm until miday..... I have had a productive day working on the next fire surround as well as making the windows for the second floor of the Spanish Bar......

Friday was OK, 23C, Saturday was cloudy and cool but there was very little of the predicted rain, Sunday was mostly sunny but it's been a lot cooler. On Sunday we went to Suzi's for dinner.... It was really good.

Here is a video of the Micro helicoper flying

Thursday afternoon: It's 33C here at the moment, clear and sunny with a light breeze, although they are forecasting rain and thunder by 6am in the morning... I'll belieive it when I see it!

The weather Tuesday and Wednesday has been gorgeous too, clear and sunny, 28C and dead calm, so when the sun goes down behind the mountain, the ground is warm and I have been flying each evening with either the Tiger Moth or Lady B. I had a good 10 minutes full power aerobatics with Lady B yesterday and landed with no power loss following the balancing of the 6 year old batteries. The new larger 40C batteries for it have arrived from Germany, but the plugs I need for the model are still on their way from Hong Kong. This should give me up to 20 minutes flying time, whether or not i can handle that is another matter, I have sort of got used to the 10 minute time limit I set myslef now anyway, so as long as the models fly for that long I'm more than happy and if I want to go for longer then I can a little........

The sun is sliding down the edge of the mountain now and I expect that we will loose the extra hour of direct sunshine tomorrow, but this is probably a good thing for me because this seems to be the time i want to fly, it's light still enough, but without the glare....

I have been carrying on with the brick oven

And painted it......

I went to Calpe this morning to take put our poster on display with the rest of the exhibition, it wa a nightmare to park, I nearly gave up and couldn't find anywhere within 10 minutes walk of the Casa de Cultura, but I found somewhere in the end. After I had been to the Casa, the only way out of Calpe was through the centre... nose to tail and all closed again for roadworks...what a nightmare!

Monday Night: Monday was warm and sunny 27C. I did the workshop at the club this month and the subject was the brick impress moulds, and how to make the brick impressions. I must say they were all really interested and some were enthusiastic now the "secrect" has been revealed....

 

Yesterday was also clear and sunny and warm at about 26C. I spent the day making a sample brick surround for an Auger type cooker so I could show the ladies how to do it, the surround is very similar to the one at the farm.....

I am featuring the little helicoper again today because of how much I am enjoying it. I have just found out that Hobby King have a parts backup support for it, including batteries and blades (which I already ordered) as well they have the control electronics if you really stuff it up and replacement bearings and the motors ifyou just wear it out..... So now it certainly doesn't feel like a cheap chinese toy, it really is a credible little model that I should be able to enjoy flying for a long time.... In a worse case scenarion it is £35 landed in Spain from Hobby King for a replacement...... let's hope I don't need one!

I am still recovering from my "shock" crash the other day (and still can't believe I put the stick the wrong way -arggggg!) but this model is so good that now it is trimmed properly , so long as you keep it at the same hight it will fly itself  hands off, so I don't have to worry too much, but you have to keep it in the air... (ie; don't hit a wall ((or anything else)) and stop the rotors or it will fall out of the sky and the impact will most likely breal off the control lugs... ). To be honest I was feeling that if I crashed it again that was that, but now I know I can get back up spares I have relaxed a lot and probably if I get back to my true standard, I can put this thing anywhere I want.... even nose in if I prcatice on a simulator....

I also flew my little foam Tiger Moth this evening just after the sun went down. The ground was warm and the air was still, these are simply perfect conditions and it was a perfect flight with the best landing yet so I was really happy. This is a fabulous little model and because it has such a light wing loading it flys like something twice it's size....

I have some acrylic paint that is exactly the same colour as the model so I have touched up the areas that were showing white after it had been repaired.... Now it looks brand new again, there are no signs the model was ever damaged.... I'm rapidly becoming a fan of the little "foamies" for flying here!.

Saturday Night: Mostly sunny much cooler today at just 21C. The last few days have been really nice though, it was 26C yesterday and 28C on Thursday with Wednesday somewhere in between... so it's still been really warm.

