Little things please little minds

Servo Link
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.

Allow me to let you into a secret dear reader. This blog isn’t exactly written in real time. That is to say I tend to store up pictures, and therefore postings, so that I have a backlog to work through. Sometimes you get exactly what I’m working on, sometimes it’s a bit out of date. This way you get a reasonably steady supply of posts and I get to have a life without thinking, “If I don’t build something this evening the blog doesn’t get updated”.

So, while I am fixing the damage on Flockburgh, here is something I did a few days ago. In case you are interested, the replacement bargeboards are fixed to the building and I’m fiddling with the computer while I let them dry. A bit of sanding is required and it’s never clever to sand plastic that has Mek-Pak on the surface since it’s not solid enough. There is a better chance of sticking the sandpaper to the plastic than smoothing anything.

But I digress. The subject of this post is a tiny little thing. To be precise a micro servo.

I have plenty of spare standard size servos. More than I thought actually as I found some more in a box of parts intended for another model recently. Therefore when buying the bits for the new boat I didn’t think I needed to buy any more. Then test fitting one in the hull it hit me that I was wrong. The task was like trying to park a caravan in a telephone box. No linkage imaginable however crazy, was going to get control anywhere a standard size servo would fit.

The instructions point out this and suggest a micro servo. I hadn’t actually bothered to read this bit.

Howes supplied a micro device and a speed control (my spare one of these was too big as well) in a couple of days allowing me to build a little plasticard box from 2mm thick sheet. I had my doubts that something so small, and it really is tiny, would do the job but it does. Just like it’s big brother in fact. For around a quid over the cost of the normal version I can see a few more of these appearing on my bench – well worth the money.

Incidentally, don’t those bits making up the linkage look good. My first boats suffered from bent bits of wire until the discovery that a few quid bought the parts for a proper adjustable engineering job. Just like real model makers would do !