Patch News – April 2023

Due to some personal commitments this month’s Patch News will only cover the first three weeks of April but whatever I miss will be included in the May edition. As is to be expected in April some of the weather was horrendous with lots of rain and very strong winds but there were also quite a few decent days when lots of us enjoyed some excellent flying.

As predicted the herd of bullocks came to visit our field in April but weren’t too much of a problem and just needed herding away from the patch area when we arrived each time.
The weather was excellent on Good Friday and eleven of the FARTS (Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society) gathered for mowing and flying. With the high turnout, once all the hard work was completed it seemed only right to have a reward so I ran a prize draw. Everyone pulled a number and the result was perfect with the winner being the oldest of the FARTS present, Bob the Builder, and he was presented with a bottle of Old Farts beer.

Some very sad news now, long time club member Nigel Baker passed away on 7^th April. Nigel had a fall at home late last summer and eventually ended up in hospital where things deteriorated and other complications set in from which Nigel never really fully recovered.
Nigel’s Patch News pseudonym was Chris P Bacon, a name he chose for himself and which sums up his sense of humour well, he was a great character as well as being a real gent.
Nigel had been a keen modeller for many years but also had other interests, the main one being music, and for much of his life he played bass guitar in a number of groups. Nigel will be sorely missed by all of his friends in Petersfield Aero Modellers and of course our condolences go to Nigel’s wife Ursula and their daughters Alex and Kat.

Mini-Mike brought a new model along to test fly in April, a Great Planes ElectroStreak.
It’s new to Mike but it’s a very old design and the kit was discontinued several years ago. The plan is available as a free download from the Outerzone where they says this about it: The Electrostreak was originally designed by Tom Stryker and featured in November 1987 Model Aviation… it was kitted the next year by Great Planes. A 44 in span aerobatic model designed for 550 motors and 7 cells (Great Planes own Goldfire motor was included with the kit, the equivalent of a 7.2V speed 600 or the Simprop power speed 660) the Electrostreak is a fine exercise in minimal design, the lightweight air-frame offsetting the heavy motors and batteries of the day to give excellent performance.
Mini-Mike has had his kit for several years but only got round to starting the build about eighteen months ago. Obviously Mike is using updated electrics in his ElectroStreak and is certainly pushing the power up, he’s using a Tornado Thumper 3542 1250kv motor on a 4 cell 2200mAh lipo. He thinks it might be over powered and he may change to using a 3 cell pack instead. Mike used Solarfilm Supershrink Polyester covering, the main colour being a light grey and with orange trim. The colours are the same on both top and bottom but the pattern of the orange trim is different, I wonder if the difference will be enough on what is going to be a fast model with all that power and the finished all up weight of just 2lbs.
The first flight proved to be ‘interesting’ as Mike was having to hold in a lot of aileron on the stick even after he’d used all the trim up so he wisely landed after just one circuit.
The problem turned out to be a twist in the wings (that Supershrink Polyester is powerful stuff!) so Mike went off to attack it with weights and a heat gun. That did the trick and next time out the ElectroStreak flew well with barely any trim required. The only problem was a vibration at near full throttle which Mike will investigate, it might only be the spinner.
For the next flight Mike switched to a 3 cell battery and the vibration was much reduced. Overall the model flew well and once Mike has sorted out the remaining niggles is should be a good performer. Some of the flying can be seen in this month’s video.

In the middle of the month Dwayne Pipe and I had a bit of a disaster when we had a mid-air collision. Dwayne was flying his Big Splot that he’d had to rebuild recently having lost the tail mid-flight and I was flying my old foamboard Mig-29. My Mig is no stranger to mid-airs as in the past Captain Slow and I have deliberately flown our Migs in tight formation and have had a few comings together but with them both being mid-engined foamboards there has rarely been any damage other than an occasional chewing of some foam extremities. All good clean fun. More recently Gordon Bennett has also been flying a foamboard Mig and we’ve had some similar ‘meetings’ with no serious damage.
But the mid-air with Dwayne’s Splot was rather more serious, partly because the Splot is bigger and heavier than a foamboard model but also because we weren’t flying together in the same direction. We were both taken completely by surprise when we collided, we were both flying right hand circuits but circuits of different sizes and at different speeds.
I think it was just one of those things, neither of us was aware of being close to the other until there was a sudden bang! Unfortunately Dwayne’s Splot seemed to suffer more damage than my Mig but he loves building and repairing so I think he’ll soon have it back in the air. My Mig didn’t look too bad at first but I think I’ll probably scrap it as I’ve been flying it for several years and it was looking pretty tatty after all the abuse I’ve dealt it.
As I now have four unbuilt foamboards jets in the hangar (I buy them quicker than I build them!) I’ll just transfer all the hardware over to a new one, probably the Chengdu J-10.

Speaking of my stock of foamboard jets, last month I reviewed Woody’s new F-22 Raptor and said that having liked it so much I’d ordered one for myself. They come from China and the expected delivery date quoted was 2^nd May but it actually arrived on 13^th April. I had expected it to be packed in a small box but it was all simply taped up in a plastic bag!
But everything was undamaged, surprising really considering it had come half way around the world. The bag contained all the foam parts and also all the necessary hardware including the motor with prop adaptor, motor mount, three propellers, speed controller, and two 9g servos. The total cost of the whole lot was just £28.87 including delivery.
Is it any wonder I enjoy these foamboard jets so much! Woody has been enjoying flying his Raptor so much that he ordered a second one just in case he breaks it. He was happy when the second one arrived promptly and even happier when a third one unexpectedly turned up! There must have been some sort of processing error for the third one to be sent as he’d definitely only ordered and paid for the second one. He promptly sold it on to Gordon Bennett at cost price. Bob the Builder has ordered one for himself as well so we should soon have four identical Raptors in the air at once. What could possibly go wrong?

