Patch News – February 2026

OK this is getting very boring now, rainy day after rainy day after rainy day. Never mind, looking on the bright side March 1^st  is officially the start of spring, things should improve. There were a few decent days in February but only a few. One of better ones was on Saturday 14^th Valentines Day: Roses were red, Violets were blue, so were the skies and lots of us flew. Who said romance is dead for us load of old codgers! The morning was cold with a north wind blowing but nothing we couldn’t cope with, and we had a good session.
We had sensibly decided to switch flying to the Saturday (despite it being Valentines Day) as all the forecasts correctly predicted strong winds and heavy rain on the Sunday.

At the end of the month, on a day that was much too windy to fly, Woody and 1066 took it upon themselves to go up to the field and mow the patch. As this was the first cut since December it was no mean feat so well done and massive thank you to Woody and 1066.

As the field is on the top of the South Downs it’s difficult to predict whether there will be mist/fog/low cloud, sometimes it’s foggy at lower levels where we live but clear at the field, and sometimes it’s the other way round. A few of us turned up, hoping to fly, on Sunday February 8^th but found the field enveloped in thick fog. There was very little wind to clear the fog and it looked as if we’d had a wasted trip other than enjoying a sociable morning.
But Dougal Entendre wasn’t going to be put off by a lack of visibility, he’d brought the correct model for the conditions, a Hummer that he can prop hang endlessly! I wasn’t as bright and had taken two EDFs, so with no chance of flying I filmed Dougal enjoying himself instead. Dougal had no problems; he didn’t lose sight of the plane at all and landed safely after several minutes of happy hanging. You can see it in this month’s video.

I have kept myself busy by building twenty new models, none of which will ever fly!
One of my Christmas presents was a book of twenty press out and build vintage paper planes, all of which are ‘scale’ planes…very rough scale. So, as I was unable to get out and fly much, I spent quite a lot of hours pressing, folding, and glueing my own mini air-force.
As well as the usual suspects there are a few fairly unusual types so I feel a competition coming on, a suitable prize will go to whoever correctly identifies the most planes in the comments below. If more than one person names them all correctly the prize will go to whoever does it first. Having completed all twenty I now have a dilemma, what on earth am I going to do with them all? If anyone wants one, several, or all of them please shout!

A few new models appeared in February but, at the time of writing, not all have been flown yet, mostly due to the abysmal weather. First up is one that has managed quite a few flights already, the Hacker MX2 that Woody had won in the raffle at the club AGM.
I’ll let 1066 explain: As you will all be very aware the AGM raffle was fixed so that I wouldn’t win anything, but that’s OK because first prize went to one of the nicest men I know. Jealousy is not my most attractive attribute, but it’s not as bad as my ability to take advantage of people like Woody, and I didn’t miss a second in offering to help him out by taking the kit home. To my disappointment Woody decided to keep the kit and give it a go himself. However this was short lived because to my surprise Woody decided the model wasn’t for him after all, so a deal was done (in reality I stole it from him).
At the time I was midway through building my Christmas present, so I had no intention of putting the MX2 together, but I made the mistake of opening the box just to have a look, and three hours later I had made a good start. I’m not sure how old the kit is but, being a Hacker model, it was always going to be good quality, however as ARTF models go there was a bit more work than I would have expected on this type of construction. There were also some unusual design features. The most obvious was the laser cut kit of ply parts that made up the wing centre section to which the foam wing halves were butt glued, this also included the undercarriage mount, and wing retainer, but no main spar. That evening I hit the AliExpress website and found a 35-36 1250 KV motor, 50 Amp ESC, and four 17g digital metal gear servos for just over £40.00 delivered. The model went together over the next few days, and the electrics arrived at 2pm on the day previous to the next flying day. By 8pm everything was installed ready for flying the next day, something I never normally do. The next day the weather wasn’t great for a maiden flight, but the first flight was undertaken, and although everything went well the model was far from right, I just hadn’t taken enough time setting things up correctly.
Over subsequent flights things were sorted out, and having flown the model for a few weeks now it’s fast becoming a real favourite. In summary, thanks to Woody’s generosity and a bit of time on the internet, I now have a fantastic one-piece model that seems to cope with a wide wind speed range, is docile and aerobatic and cost me just £63.
Thanks for that 1066. BTW, if the raffle had been fixed I would have won the MX2 myself! As 1066 says the MX flies extremely well, check it out for yourselves in this month’s video.

Sticking with 1066, he sent me a meme that he’d spotted online and felt was good for us:
Every take-off begins with belief.
Every crash builds experience.
Every flight makes you better than yesterday.

