Happy New Year everybody! I hope you’ve all had a great Christmas and maybe even received some modelling goodies. If you did please let me know what you got and tell me about them, I might feature them in a future edition of Patch News. Unfortunately much of the December weather was not conducive to model flying with the first half of the month being extremely cold and the second half warmer but wet and windy. I didn’t spot a single new model t0 feature this month, I think that’s a first. Rather oddly, just like last month, the weather always seemed to be better on Friday afternoons than on Sunday mornings and I took this sunset photo as we were loading up our cars on Friday 16th December.
But now we’re into a new year, the shortest day has come and gone, the evenings are already getting lighter, and we’ll soon have week after week of glorious long, hot, near windless days that are perfect for model flying…possibly!
December 1st was an excellent flying day, quite cold but with light winds so no wind chill. I flew FPV with my Volantex Ranger and hoped to copy Dougal Entendre’s cloud hopping that I featured last month. The day was similar to when Dougal had captured his excellent video footage but the clouds that were laying in the valleys stayed stubbornly down in the valleys rather than slowly blowing up and over our field. Never mind, although the clouds were just too far away for me to reach I did manage to get some nice footage and I quite like this shot where you can see the masts directly in front on the plane’s nose.
Back over our field I managed to follow Chas’s Wot4 as he did some touch & go’s.
You can enjoy watching some of the footage in this month’s video.
Away from the patch the first club AGM in three years was held on Wednesday 7th December. With the various Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions it had been impossible to have any meetings so this was a very important one. After a discussion with the other committee members Chairman Captain Slow chose a room at Clanfield Memorial Hall as the venue and it turned out to be an excellent choice with seventeen members making the meeting. The AGM began with reports from each of the committee, one of the important ones being the Treasurer’s report which showed that the club had managed to stay solvent despite all Nick Squire’s expensive holidays! Then it was onto the main event, the election of a new Chairman as Captain Slow had decided to step down after three years.
He’d done a great job of guiding us through the difficult Covid-19 times with several bouts of no flying at all or with only limited numbers allowed and various other complications along the way. Holding the club together when no meetings were possible was a feat in itself which Captain Slow handled admirably. But who would step up to become the new Chairman? We were very pleased and mightily relieved when Gordon Bennett volunteered to take on the job and within seconds he was elected, before he could change his mind!
The remaining six committee members were happy to continue so with no other candidates coming forward were all re-elected. The topic of restarting club meetings was discussed at length and it was decided to try and hold quarterly formal meetings with maybe some social meetings in between those if members wanted them. I ran two raffles (Big and Small) with prizes that had been bought just before the first lockdown. The members were extremely generous and the total takings were £111, an excellent result.
Overall the AGM was a great success and I think everyone enjoyed it.
Way back in early November I’d spotted what looked to be a bargain on the Banggood site and in a moment of madness I’d hit the Buy button. It’s sold as an HW-34 and it’s another of the tiny Chinese models that come complete with a transmitter and are fitted with a gyro but unlike the others it’s not really even pretending to be a scale model, it’s much more of a toy. I think it’s roughly based on the Sukhoi SU-34 and I do mean roughly.
The other micro planes that lots of us are flying have the usual aileron, elevator, and rudder controls but this one has none of those. It is fitted with two pusher propellers and control is done by altering the speed of one or both of the motors to make it climb or dive and turn left or right so there’ll be no aerobatics with this one. It is moulded in coloured EPP foam and is said to be unbreakable, there’s a video showing various strength tests.
So why did I buy it? Well partly because it has multiple LEDs for night flying (the lights alone would be enough to convince Woody to buy it} but mostly because the complete package including three batteries and tracked delivery was only £24.12, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot as it turns out, it hasn’t arrived yet! It’s coming from China so I knew it would take a while and the estimated delivery was between December 2nd and 12th. I placed the order on 10th November and the tracking shows it was shipped on 11th and went through various parts of China before arriving by plane in the UK on 20th November. Since then nothing has happened and the Royal Mail tracking simply says “More information will be available when it arrives in the UK” so presumably it’s awaiting customs clearance. I used the Banggood online chat service to query the delivery and Archie (my new best friend) basically said to be patient. So it took 10 days from my placing the order to arrive in the UK and by 1st Jan it will have been sat in customs for 42 days.
STOP PRESS: The day after I wrote the above it arrived! That was 23rd December so it only took 33 days to be delivered once it had arrived in the UK. The Royal Mail tracking still shows that’s they are waiting to receive it from China even though they’ve now delivered it!
Oddly although I ordered an HW-34 according to the box it’s an HW-29 that’s been delivered but it looks identical to me. So presumably it’s supposed to be a Mig-29 not an SU-34. I’ll give more info and hopefully a flying report in the January 2023 Patch News.
Despite the very cold and frosty days at the start of December quite a few club members left the warmth of their homes behind and came out to fly. Just five of us were present when I took this photo fairly early in the morning on Sunday 11th December but soon afterwards several more brave souls turned up as well, a good turnout in those conditions.
From the left it’s Dougal Entendre, Mini Mike, Gordon Bennett, and lastly Captain Slow.
Peter Fothergill dragged himself out in all kinds of weather to practice the flying schedule for his BMFA ‘A’ certificate and flew on days that varied from freezing cold but with light winds to wet, warm(ish), and windy. I admired his stoicism, he must have got very bored flying figure 8 after figure 8, after figure 8 but Peter never complained. Here’s Peter back in July when the weather was rather better with the Max Thrust Riot he used for the test.
Peter had been looked after at various times by Dougal, Chas, Captain Slow, 1066, and me. Both Dougal and I are examiners but as I’d spent more time than Dougal teaching Peter it seemed best if Dougal took Peter for his test. But with the combination of dodgy weather and Dougal’s work commitments it was proving difficult to arrange so when the weather on Friday 16th December was perfect I took Peter by surprise and told him he was taking the test. All went well and his flying was excellent, Peter said later that being able to fly without the hindrance of gloves and a transmitter muff helped no end! He’d already passed the RCC test which simplified the question asking part of the test and he was able to answer all the questions I threw at him with no problems at all.
Having passed and been congratulated by all those present Peter packed all his gear away and sat watching the rest of us. When I insisted he had his first solo flight he unpacked everything again and had a flight that included several loops and rolls followed by a perfect landing on our small patch. Well done Peter, you’re going to be fine!
Gordon Bennett asked to me to check out his Spitfire one day, I’m sure I heard him say he wanted to see how it looked when it was flown properly! Obviously I happily agreed to help out but then I realised there was a problem, Gordon uses Spektrum radio gear…yuk!
But I managed to overcome my dislike and of course the Spektrum performed faultlessly.
Dougal Entendre and I managed to escape the festivities for a while on Boxing Day and enjoyed some great flying in reasonable weather, chilly but not freezing and light winds.
With little flying in December I’m afraid I don’t have any new flying shots so here’s a look back at some of Kryten’s excellent photos that he has taken throughout 2022:
Video time now with footage taken by Dougal Entendre, Gordon Bennett, and myself. 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
Does Father Christmas have to pay landing fees for his sleigh and reindeer?
No, they’re on the house…
Colin Cowplain
Another good patch news. Happy new year to all PAM members
Great work with very little available content Colin. Happy new year all.