Tips & tricks

A KEY YOU CAN'T LOSE!

Losing your 4-stroke engine's drive-shaft key can put your airplane out of action in a hurry, but this frustrating situation can be easily avoided with the following technique. With the key removed, use alcohol to clean both the key and the slot in the drive shaft. Coat the Inside of the prop driver with light grease or oil to protect it from any over-run. Use a toothpick to apply some medium thread-locking compound to the drive-shaft slot, insert the key, and slide the prop driver into place to align the key In the slot. Let the assembly sit for at least 30 minutes while the thread-lock cures, after which the key will be securely seated. If at some point you need to remove the key, a flat-blade screwdriver or pliers will easily break the thread-lock seal and free the key.

Brian Winch, Lurnea, New South Wales, Australia

TWO-FOR-ONE PROP NUT

Is a loose prop nut on your favorite 4-stroke driving you crazy? Try this: on a lathe using a parting tool, cut a Harry Higley prop nut into two pieces. Make the cut where the hex-shaped section joins the nut's main body. When the cut is complete, use a wrench to tighten the hex end to use as the prop nut and the nose piece as the jam nut to hold the prop securely In place. You'll never lose another nut again.

Richard Kremer, Vashon, WA

COWL CLEANUP

Cutting holes in a cowl is a necessary evil for most of us, but glow-- plug, fuel- and needle-access holes don't have to be ugly. A simple way to clean up these openings is to fit rubber grommets around the lip of each hole. Hardware and electrical supply stores

sell these Inexpensive grommets In a variety of sizes. When in place, they make access holes in your cowl look much cleaner. They also protect the open edge of the cut and help prevent the cowl and paint from cracking or chipping.

Robert McGuire, Moneta, VA

SERVO BY NUMBERS

Most receivers come with numbered connections, but that doesn't help unless your servo leads are numbered, too. A labeling gun from your local office-supply store can make a neat, simple way to organize your servo connectors. For each of the servo leads, just print out numbers that correspond to the connection on your receiver and then tape the numbers, like little flags, around the loose end of each lead. Now, when you remove your receiver for use in another model, you can quickly and easily drop it back into place without the time-consuming trial and error to get the channels right.

George Poirier, Providence, RI

LONGER DRIVES

No, we're not talking about car trips or your golf game! This tip shows you how to make your own long-reach, slimhandle screwdriver for accessing those hard-to-reach screws inside your model. Take some 5/16-inch-o.d., 1-32-inch-thick brass tube of a length suitable for your needs and insert a 1/4-inch hex-driver tip Into the tube end. A no. 1 Phillips screwdriver tip is the most useful, but larger sizes, flat-blade screwdrivers, hex drivers and Torx tips can all be used. You can add a short length of 1/4-inch-i.d. fuel tubing on the end to hold your screw while you position the driver inside the model, and then drive the screw. The fuel tubing will release the screw as it bites into the model.

Tom Naser, Meadows Place, TX

FLUSH PIN

If you need to pin something to your building board, but the head of the pin prevents It from fitting tightly against an adjacent surface, try this. With your Z-bend pliers, bend your pin to offset the head. With the pin bent this way, it can be Inserted through the wood and straight down into the building board, even if it has to sit flush against a vertical section.

Karl Byman, Longview, WA

SHARP IDEA FOR HOBBY KNIVES

We've all heard the story, and try as you might not to laugh at the hapless victim, sometimes you just can't help It when a fellow modeler reports that his hobby knife rolled off the worktable and found his foot on the way down. With this helpful tip, modelers will never again have to endure this painful mishap or the embarrassment of Its retelling. Simply attach a common zip-tie to the handle of your blade, and it will stay safely on your tabletop. While you're at It, if your hobby-- knife handles are identical, use different-color zip-ties to designate different degrees of blade sharpness. For example, use a red zip-tie to Indicate a new blade for precise trimming and a white zip-tie to indicate a knife with a used blade for general cutting. When the new blade gets a little worn, move it over to the general-use knife.

Doug Beaver, Dearborn Heights, MI

EYE IN THE SKY

RC aerial photography has been around for a while, but it often requires a special prefabricated rig or complicated alterations to your plane. Here's a relatively simple way to build a camera box for your .40-size trainer that

shouldn't increase its weight by more than a pound.

The box is constructed of balsa and lite-ply: the back and front are 1/16-- inch ply, the ends are 1/8-inch ply, and the floor is 1/8-inch balsa. Venetian blind hold-downs allow the camera to rotate, and a servo (epoxied to the camera) is positioned so that the servo arm and brass pushrod connector trigger the shutter button. An inexpensive 35mm camera with automatic film advance works fine for this task. Be sure to check the side-to-side and fore-to-aft center of gravity of the plane with the camera rig In place. To get the balance right, you may have to add some weight to a wing.