Patch News – December 2014

Happy New Year to you all, let’s hope 2015 is good to us and we have a lovely year of warm windless days. No doubt Santa will have brought some aero modelling goodies to some of you and I look forward to reporting on them here over the coming months.

December turned out to be muck spreading month at the field. This has happened a few times over the years but I don’t remember it ever being quite as mucky as this time. The farmer was good enough to avoid our patch but all around it there was a very good(?) covering. This increased the desire to land on the patch for obvious reasons, there were a few that landed just short or ran off the far end and they soon discovered they really were in the sh*t!

It didn’t matter where we chose to put the pits, there was a pretty uniform covering and it was impossible to avoid the stuff. Fortunately some fliers carry a plastic sheet to put their gear on and rest of us managed to cadge a corner or two for our transmitters etc.

Obviously the winter weather has meant less flying than in the summer months but many of us have still flown fairly frequently. Despite some blustery winds Dougal Entendre (aka Mark Agate) was pictured practising inverted passes with his Max Thrust MX2, not easy in the conditions on that particular day.

However, Dougal did have a bit of a problem on another December day. I could serve up my usual course of abuse and mutter about poor landings and so on but on this occasion the damage occurred when he gave his Sportjet a duff launch.It really wasn’t his fault though, as Dougal took a step forward to release the plane he slipped in the aforementioned ‘muck’ and fell over!

Steve 1066 Hastings showed us how it should be done in a similar incident but sadly I didn’t get a photo. He was flying one of his many 3D machines and doing his usual impossible manoeuvres with zero airspeed at waist height when he got the plane a little too close to himself for comfort. In taking the necessary backward step to avoid disaster he ‘did a Dougal’, slipped in the sh*t and fell over! Unlike Dougal he did a sort of 360 degree parachute roll in an attempt to spot the model and managed to regain control. He was then able to get to his knees and back onto his feet to complete the flight. It really was ones of those times when somebody should have been videoing! The model was fine but Steve was comprehensively covered from head to toe…

John Wheeley was good enough to send me a couple of photos of my Yak 52 on an overshoot. The Yak is now sorted to my satisfaction and makes a great flier for the winter weather. He also included a pic of me and Woody braving the elements.

Dougal Entendre snapped this photo of 1066 at the last club meeting before Christmas (subs night). The fire alarm in the room went off unexpectedly and Steve was trying to muffle the din but I reckon the photo is ideal for a caption competition.So, in an effort to see if anyone actually reads Patch News I propose to offer a prize for the best caption in the Comments section at the end. I’ll start the ball rolling. If you’re unsure of how to comment, just put your name (or a nickname), your email address, and the CAPTCHA code shown. Your comment must be at least 15 characters long. You can leave the Website box empty.

The last time I remember the clubroom fire alarm coming into play was when the then member John E gave us a soldering lesson. As most of you will be aware John E is expert at pretty much everything including, it turned out, how to burn huge holes in your trousers with a soldering iron! As you can imagine we barely mentioned the incident… hardly at all…

We know that people across the world look at the PAM website and Steve 1066 received an email the other day from Nick Marson in Houston Texas enquiring about a Splot plan. Nick had lived in the Cotswolds prior to moving to the USA and in the 80’s & 90’s he’d built three Splots, powered by an OS26FS. Nick refers to it as the SMC Splot to presumably he’d bought a kit when Sussex Model Centre kitted them for a few years. Desperate Dan Bennett is on the case and is currently sorting out the best way of getting a plan to Nick. We’d love to hear how it goes Nick, it would be great to receive a report and some photos in due course.

A rather unusual bit of damage occurred one Sunday when Desperate Dan lost power on a landing approach with his Acro Wot Foam-E. He was coming in over the track at the bottom of the field and just caught the top wire of the barbed wire fence.It chewed off the underside of the foam cowl a treat but left the rest of the model pretty much unscathed. He had a lucky escape really, that fence has comprehensively shredded a number of models over the years.

Ever the one to invent new ways of causing mayhem Nigel Baker managed to do something I’d not seen done before. During an attempted take-off with his Wots Wot the prop ‘pecked’ the ground hard enough to break it and throw muck all over the top wing. To add insult to injury the broken blade then chopped off the top of the rudder, surely that’s a first!

Nigel was also involved in an incident that happened to me on Christmas Eve. Ever the thoughtful, selfless one I decided to take myself out of the way of the last minute Christmas preparations and the flying field seemed the obvious place to go. I emailed my intentions to the usual suspects but nobody else could make it apart from Nigel who said he’d come up as soon as he could escape from work.

I only took the little Spirit glider to fly and I had five lovely flights accompanied only by some kites that were soaring over the valley. Between flights I watched the kites, hoping to get some photos but they didn’t come close enough. Needless to say, once I was flying again they flew straight over me a couple of times at about 20 feet!

Part of the reason for choosing the Spirit to fly was because I’d stuck a couple of reflective foil patches to the underside of the wing in the hope of increasing the visibility of the model. I’ve managed to lose sight of it several times, especially in grey wintry skies, and hoped the shiny patches would improve things.

Nigel duly appeared while I was enjoying a sixth flight and, being the friendly chap that I am, I started chatting to him, and pointed out the kites. When I looked back to the Spirit I couldn’t see it! The patches did nothing at all, I had barely seen them on the previous flights, and they certainly didn’t help me now. Usually when you lose sight of a model it reappears after a few heart stopping moments but not this time. I had been gliding out over the valley of death so I started the motor in the hope of hearing it but to no avail (damn those quiet electrics!). Oddly I couldn’t remember with any accuracy where the plane had been when it disappeared! The Spirit is not a stable floater type of glider so after about 30 seconds I knew it would be down but hadn’t got a clue where. I went over to the valley expecting to see white wreckage but saw nothing. The wind was roughly north-west so it should have gone south east.

I spent the next 40 minutes or so checking out the east end of the valley and then the field that used to be the HMS Mercury sports field but had no luck. Then my mobile rang and it was my wife saying that Nigel had rung her (he had my home number but not my mobile) and he’d found my plane. Turns out it had circled back over our field and landed near the lane, about halfway down towards the barn.Fortunately there was only minor damage and she’ll soon be flying again. Moral of story: don’t be a prat!

I couldn’t resist snapping this photo of John Wheeley the other day. Sign of a confused pilot? It just seemed a bit odd to be wearing camouflage trousers with a high viz jacket, contradiction of terms!

Santa Claus, like all pilots, gets regular visits from the Federal Aviation Administration etc, and the CAA examiner arrived a few weeks ago for the pre-Christmas flight check.

In preparation, Santa had the elves wash the sled and bathe all the reindeer. Santa got his logbook out and made sure all his paperwork was in order. He knew they would examine all his equipment and truly put Santa’s flying skills to the test…

The examiner walked slowly around the sled. He checked the reindeer harnesses, the landing gear, and Rudolph’s nose. He painstakingly reviewed Santa’s weight and balance calculations for the sled’s enormous payload.

Finally, they were ready for the check-ride. Santa got in and fastened his seatbelt and shoulder harness and checked the compass. Then the examiner hopped in carrying, to Santa’s surprise, a shotgun.

“What’s that for?!?” asked Santa incredulously.

The examiner winked and said, “I’m not supposed to tell you this ahead of time,” as he leaned over to whisper in Santa’s ear, “but you’re gonna lose an engine on takeoff.”

Colin Cowplain