Patch News – August 2026

I must begin Patch News this month with an apology. As most club members with be aware, the club website has been out of action for several weeks. It wasn’t the fault of anyone in the club, the problem lay with the BMFA who host our website, apparently they had a major server problem in mid-August and all the various BMFA sites went down. They managed to restore the main BMFA parts reasonably quickly but getting the hosted club sites back up took a very long time. As you can see the site is back up again now and hopefully BMFA will have put measures in place to prevent the problem reoccurring.

On with the more interesting stuff now. The crazily hot and dry weather continued through most of August although in the last week the temperatures dropped somewhat, it got pretty windy, and we did have a small amount of rain. We had scrubbed a few flying sessions at the beginning of the month when it was just too hot to go and stand in a field that has very little shelter, but, as always, the old faithfuls still turned out regularly.
Dougal Entendre flew his SonicModell Binary FPV (First Person View) plane on August 9^th and you can see just how dry and scorched the whole of the area had become.
Dougal complained that looking at the landscape via his goggles it was much more difficult than usual to spot the patch from the air and this photo demonstrates the problem well:
Normally the patch stands out well from the air as the mown grass looks greener than the rest of the field but that was not the case in August. It demonstrates why a spotter is vital!

Nothing especially exciting happened at the field in August but there was one very notable achievement when young Tom passed his BMFA ‘A’ certificate. That means he can now fly unaccompanied. Tom has only been a regular at the field for a couple of months and it was clear from his first visit that he was quickly going to become a very capable pilot. So much so that the older members moaned he was too good! He has always been brought to the field by his grandad Dom who has been very supportive of his thirteen-year-old grandson.
For the test Tom flew the Durafly Ugly Stick V2 that he had bought from Woody a few weeks earlier and had used to practise extensively for the test. I was the examiner for the test and Tom flew well throughout as I was sure he would. I did ask him to repeat the figure eight as he lost a bit of height the first time, and the second one was much better. His landings (including the required deadstick one) were good, but this was no surprise as his landings are always good and have been since his very first visit to the field.
The questions were the part Tom was most worried about but Dom had coached him and had even been testing him on their drive to the field each visit. Before they joined the club Tom has passed the online CAA test but that one is slightly different to the BMFA RCC online test so I had to ask him five questions from the Mandatory Questions list and Tom rattled off the answers with no problem. A few days later, having passed his test, Dom and Tom took the online BMFA RCC and passed so all bases are covered now. Well-done Tom!

Following his test success, the next time he came to the patch Tom brought along his Arrows Hobby P-51 Mustang. Arrows produce Mustangs in two sizes, an 850mm wingspan one with a fixed undercarriage, and an 1100mm span one that is fitted with retracts.
Tom’s is one of the smaller ones and he had brought it along to the field when he first joined the club and sensibly sought advice as until then he had only flown his 512mm wingspan Qidi Moore M7. The M7 is one of the very light, single cell, gyro assisted small foamies that come complete with transmitter. It flies well but obviously has it’s limitations.
Tom could fly that very well but figured the Mustang was going to be a step too far so he got me to take it up for him. I flew the Mustang two or three times and Tom took control briefly each flight once it I had trimmed it out but it was a bit of a handful for him and he gave it back to me to land each time. But at the end of August, having passed his test and brimming with confidence, Tom flew it by himself with no problems at all. It was a very windy day and I had a few misgivings when he took the Mustang out to the patch, fearing a cartwheel if the wind got under one wing. I fully expected him to ask for help but he didn’t. Once he had safely taken off I offered to land it if he was struggling but I wasn’t needed at all. Tom flew the whole flight and then made an excellent landing. To prove it wasn’t just luck he flew again a little later and that flight was even better and finished with another great landing. You can see Tom flying the Ugly Stick and Mustang in this month’s video.

There was only one new model that I spotted in August, 1066’s new Arrows Hobby Viper.
I say his new Arrows Hobby Viper as this is actually his second one. No, he didn’t crash the first one (well not properly anyway), but the airframe had got rather knocked about and tatty, but more seriously, after a great many flights it had become quite noisy.
The noise was probably caused by the various bits of grass and other muck ingested by the fan after scores of landings on the patch (and a few off it!) but 1066 liked the Viper so much that he just went out and bought another one. Arrows Hobby have updated things a little since the Viper was first sold and the new one came pre-fitted with a Vector stabiliser but 1066 is old school and doesn’t like them so he removed it before flying the new model.
I overheard him muttering something about not trusting them and being perfectly capable of crashing without the help one of those new-fangled gyro things! If anybody wants a cheap and unused Vector stabiliser have a chat with 1066, I know he’s had it up for sale, although with the delay of Patch News this month it may have already been sold.
So, how does it fly? Unsurprisingly it’s much the same as his first one, although 1066 thinks maybe it’s a tad down on power compared with the first one. Perhaps you need to run it in, check the tappets, and then change the Duckhams? LOL.  It looks to go about the same as my own pre-stabiliser one, which I reckon goes better than my Arrows Avanti. Both 1066’s and mine are in this month’s video so take a look and see if you can see a difference in performance. Obviously, one is being flown rather better than the other…

After quite a long absence from flying, towards the end of August Kryten came along to see us all at the patch. He didn’t bring a model with him this time but he did bring his camera and he captured some great action shots, some of which you can see below. But, much more importantly, Kryten brought cake! I think we had made him feel guilty when lots of us sent him birthday wishes on the club WhatsApp group so he made a rather lovely lemon drizzle cake and brought it along to share between all the pilots present on the day.
It was great to you Kryten, come again very soon and bring some of your planes with you!

The last Sunday of the month was only a couple of days before my own birthday so, not wishing to be outdone by Kryten, I also provided cakes. Sadly nothing special that I’d made, just some Tunnock’s Tea Cakes but they seemed to go down well anyway.

In August Dougal Entendre was invited to give a talk to Rowlands Castle u3a Science and Technology Group. He went along one evening, taking with him his 1/5th scale Maxford Spad III, his SonicModell Binary FRV equipped twin, and one of his drones.
The talk went down very well and received a good write-up on the group’s website:
The group spent an exciting evening hearing from Mark Agate, Vice President of Petersfield Aero Modellers, about his passion for power models, gliders, helicopters and drones. This had all started in his youth and developed when he designed and built a working model for his degree at university in Sussex, using the Downs for test flights. He showed and explained a wide variety of radio control equipment which has improved over the years from AM to FM to PCM. He demonstrated a drone in the garden and we were able to use goggles to get a first-person view [FPV] of the drone’s flight. It was interesting to hear the wide range of use of drones for commercial and industrial use.
They promoted Dougal from Vice Chairman to Vice President but we can forgive that!
Well done to Dougal for promoting the hobby to a local group, it’s all good publicity.

This month I have the luxury of including some action shots taken by two members, Kryten and Tom. Here are six, I’ll use more from both of them over the next few months:

This month’s video includes footage by MacFly, Dougal Entendre, and me.
Please watch the video full-screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around:

The Final Funny:
An air traffic controller at the Nashville, Tennessee airport related an incident from several years ago when he cleared a Cessna 172 (4-seater small aircraft) for landing.
As the Cessna turned to final approach, an airliner called in ‘over the marker’ (5 miles from the airport). At this point the Cessna was only about a half mile from the runway, and the controller knew he could land and clear the runway well before the airliner would land, so he cleared the airliner to land as well.
A few seconds later, the Cessna pilot radioed “How far behind me is that 737?”
Before the controller could respond, the airline pilot, in a deep bass voice, boomed
“Don’t look back!…”

Colin Cowplain