The next new model to arrive at the flying field was one that Woody has built, an SR-71. There’s a bit of history behind this one as Norwegian Nick had built and flown an SR-71 Blackbird back in February 2024 which flew very well indeed and looked great in the air.
Inspired by Nick’s success Woody ordered the same kit from Sarik Hobbies. They offer three different deals, you can buy the plan and magazine article for £14.03, or a laser cut Depron pack for £11, or a short kit containing the plan, the magazine article, and the laser cut pack for £23. This is the description from the Sarik Hobbies website: Designed by Laddie Mikulasko, this is a quick and easy 693 mm span electric profile sport-scale build from the CAD drawn large single sheet plan. All Depron construction with some balsa and spruce strip, and uses an economical BL2212/06 2200KV motor, 40 Amp ESC and 3S 3000 Lipo with a 6″x4″ in. APC-E prop. So Woody built the model from the Sarik supplied laser cut parts and then fitted a 2212/5T 2450KV brushless motor along with a Quantum 40A speed controller. The Blackbird only uses two servos as it’s controlled by elevons and it doesn’t have a rudder, so Woody fitted two he had in his spares box.
Power is supplied by a 2200mAh 3 cell lipo. Woody brought the Blackbird to the field on February 8^th, the day of the really thick fog, so he couldn’t fly it but the damp air showed up a problem even without flying, the black tape he had used started lifting. Maybe Nick has the answer as the tape appeared to stay stuck down ok on his Blackbird. The other problem Woody found is that the model appears to be very weak where the battery mounts, there’s very little support in that area and some strengthening is required. I’m looking forward to seeing it in the air and hope that it performs as well as Nick’s.

The final new model to arrive at the field in February was Snoopy’s new Radjet 800.
He had spotted the Radjet at a much reduced price on the HobbyKing website and decided it was too good to pass up. I forget what Snoopy told me he had paid but I’ve just checked and today they are in stock at the UK warehouse and selling for £70.43, which can’t be bad for a plug and play model. The only things you need to add are a receiver and a three cell 30C lipo battery with a capacity of 1300-1600mAh. As the postage is free from HobbyKing on orders over $99 you’d only need to spend about another £5 to qualify for that.
The Radjet comes already fitted with a 2010 1800KV motor, a 20A speed controller, and two digital 9g servos. Assembly requires you to fit the carbon wing tube and glue on the wings, fins, and plastic undertray. This is what the website says: Are you looking for extreme speed right out of the box? If so, we’ve got you covered. There is plenty of rad in the Radjet 800! With its amazing price, EPO foam, and being Plug and Fly, this brilliant model has no trouble earning the Radjet name. The Radjet 800 has been tested and flown to within an inch of its life and it performed flawlessly, not only in terms of flight performance but also reliability, and believe me, we tried hard to kill the test version!
It’s a simple build with the motor, ESC and servos pre-installed, even the decals are pre-applied! It has several impressively simple and practical features such as the plastic skid on the length of the underside of the fuselage that will protect your Radjet from the usual tears and gouges, effective cooling for the ESC and lipoly. But, it doesn’t stop there, oh no! What’s it like to fly? Utterly brilliant! The light flying weight means that the outrunner motor gives tons of performance, the Radjet will pull massive loops and is capable of some pretty precise aerobatics, it’s quick, no doubt about it but throttle back and it becomes a total pussycat, fly it like you stole it or glide around, either way, it’s a hoot! So to sum up, it looks great, it’s easy to assemble, flies brilliantly, is reliable, fast, and cheap…Radjet? You better believe it!  I must admit that I’m quite tempted… No, I mustn’t, I don’t need any more models…! The only problem Snoopy has found so far is that those rather lovely pre-applied decals had started to lift before he even brought the Radjet to the field. So, now the all important part, how does it fly, is it as good as they say?
Well so far it hasn’t flown. Snoopy brought it along on Valentines Day, one of the few decent flying days in the month, and was all set for the maiden flight but when he connected the battery the plane did nothing, dead as a Dodo. After much fiddling about with no joy at all he gave up and took it back to his car and collected a different model to fly. It was only when got back to the patch that he realised what had been the problem, his transmitter had the wrong model selected! By that time he couldn’t be bothered to walk back to the car again to retrieve the Radjet. Fancy inadvertently having the transmitter set on the wrong model, that’s not something any of us has ever done…ahem…! Never mind Snoopy, at least the transmitter prevented you from trying it and finding out the hard way.

Take a look at some of the action shots from this month’s flying, all are from the video.
I think the first pic is especially interesting, someone was definitely going the wrong way!

Video time now, this month with footage shot by me, Dougal Entendre, and MacFly. Please watch the video full-screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around:
If the video won’t play for you please click HERE

The final funny:
A woman called the airline customer-services department asking how she should go about taking her dog on board, realising it would have to be in the hold for the flight.
She was told “You can take it, as long as you provide your own kennel, which must be quite large as your dog must be able to stand up, sit down, turn around, and rollover.”
The confused the customer replied, “I’ll never be able to teach him all that by tomorrow!”

Colin Cowplain