On Wednesday Chrissie had an idea how to make some miniature brushes for the artists shop in the Spanish project and made some samples, I made some more using the dremmel to turn the shafts.... then I made tubes of paint from the aluminium caps off the wine bottels (which was also Chrissies idea) and the caps are the tops of tooth picks painted to represent the colour... and a pallete from 1.5mm bass wood which has only been painted with the colours represented in the tubes......

I have been working on the Spansh bar. Thursday I did the clay work in the box, but first I made two more impress moulds, one of which I used to make the tiles in the bar.  I made the stone walls with the commercial moulds and added the other effects. Yesterday I made the bar itself, I was surprised how long this took to make, but it was so worth it, it looks very authentic.

Today I have been to town to get the shopping which always makes me feel so tired. Later whe I though I was feeling better I decided to have a fly with my little helicopter. I have been getting more and more confident with the model as I have grown in confidence with it's performance, but today I was just getting cocky and doing nose in hovers and I know I can't do those, so why do I keep wrecking helicopters trying?

I was actually doing really well to start with but it got a bit high and a bit near the wall so I decided to move it foward a tad..... I still can't believe that after all these years I managed to push the stick the wrong way and hit the wall.... (9 ft up over a concrete tiled floor... not good) at first I actually though I had got away with it until I tried to take off again and when it took off it just hovered and did nothing so I realiesed I had broken something. On inspection it tunred out I had ripped off the main controlling balljoint conections from both blades... Urkk

Fortunatly they do give you a spare set of blades....and they are amazingly easly to chnage... (I hope you can get spares they say you can) I could never see myself doing any damage to the blades though, so now I realise this is the helicopters weak point and you can't afford to crash, hence the spare set of blades...

My helicopter still flys the way it did before, but I have changed... My confidence has all gone and my heart is in my mouth  everytime I fly it..... To be honest this is probably the way it should be when you fly one of these... But have I finally learnt??? NO MORE NOSE IN HOVERS!!!! Shame though I was getting quite good at them....

Tuesday Night: Today was clear and sunny, about 26C, calm..... despite forecasts of bad weather wt the end of lasdt week, it's been fine, each day has been sunny and 26c seems to be the daily average at the moment, it's getting down to 17C at night now though, but be honest it's lovely like this.....

Saturday afternoon Antony and I went out on the bancales and had a fly with the electric models (which I can now both charge and balance). He had spent some time on the simulator this week and I have been giving him some lessons on that, so without a "buddy box" I was trusting him here somewhat.....

I let him have a go with the Lady B first and he did really well, so then later when I flew my new Tiger Moth, I let him fly that as well. The wind was from the north and steady at little over 3knots...... These are the best conditions for here, so it was perfect! The little Tiger handled so well it reminded me of my old BE2c, yet it's so tiny and but it these good conditions it flys so beautifuly!

Just a foot note about flying, so does my little helicopter...it's utterly amazing..Again it feels like a big stable I/C model, yet I can wizz it around the lounge and really fly it, it's so compcat!    Mark you have to get one of these!!! They are only $34 US from Hobby King, you'll utterly love it, it's well well worth it, it's the best one by a long way!!!!!

I have spent the last two days fitting the backs on the Victorian Street precincts for the exhibition which we are had to set up at 8pm Monday at the Casa de Cultura in Calpe.I measured the size of the wood I needed, I even double checked it, I was right but the woodyard cut it 100mm short and I didn't find out until Sunday, so I ended up doing the backs a completey different way. It was the way I origially planned to do the job, so iIn the end I was pleased I did do it this way as it is much better and the whole thing looks tidier......

We had to get up really early today to go to calpe for 8am.... urggg... I took most of the exhibit in the first trip and when I arrived we set up the cage and the tabels, so Zack and Debra were able to get on and get things in place... Chrissie came with me on the second trip and we finished setting the street up....

I think it looks fabulous set up in the cage here and so well lite with natural above light..... We should just leave it here....

This evening we have all been back to Calpe again for the Inauguration of the exhibiton......

Chrissie proudly displays our article in the Dolls House World Magazine, it was the first time we have seen the actual mag...it looks brilliant in there.....

People View the Street.... There's a lot of trust here as access is good, but we still have our rope barrier... stops the kids.... strangles the little bastards...lolol

Great view from upstairs, the Inuguration evening......

The Inauguration.....

