Patch News – August 2018

August saw a change in the weather and we’ve gone from moaning ‘It’s too hot, I’m sick of this heat, we need some rain’ to ‘What’s going on, it’s supposed to be summer but it’s like winter’! The patch greened up very quickly when it rained and the speed of the transformation from dry dust bowl to lush green grass was quite incredible.The FARTS (Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society) sprang into action and gave it a good cut on Friday 17th but even by the Monday it was growing rapidly and when it was cut again on Friday 24th there was a lot of grass taken off. With the fence doing its job of keeping the bullocks away the grass is now in first class condition and the patch is better than it’s been for a very long time. The bullocks have learnt not to go near the fence and they leave the fliers alone most of the time so we have rarely needed to use the pen round the pits area. I took this photo one midweek day when we had just arrived and were busy lowering the fence, that’s not how we had the pits set up! We had an ‘incident’ this month, John Warren managed to run his Albatros into himself whilst connecting the battery and the propeller did an excellent impersonation of a bacon slicer on his arm. He was extremely lucky that the cuts were not too deep and with the application of pads and a bandage the bleeding was soon stemmed. Initially we thought John was fine and we rang his wife to come and collect him but then shock kicked in, the blood drained from his face and he briefly passed out so we rang for an ambulance. John was laid down on a groundsheet with his arm raised and was looking much better by the time the ambulance arrived. The ambulance service was excellent (both the staff on the phone and the crew) and, once they’d checked his blood pressure etc., they soon had his arm cleaned up and re-bandaged. They said it didn’t need stitches and a trip to A&E wasn’t required so John’s wife drove him to Petersfield hospital where he was given a thorough check over, the wound redressed, and his arm put in a sling. Several things came out of the incident. Firstly, we must never get blasé about the dangers of an electric model once the battery has been connected. Secondly, the club first aid kits issued to members proved to be very good and we must all keep them with us whenever we fly, they are no use at home or in the car. Thirdly, it took several members to manage the situation, caring for John, directing the ambulance, replacing the fence and so on. Fortunately the bullocks stayed at the bottom of the field and didn’t need to be kept at bay, had they been more inquisitive the situation would have been much more difficult. I don’t want to be unsympathetic but John had been warned several times that he was not being careful enough with a ‘live’ model, hopefully he has learned from this. The incident should also serve as a warning to all of us not to be complacent, a model is dangerous from the moment the battery is connected and must be treated with the utmost respect.

Lecture over, onto more pleasant things now. Despite it still being summer there was a slight lack of new models in August but Page Boy turned up one morning with a very nice little North American AT-6 Texan.The British version is the Harvard but they are basically the same plane. Page Boy’s Texan comes from FMS and it’s an 800mm span model moulded in EPO foam. He actually bought it second-hand (but unflown I think) on eBay about a year ago but has only just got around to finishing it. Page Boy has fitted 1900Kv bell motor in place of the stock 1300Kv motor and uses a 3 cell 1000mAh lipo. At full throttle it’s giving 185W and as the Texan only weighs 450g (1lb) that’s an awful lot of power! The rest of the gear is as it comes, a 20A esc and four 9g servos. As you can see in this month’s video the Texan flies really well. Page Boy was flinging it around at pretty high speed when I was filming but I had a flight with it afterwards and it is also well behaved when flown much more slowly, I was really impressed with it, a lovely little model.

 At Buriton recreation ground, before the last meeting of August, Dwayne Pipe flew his the latest version of his indoor/very light wind model, appropriately named Mark 3. Unfortunately I was busy flying my Hummer so I didn’t get to video the Mark 3 but it looked to be flying well, certainly much better than either the Mark 1 or Mark 2 did. I asked Dwayne for some details of the model and this is what he sent: The Mark 3 is my latest attempt to home build an indoor flyer that uses my standard Spektrum transmitter. I have a couple of HobbyKing indoor planes already, which always come with their own low spec custom transmitter. The Mark 1 was a 15″ Depron Blitz that flew round in circles. The Mark 2 was a 15″ Depron Splot that was too heavy and could barely fly.

