Flying week 27th Feb

Lots of flying this week, it was a bit misty first thing most mornings but it burned off quickly and Thursday in particular was glorious.
 
The EDF fad continues apace and at various times over the past two weeks we have seen a Grumman Cougar, two DH Vampires, two Dassault Alpha Jets, a Mig 15, and my Twister, all flying very well. Steve Montague’s 4 cell Lander Cougar is very smooth to fly and pretty fast, possibly faster than Phil Wiltshire’s smaller 3 cell Art-Tech Alpha Jet, we need to fly them both together to find out.  Tony Neal’s Vampire flew on Sunday, it’s the Durafly one from HobbyKing, as is Steve Montague’s. Steve has tested the durability several times and it keeps coming back from the dead! Tony has since had a problem with his, whilst bench testing it he discovered just how much suck the fan has…the FOD it ingested destroyed the fan and motor!  Ron Vears’ J Power Alpha Jet had it’s first three flights today, all totally successful, it went very well with it’s 70mm fan and 4 cell 2200 pack. Ron is sensibly taking it gently with his first EDF but by the third flight he was confident enough to fly it from hand launch to landing (on the patch) with no help.  Steve’s Mig 15 flew well but proved to be very frail. It was (note past tense!) made from EPS rather than the much stronger EPO which tends to deform on impact but can be easily reformed with hot air/water/steam and re-glued with hot melt.  The next new EDF to take flight should be Mick Harper’s Hawker Hunter. It’s a Lander one and Mick will be using 6 cells in it. Judging by the 4 cell Lander Cougar it should go very well indeed.
 
New member Des Evans brought along his Hawk Sky foam electric ‘glider’ on Wednesday. Des is in the very early stages of learning to fly and caused much amusement with his valiant attempts! He made progress though and is getting there slowly, although unfortunately the model decided to run for cover in the valley of death on it’s second flight and suffered minor nasal damage. No, it wasn’t me teaching him at the time!
 
It was good to see Geoff Berry flying again in the week, although he confused us all as we were leaving the field, he was seen with an assortment of cloths and a spray bottle cleaning a load of oily gunge off the model… weird.  Oddly, when John McEvoy came up a couple of times this week he seemed to suffer from the same problem…!  Our Chairman turned up at the patch today, had several flights with his Yak, and went home without breaking anything again…now this is starting to get boring Mick   😉
Andy P.