Thursday Night: Today was wet, yes it rained for the first time since May, but not for long enough though. We did have a little thunder, the power went out a few times..... The reason I think? Well the UK is getting a record heatwave with clear skys and sunshine, so for the next three days they have our weather and we have thiers.
Parts of England will be 29C tommorow whilst we will get rain and wind.... Until next week when it is all back to normal, I guess we have to give them a little taster of sunshine or they'll all go nuts from SAD.......

Saffie walks past the lovely flower on the Yuka tree this year, the last time it flowered was 4 years ago.........

Tuesday and Yesterday were warm and sunny with temps in the high 20's. Yesterday I got on with the Spanish Bar room box.......  

Late in the afternoon I decided to take the little scooter for a spin around the plaza to give the battery a boost and by "around the plaza" I mean out to the right on our new road, round to the main road and back on the old one to the plaza,  it's a great little race track.......

Now I had drunck a small glass of beer earlier in the afternoon, but it was nowhere near too much or I wouldn't have gone in the first place. I went out of the drive, turned right onto the new road, down to the mountain road, right into the old road and back up to the plaza and who should be sitting right at the entrance to the plaza but the bloody Guadia Civil..... I totally freeaked..... my heart was in my mouth, I sped up past them, past the school and the church and shot up our drive, I dashed around the garrages out of sight and prompty abandoned the bike..... I was of course for some reason expecting to see them right behind me, but they were not....

On reflection my reaction was OTT but totally to do with past history, because to the Guadia I was just an old bloke on a little scooter, correctly attired in day glow yellow with my helmet on, so why would they even want to chase me? It just goes to show that triggers from the past still resonate in my subconcious. Thanks Oamaru Police, your legacy continues (And you would have bloody chased me for no reason and then made one!)

Today we went down to Calpe because Chrissie had to go to the dentist. I parked (yes there are places again) near by then walked right to the top end of town up the hill to go to the model shop and buy a little helicopter I had seen a couple of weeks ago. I have been thinking of getting another little indoor helicopter for a while and they have come such a long way since my last one and you can get one now for a reasonable price. I have been disapointed with those I have seen and tried to date so far though. However now it is possible to get a 4 channel 2.4Ghz micro helicopter, whose main fuesalge bulb is about the size of an egg, the whole model is about 8" (20cm) and it can be precisly controlled indoors, which is what I wanted.

This is definitly not a toy and I challenge anyone who has never flown a helicopter before to fly this, but for me it is perfect. I have the experience and the skill to really enjoy this little beast! I have been flying it in the lounge and am also pleased with the duration of the flight and the availablity of full power throughout unitl the end. very good, off for a fly now

Monday Morning: Mostly sunny, some low cloud on the mountain tops, other than that clear above, mild 23C.

Saturday began overcast after light overnight rain, but cleared up later. We went to town in the afternoon to do the shopping. Sunday was clear and sunny, 25C with a light easterly breeze. I have been re-charging and balancing both of my old Lipo batteries with the new charger and have found they are in surprisingly good condition considering their now rather old age of some six years! With the peace of mind that the battery is good, I flew the Lady B.....

To avoid damage from the very sharp dry stems that poke up on the terrace, I spread out the almond net, which is 4.5M square so I could land on it. Flying was good and the final approach was gentle and on target, until the very last few feet when the model suddenly dropped with no warning and hit the stone wall below the terrace nose first...... OK this is Lady B, it is very strong and only had a broken front former, which was quickly repaired with cyno.....

In the mean time I decided to fly the new Tiger Moth again, it also flew very well. For the landing this time I decided to approach from the South as the sun was very low and bright. All was going perfectly, then the model suddenly dropped in nearly the same place as before, I put the power on quickly and caused it to snap roll and then the inevitable, she hit the deck nearly vertical. The bottom left wing was snapped clean off at the root and the right wing was hanging with a thin strip of foam barely intact.....

The Plaza has been built on a long spur, so either side are deep valleys. When the wind is from the east there is lift on that side, the landing area is almost calm, but obviously there is an area of "dead air" or a down draft right before the edge

Apart from a few of the struts also pulled out, it wasn't too bad. I took it inside, got the cyno and 20 minutes later it was back in the air..... The last landing I approached higher, steeper and from the north and plonked the model in the middle of the net........