Patch News – December 2024

Happy New Year everybody, especially PAM members! I hope you’ve had a great Christmas and are looking forward to lots of flying in 2025. The days are already getting longer again and those long hot summers days are just around the corner…possibly!
Let me know if you received any modelling goodies from Father Christmas, I already know that Woody and Captain Slow each received a little RC foam plane that Santa apparently obtained in the Lidl Black Friday sale, more of those later. Some of us managed a few flying sessions in December but of course the weather wasn’t the best and several times a few of us made it up to the field but didn’t fly because it was too misty. Six of us went on Christmas Eve despite it looking very murky in Clanfield. We were assured that the mist was about to clear by some idiot (OK, it was me!) who was sadly proved completely wrong. Never mind, it was all made worthwhile as 1066 brought along mince pies for us, surely a Christmas miracle! Chairman Gordon Bennett brought along his wife Pam which brightened up the morning and she photographed the group of merry members. Pam’s presence clarified something for me, I’ve always admired Gordon’s rather confusing loyalty to Petersfield Aero Modellers when he says he’s totally committed to Pam…

December marked the first anniversary of the club using the new site after many years of problem free flying at Chidden Down. I think we can all agree that the first year at the new site has been successful and, comparing it to the old site, there are some good points and some bad points. The track leading to the parking area is longer than the previous one but it’s less bumpy and not so muddy. The first couple of hundred yards are a bit mucky but from there on it’s pretty good. The parking area gets churned up a bit by the farm vehicles but last winter the farmers put down loads of wood chippings which helped a lot, maybe they could do the same again this year. The patch is a great improvement on the previous one, rather than a 30 metre diameter circle we now have a 30 x 40 metre rectangle.
In just a year what was just rough field has become a nice flat area of decent quality grass. We’ve had cattle in the field a few times but much less often than in the old field and they’ve been less troublesome, maybe because the field is much larger overall. There have also been sheep in the field occasionally but they’re rarely a problem to us anyway.
And there are superb views from the field, especially looking east from the pits towards Butser, so fingers crossed that we can have untroubled use of it for many years to come.

On one the nicer December mornings we were joined at the field by Jeremy Stuttard. Jeremy has been a club member for quite a few years but his main club is CADMAC (Chichester & District Model Aircraft Club) as he lives in Emsworth so Thorney is very close for him. Because Thorney is only available for flying on Sundays Jeremy keeps PAM membership for midweek flying, although this year he hadn’t managed to fly with us until December. That meant it was his first time at the new field and Jeremy said he preferred it to the old one as he was never happy about the close proximity of the road before.
Jeremy flew his E-Flite Pulse 25E, a model I’ve seen him fly before but since then he has re-covered the wings in orange film to help with visibility. Jeremy explained that he’d found the previous white and yellow covering occasionally have him orientation problems and that the orange stands out much better for him. I was a little confused when he kept the wings covered with reflecting protective bags until immediately before the flight and replaced them immediately after the flight but Jeremy explained that the orange covering fades really quickly in bright sunlight and he wants to keep them nice and bright.
I think the 52” span Pulse is intended to be flown on 3 cells but Jeremy was using a 4 cell pack which fitted in perfectly and the model certainly performed well. Jeremy has his timer set for eight minutes, a decent flight time considering he flew a turnaround schedule of almost constant aerobatics. You can watch some of Jeremy’s flight in this month’s video.

In the last Patch News I mentioned the upcoming AGM. For those of you who missed it the AGM will be held at The Hampshire Hog on Wednesday 8^th January, starting at 7.30pm. The meeting agenda will be circulated in due course but, as always, one of the things to discuss which affects us all will be the annual fees. Please put the date in your diaries and make the effort to attend. As always, I will be running a raffle with modelling goodies for prizes so make sure you come along with your pockets stuffed full of cash!

For a few weeks Woody has been telling us about a foamie Darkstar he’s been building and this month he brought it along to test fly. The full-size Darkstar is the top-secret plane that featured in the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick where it was flown (and destroyed) by Woody’s hero Tom Cruise. To give it its full title the plane is a Lockheed Martin SR-72 Darkstar and is often referred to as “Son of Blackbird”, the amazing SR-71.
The USA have only recently admitted that the real aircraft even exists and they say it’s not related to the Darkstar in the movie even though the fictional Darkstar was designed with the help of engineers at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division. Next they’ll be saying the Tom Cruise isn’t really the world’s best Test Pilot, pah! Back to Woody’s model, it was designed by Humayun Najabat, a guy in Pakistan who has a YouTube channel featuring various designs of foam models with the videos showing the construction and flying.
There aren’t any plans as such but the videos show the basic measurements of the various pieces and basic installation of the motor and the radio gear. Woody said there was no indication of where the centre of gravity should be but in the notes below the video it says 11cm from the motor. Admittedly that’s a bit vague but I assume it means 11cm forward from the back of the motor. Anyway, Woody guessed where it should be and he ended up with the battery further forward than where Humayun has his. The notes also say that Humayun used 10mm Thermocole foam which seems to just be expanded polystyrene.
The photos of Humayun’s model are all screenshots taken from his video. His YouTube channel features lots of his models and is well worth a look. It can be found HERE
Woody used some 5mm underfloor foam insulation for B&Q and then covered it in brown paper to give it some stiffness. He used his usual foamie set-up consisting of a Turnigy 2826/6 2200Kv motor, a 30A speed controller, and a pair of 9g metal gear servos.
Oh, and lights…obviously! Moving on to the most important part, did it fly? Yes! Very well actually, just a little bit of down elevator trim required but otherwise perfect. Woody is using a seven inch diameter prop rather than the six inch most of us use with that motor and the Darkstar wasn’t at all noisy. The centre of gravity is a little bit too far forward which meant that it wouldn’t maintain inverted flight even with full down elevator but other than that it is a really nice flier and will happily loop and roll. Tom Cruise reached Mach 10 in his Darkstar but Woody’s wouldn’t reach Mach 0.01 downwind in a gale but not to worry, the slow speed handling was excellent. You can see it flying in the video.

