TheFlyingBrit
Legendary member
I had a very quiet spell and during the contemplation of all my planes a thought crossed my mind, I know I will make a list on excel.
Initially it was going to be a basic list, more like an inventory of: what I have, whether its air worthy and what its built out of.
As I started to assemble this list, suddenly it seemed a good idea to add more columns to include: Motor, ESC size, Transmitter used, Receiver, channels, Battery used and prop size.
I then sub divided them into: Foamboard that fly, Foamboard under construction, Foamboard to build, ARFT foam models, balsa models, models needing extensive rebuilds etc you get the picture.
Great I thought this was a worthwile exercise, until I started to populate it. In a very short period of time I has lost track of what motors I fitted in some planes, what size ESC's, I have been struggling with which TX and RX combo Ive used for a particular model. The prop I used is the worst one to remember, the smaller and big planes are easy but the ones inbetween I will need to check.
Now I have reached a stage where I can no longer populate my list any futher, I need to inspect some models to confirm what I fitted and confirm the correct battery I should be using.
Its taken a while but I think its been a fairly good exercise and I am glad I did it now. My next spread sheet is going to be a flight log for all the models that can fly as I want to reflect back at the end of this year on how things went.
As Covids going to ruin my flying until at least the middle of February, I may start doing an inventory of my spares and parts. That way I will know in advance when I am running low on a particular item. A perfect example: I only use XT connectors, so when I wanted to use my second lipo charger it was necessary to make a new charging lead with an XT60 connection. It was only when I opened my soldering box I realised I am down to my last 2 male XT60's. So just ordered another 10 pairs just in case. If I had my new inventory list in place I would have relised earlier how low I had got and ordered more in advance.
I know its pretty sad really, but with flying being banned in the UK for the next month and half what else is there to do besides build ! As I am running out of space in my attic for storing models, thats going to have to be put on hold soon too
.
Initially it was going to be a basic list, more like an inventory of: what I have, whether its air worthy and what its built out of.
As I started to assemble this list, suddenly it seemed a good idea to add more columns to include: Motor, ESC size, Transmitter used, Receiver, channels, Battery used and prop size.
I then sub divided them into: Foamboard that fly, Foamboard under construction, Foamboard to build, ARFT foam models, balsa models, models needing extensive rebuilds etc you get the picture.
Great I thought this was a worthwile exercise, until I started to populate it. In a very short period of time I has lost track of what motors I fitted in some planes, what size ESC's, I have been struggling with which TX and RX combo Ive used for a particular model. The prop I used is the worst one to remember, the smaller and big planes are easy but the ones inbetween I will need to check.
Now I have reached a stage where I can no longer populate my list any futher, I need to inspect some models to confirm what I fitted and confirm the correct battery I should be using.
Its taken a while but I think its been a fairly good exercise and I am glad I did it now. My next spread sheet is going to be a flight log for all the models that can fly as I want to reflect back at the end of this year on how things went.
As Covids going to ruin my flying until at least the middle of February, I may start doing an inventory of my spares and parts. That way I will know in advance when I am running low on a particular item. A perfect example: I only use XT connectors, so when I wanted to use my second lipo charger it was necessary to make a new charging lead with an XT60 connection. It was only when I opened my soldering box I realised I am down to my last 2 male XT60's. So just ordered another 10 pairs just in case. If I had my new inventory list in place I would have relised earlier how low I had got and ordered more in advance.
I know its pretty sad really, but with flying being banned in the UK for the next month and half what else is there to do besides build ! As I am running out of space in my attic for storing models, thats going to have to be put on hold soon too
.