The Mark 3 is a 15″ own design based on the Splot planform. It flies on rudder, elevator and throttle control. The wings and tail feathers are made of 3mm Aero Depron. The cambered wing is heat moulded to a Clark Y section using a process I found in a recent RCME article. This construction makes a very stiff wing that requires no spar. The two wing sections are assembled with dihedral and then epoxied to a couple of 2mm carbon fibre tubes which form the fuselage, with the tail being sheet Depron. The whole thing including battery I estimate as about 30 grams.The electronics are a Bang-good 2.4G Micro DSM2 compatible receiver with built in brushed ESC. This was bound to my transmitter (eventually) and unlike most “blocks” comes with 4 servo micro sockets. It turns out that only HobbyKing make servos to fit these sockets. These are HobbyKing HK-282AS ultra-micro analogue servos at 2.2 grams each. The motor is a Bang-good coreless brushed motor fitted with gearbox and 5.5 inch propeller. Most importantly I discovered that these tiny aircraft require no down thrust or side thrust when setting up the motor. The battery is 1S 300mAh positioned to balance the model. The model is designed to take the wire wheels from another indoor flyer and will take-off from the ground.From initial flights it is very stable and should be ideal for indoor flying at Havant but probably too cumbersome to fly at the much smaller Medstead. Thanks Dwayne, I’ll try to get some video of the Mark 3 for a future Patch News.

It finally happened, Cream Egg eventually ran out of skill luck and crashed his Wot4…big time! He had to search for a replacement and this is his story: I spent a lot of time considering what model to purchase following the demise of my WOT4 through stupid pilot error! I ended up with a very extensive shortlist and then Steve Hastings (1066) kindly came over one evening for us to go through the choices and finally settled on the Voltigeur.Cost: £142, including motor, 45 Amp ESC, servos, prop and everything necessary other than the receiver. Assembly instructions: None. Simply 10 pictures on the box, which were very easy to follow. The servos and linkages are pre-fitted. These feature very nice ball joints and the servos are metal gear versions. The entire model is foam construction. Carbon fibre rod through the wings, which is typical. The wings are secured by small plastic bolts for easy disassembly. All one needs is some good Gorilla Glue to install the elevator/rudder/tailplane assembly. Connecting the linkages was reasonably straightforward. The worst operation is assembling the wheels and the fairings that surround them. This took more time than any other operation. Wheels are small and one already has a partial flattened surface and so I am inclined to change these and indeed increase the size slightly as the fairings will accommodate a larger diameter. The plane is designed for 3S batteries and demonstrations by Michael Wargo of Hobbyking show this to be a high performance aircraft with this size of battery and the 1000Kv motor/45Amp ESC. However, my 3S batteries were originally used in my Pandora when I started out and, as they have not been charged/discharged very much over the last year or so, I found them to be quite weak. Accordingly, I thought I would try my 4S batteries, which I have been using in the WOT4. A full load test with Andy‘s assistance showed a maximum power draw of 500 Watts at 40 Amps. Accordingly then, the 45 amp ESC supplied should in theory be adequate, but I plan to use the 60 Amp ESC out of my WOT4 instead. My last flight lasted eight minutes and came down with 57% on the 4S battery flown in fairly high winds of up to 17 mph. All up, I am delighted with the model and especially the way she handles, especially when landing. She is very light and when climbing vertically, it is really impressive. I believe it will be a great aerobatic model to further develop my skills. The Voltigeur certainly looks good both on the ground and in the air, it’s a very pretty model that performs really well. You can see 1066 doing the maiden flight and some of Crème Egg’s latest flight in this month’s video.

