Welcome to Chins Chins, my chance to chin-wag.
Each month I will be looking at something new in the modelling industry, some history from the same month a quater of a century ago and current Bumpy Green projects I am involved in.

As this is the first of my Chins I will brief you on my column. I don't get as much time to build and fly as the other guys at Bumpygreen but I try to get as much out of my time as possible. I am very often scouring the netfor goodies, whether it be info on new aeromodelling products, reviews of planes I am looking to purchase or just browsing the thousands of galleries of fellow modellers aircraft.

I was also fortunate enough to come by some old Radio Modeller magazines, 3 full years worth from 1975 onwards. I have enjoyed reading through them and I will share some of the 'new' products & notable things I found amusing. Does anyone know what happened to Radio Modeller?

Finally a brief look at projects I am working on, almost like the diary of a busy aeromodeller.

Volz have released two new versionsof their stunning servos. See the What's new main feature for more details.

I decided to look into Volz Servos and visited their website. Taking a look at the quality section show's these servos are not built like any other. All metal gears and multiple mounting fixtures make these servos the choice of competition flyers. Precision engineering and high quality materials go into contruction. Volz make servos for industrial use and the various applications highlighted in their web page make for some interesting reading. 20 years experience have brought Volz to the forefront of servo technology and although expensive compared to mass produced modelling servos they offer and endurance few others could hope to match. Phoenix Model Products are the only agent of Volzs servos in the UK and I shall be speaking to them this weekend and aquire some for review as I have a number of projects I can apply them to.

www.volz-servos.com for more information and specs.

http://www.phoenixmp.com for UK prices & ordering.

Modelling certainly was a different world in 1975. ARTF would have been Basic Design classes at the local college, and computer was listed in the dictionary as ''a mechanical or electrical device capable of continuous repetative tasks''. Plus we don't have many young ladies gracing the covers of our magazines these days & in '75 the covers were usually the only colour parts of the mag.

One of the main themes throughout this magazine was the raise in VAT from 8% to 25% ~ imagine if they did that today, we'd all be skint. Many manufacturers lowered prices to absorb some of this increase thereby keeping the model industry flowing. Also an editorial announcement that RM would be put up in price to a staggering 35p (GASP!)

They certainly do. How is this for the latest '70s transmitter technology. Where's the LCD panel ?

One of the things I found funny in these old mags was the name Peter Chinn, not the name itself but as a reminder of my own nickname so I will be featuring this namesake quite a bit I think. The Enya .40 review was very thorough highlighting the multi port (9 no less) design and the use of front and rear crankshaft steel ball-bearings. One noted point was the 'optional' silencer and the tests were carried out with and without the silencer attached. Imagine what the noise abatement people would say about that these days.

New at the shops were the GYR Falcon, a 1:1 scale slope soarer. I would love to try one of these on the crows at Ivinghoe. Also the emergence of the dreaded plastic clevice, the failure point on 2 of my models so far. Useful for throttle linkages where oscillating vibration interference can cause problems of course but we never trust them for main control surface fixtures any more.

Multiplex's Twin-Jet has met with rave reviews. Everyone who has flown one is instantly transformed into a Top Gun pilot. With it's stunning performance and amazing agility it makes a good quick fly model.

Seeing this picture I wondered if the guys at Multiplex had seen it when they designed the Twin-Jet.
Follow my review and my attempt to make my Twin-Jet look like the Sukhoi Su27 above.

See you in September.

Article by Chinman from Bumpy Green Model Aerodrome
5th August 2001