Last month I reported on the own design F-22 Raptor that Dwayne Pipe had built from Correx. It looked good but was struggling to get airborne. This month there have been a couple of developments, firstly it’s an F-35 not an F-22, oops, sorry about that Dwayne.
Secondly, after a few modifications it now flies. You can see it flying in the video where it looks good and appears to be flying well but Dwayne isn’t really happy with it and reckons it’s a bit underpowered and overweight so it’s going back to the workshop for more mods.

Now for the ‘It’s all about Dougal’ section. Dougal Entendre sent through a photo that he’d snapped of his Durafly Excalibur and HobbyKing SportJet in matching white with green, grey, and black trim. They look nice but it would have been better if they were lined up more neatly Dougal, I’m afraid it’s beyond my photo shopping skills to straighten them!
As it’s now the end of spring and heading rapidly towards summer Dougal decided to purchase a transmitter muff to keep his hands warm. Sticking with his obvious taste in colours Dougal chose a delicate shade of bright orange to match…er.. absolutely nothing.
It comes from Ali Express and is also available in black for those of you with more taste! The manufacturer is Wtotoy and according to the website it has a heavy duty canvas material for the exterior with felt lining interior. It has an internal structure to keep the glove from interfering with the sticks and an elastic strap to hold TX in place but Dougal said he could feel it against his fingers on the sticks so he’s going to try and sort that out.
If you’d like one (in black obviously!) they cost just £11.08 with free shipping from China. Order today and it should arrive before winter, about six months before winter…

Still modelling (but not aeromodelling) 1066 is building a rocket. Sort of. This is what he says: I am making it for a mate who loves film memorabilia and it’s to display a puppet alien made by a guy called Raiden Gorby who owns a company called Luna’s Puppets. More info can be found on the internet but he makes large film props. I am working from a model that is about 75mm tall and scaling it up so the body of the rocket is 400mm tall. The top of the little model rocket looks like an old radio valve, and the puppet will go in a dome on top of the bit I’m making, so you can get an idea of size.
The construction is 3mm ply formers on a 12mm piece of dowel, the planking is 3mm x 6mm strips of pine cut down from some old scraps I had in the shed.

The build is drinking CA and kicker, but with the puppet being quite valuable I’m not sure my mate will worry about that. His dad owns a car body repair shop, so when it’s done the rocket will be professionally finished. It looks great so far 1066, hopefully we’ll get to see some pictures of the completed rocket fitted with the dome containing the puppet.

Captain Slow brought along a new model to test fly in April, a Flite-Test Simple Stick.
Captain Slow had looked at buying the kit from the Flite-Test website but the postage from America was more than the kit so, having a son who lives in the States, he asked him to bring one over with him at Christmas. Hang on, that means Captain Slow got the kit in late December and flew it in mid-April, that can’t be right, maybe it was a previous Christmas!
The kit consists almost entirely of brown paper covered foamboard, the only wood parts being the firewall and wing dowels. He says the online instructions were very good but they say to use hot glue for the whole build but when glueing the spar in place Captain Slow found the glue was cooling down and setting too quickly so he used epoxy instead. Apart from that the build went well and when finished he covered the Stick in shrink film.
He has fitted a 2212 1000kV motor, a 30A speed controller, and is using a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo. Flite-Test say to use a 1300mAh lipo but Captain Slow found the centre of gravity was a little rearward with a 1300 so plumped for the 2200. The first flights were done using a 9 x 4.7 propeller but if he wants a bit more speed (Captain Slow?) he could change it for an 8 x 6. Both propellers only pull around 11A so flight times will be long with a 2200mAh pack.
Despite his fears that the Stick night be a bit underpowered it took off with no problems at all and flew very well, the only comment from Capt. Slow being that it was a bit twitchy on ailerons, something that is easily sorted by dialling in some expo. As you’ll see in the video Slow didn’t try any aerobatics on the first flight, he was just getting the feel for the model.

Thinking of hot glue construction I’ve often hankered after some of the long glue sticks used in the Flite-Test videos as the usual length sticks aren’t long enough to complete the long joints often required on foamboard models. I’ve never seen the longer sticks in the shops until this month when I spotted some in the In-Excess garden centre at Fair Oak.
I bought a pack to try but haven’t had a chance to test them yet so I’ll report back later.

April seemed to be the month that members had a go at the spot landings competition. First Woody hit the spot with his Sukhoi SU-27, then young Leo landed his Skylark right on it while Dougal was videoing, and finally Bob the Builder did the same with his Skybus.
It’s interesting that all three of them are ‘A’ certificate holders and so far none of the ‘B’ certificate holders have hit the spot. That should wind 1066 up to have hundreds of tries!

Here are a few old action shots for you to enjoy, no new ones I’m afraid this month:

Video time now, this time with footage recorded by me, Dougal Entendre, and Peter F. 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

Almost new parachute for sale:
Never been opened
Used once
Small stain…

Colin Cowplain