I mentioned in last month’s Patch News that we had been visited by ex-PAM member Peter Mason and he’d promised to organise a quiz night for us. He duly came along to the first meeting in August and ran what turned out to be a very successful quiz consisting of 50 wide ranging aviation questions. The questions were well thought out and I was pleased that there were none of the ‘How many rivets were used to construct Mk.9 Spitfire’ type. Some questions were comparatively easy while others made our tired old brains whir quite a lot! Peter provided some very nice prizes for the first three places and I’m pleased to say that I won with just 25 points and Dougal and Woody tied for second place with 24 points each. I’m sure all those present thoroughly enjoyed the evening and we pass on our thanks to Peter.

Woody bought himself a new Wot4 recently and has been getting along well with it in August.It’s an ARTF wood E version, not the Foam-E and is identical to the one being flown by Bob the Builder. There could be trouble ahead…! Kryten snapped a couple of lovely flying shots of the Wot4. Woody has also finished a renovation job on his old Seagull Swift trainer. I think the Swift was Woody’s first model and it served him well but as it’s now around 5 years old it was starting to look a bit tatty.He decided to give it a US Navy Blue Angels colour scheme in the hope that the bright yellow underside would show up well even at 5000ft where he usually flies! It certainly works, looks very smart, and flies as well as it always did. Although Seagull sell the Swift as I/C or electric it’s really just an I/C plane that’s easy to convert. Woody has fitted an old Thumper motor and runs it on a 5 cell lipo which gives it ample power to do all the aerobatics that you can expect from a trainer. Good one Woody, well done.

Having buried his original Kung Fu 1066 decided he missed it and has built another one.The first one was built for the annual club model event although 1066 seemed to have trouble counting fins as his only had one rather than the two shown on the plan. The club models were built from Depron and most flew very well, 1066’s being vastly over-powered as usual. He has built the replacement Kung Fu from foam board, the paper faced/foam core stuff that can be found in art supply shops etc. It’s very easy to work with although 1066 found the paper is easily damaged by tape when trying to hold it together while glue dries. I imagine cyano would melt the foam so UHU Por, Gorilla Glue or epoxy would be the obvious choices. The new one is to the plan apart from only having one fin (again!) and a slightly lengthened nose in order to achieve the C of G without requiring nose weight. It seems to fly just like the original which is unsurprising as 1066 has fitted the same motor etc.

Dougal Entendre has finally got around to finishing the Freewing Moray that he bought some time ago from Alibaba in China. The Moray is intended to be flown on a 4 cell 1600mAh lipo using a 1400Kv motor but Dougal wanted to use his 3 cell 2200mAh packs so he has fitted a suitable 1800Kv motor instead and it flies very well. Some of the first flight can be seen in this month’s video and all went well. Unfortunately the second flight didn’t!It was flying perfectly until Dougal decided to check the stall and, despite having ample height, the Moray didn’t recover as expected and crashed. At the time of writing the cause is undetermined but the damage didn’t look too bad so hopefully Dougal will soon have it repaired and flying again.

Chris P Bacon visited the BMFA Nationals over the Bank Holiday weekend and sent me some photos of the event. He says the Vulcan had incredible presence in the sky but he didn’t feel the same about the Lanc. Maybe I’ve been flying electric too long but for me the petrol engines used in most WW2 models always sound terrible and with 4 of them in the Lanc I don’t think it would ever impress me. The jet turbines in the Vulcan just sound like…jet turbines.Chris P said the ailerons on the fun-fly model were the biggest he’s seen, I imagine they can be drooped a little to change the wing section for the Max Glide part of the competition, hence the size.He also said all the F3A aerobatic models were electric powered and used 10 cell lipo packs to give the performance. Nice! Thanks for the photos Chris P, more of us should make the effort to visit the Nats next year.

Thanks to Kryton, Captain Slow, and Dougal Entendre for pics & video contributions; here’s this month’s video:

Please watch the video full screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around. If the video won’t play for you CLICK HERE

This month’s closing chortle is a photo that I stole from Dougal’s Facebook page. ‘Two planes sharing a joke’ 

Colin Cowplain