Now for more about the Sky Viper Vectors that both Captain Slow and Woody received as Christmas presents. Is it me or does Sky Viper Vector sound like something from an Airplane movie?! Captain Slow spotted them for just £39.99 in the Lidl Black Friday sale, bought one for himself, and then convinced Woody that he also needed one.
It’s a little twin motored foam delta, similar to the Darkstar and comes completed with the transmitter and a single cell 500mAh lipo battery which is charged using a USB lead. Unlike some foamies the Vector has elevons rather than relying on variable motor thrust. It doesn’t have a rudder so uses variable thrust for yawing but normal aileron and elevator controls are taken care of by servo driven elevons so it should be very manoeuvrable.
The range is quoted as 600ft and the motors cut off if it goes out of range and the Vector glides down and beeps to help the operator find it. The transmitter has an Aerobatic button which when pressed makes the Vector loop or roll. Unfortunately the misty weather prevented Captain Slow from flying between Christmas and New Year but Woody was able to test fly his Vector on 30th December when he found it was an excellent flier.
The auto stabilization was certainly working hard as can be seen in this month’s video.

Santa gave 1066 a Christmas present and he’s going to write a full build blog for us.
Here’s Part 1: Introduction & Unpacking: As most of you know I have often mentioned my time displaying the Ken Stokes Mirus at model shows all over the country, although not as often as Palmer has mentioned his Spitfire flight (I have no idea what he means!)
It was a great year spent with like-minded mates, flying toy planes, drinking, and barbecuing. Ken Stokes epitomised the model designer, he came up with a design that really caught on at his local club, before deciding to produce them for sale.
The Mirus was originally supplied as a plan pack which was basically a foam wing, and plan, it came in two sizes, for 25 and 40 size IC motors. Ken would then travel around the shows selling the Mirus out of the back of an old camper van with his wife and dog. Ken was a real character, he was almost deaf, and going by his glasses his eyesight wasn’t great either, and he was never seen without wearing his old straw hat.
The Mirus display team consisted of around ten guys who were prepared to buy the model, supply everything needed to finish it, cover their own travel costs, and more often than not, pay to get into the show. Then when it came to the display, follow exactly what Ken was doing. But despite all this it really was a great experience. That’s 1066 below!
I never kept any of the models I had back in 1981 (yes, I was in my early twenties) so many years later when I had been infected by Andy Palmers constant nagging about flying electric, and the nostalgia voice was constantly in my head, I thought the Mirus would be a great candidate for conversion. By this time Ken had passed, and the Mirus plan pack was no more. After some research I found a guy selling the plan on eBay, so one was purchased. As I said at the start, this was originally a plan pack, and Ken cleverly left off any wing section details so you couldn’t cut your own wings, hmm. Not to be beaten I decided to make a solid balsa flat plate wing, similar to the Weston UK Magnum, however this failed miserably because it was done in the winter, out in the shed, so when it came indoors and dried out it twisted so badly it could not be salvaged. Move forward another couple of years and we all discovered the Kline-Fogleman wing section, and found that art card combined with coloured packing tape could be used to make serviceable wings. A wing was very quickly made, and after some mods has been quite successful for a few years now. Moving forward again, I found a guy on Facebook who had started kitting the Mirus again. Mini-Mike soon purchased the 25 version and when he brought it to the field for the first time the nostalgia voices started nagging again and when NJR Modelling offered a Black Friday deal I decided the wife should buy me a 40 sized one for Christmas. So, let’s get started on the Mirus unpacking.
On opening the box you are greeted by the foam wings and a huge amount of tissue (I won’t need a toilet roll for days). Once the tissue was removed a surprisingly small amount of materials were exposed. For the purpose of this blog I removed all the parts from their respective sheets and photographed them to show just how few parts there are for this very simple model. As can be seen in the photos you don’t get a lot for your £100. I also took a photo of the scrap and it’s very obvious that NJR had spent a lot of time keeping this to an absolute minimum. So my initial thoughts on the kit are, the materials have been well selected for their respective jobs being a mixture of lite-ply and Balsa.
The laser cutting is outstanding, all the parts almost dropping out of their sheet just by taking them out of the box, so requiring little or no sanding. Strangely even though this is an IC kit there is no engine mount or fuel tank. I also think NJR has missed a big market by not having an electric version (yet) so I will have to put a bit of effort to do the conversion myself.  Thanks for that 1066, watch this space next month for the build.

This month I’ve delved way back into the archives for some older PAM action shots:

Video time now, with footage shot by myself, MacFly, Dougal, Gordon, and Captain Slow. 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

This month the Final Funny isn’t aviation related but it’s seasonal and made me smile 🙂

Colin Cowplain