Patch News – February 2015

It’s the beginning of March and the signs of spring are here, roll on summer! February gave us the expected mixture of weather, some days were just wet and awful, others were cold but clear, but the overall trend seemed to be windy.

February 1^st in particular was VERY windy, only an idiot would have bothered trying to fly…well it seems we have two idiots, Captain Slow (John Wheeley) and Dougal Entendre (Mark Agate). Perhaps I should mention that the nicknames are mostly not ones I have dreamt up, they are what people have chosen to call themselves.Anyway, said idiots both flew their little Spirit electric mini-hotliners and Dougal sent the photographic evidence.He reports that the wind was typically 25 knots with gusts up to 38 knots but the Spirits took it in their stride!

We all tend to struggle with watery eyes when trying to fly in really windy weather. Personally I wear sunglasses all year round and find that they control the watering. Steve 1066 Hastings struggles more than most and was seen this month testing yet another solution.

Not your best look Steve but if it works for you…

Last month I briefly mentioned the Citabria Pro that Dwayn Pipe (Keith Evans) had built but as he was planning to give a talk at club about building the model I didn’t go into any detail.The talk was excellent and gave a good insight into building from a plan, including such things as creating a materials list and cutting a kit of parts before commencing the build.Following the first flight Keith has made a few adjustments to such things as the motor downthrust etc and the Citabria has now had several more successful flights. I managed to get some reasonable video of one flight which you can see here: Citabria video

I also mentioned last month that Dougal has been messing around with some new firmware on his Walkera Devention transmitter which has meant overwriting every model setup. So he has been giving all of his many models a fresh ‘first flight’ to trim them and get the control movements he likes. Dougal seems to have gone with the approach of starting with the maximum movement possible on all surfaces with no exponential, and then taming them back to something more comfortable. This has resulted in some amusing moments for us spectators and having watched some of his tests I decided to record the ‘first flight’ of his Slick.

I only managed the first few seconds as I was laughing so much: Slick video

One of the PAM members who braved the winds several times in February was Gary Houghton. Gary is the last remaining regular I/C flier but I understand an electric model is currently under construction.

He is seen here with his Chris Foss Wot 4 and he also flies a Weston Cougar 2000.

Steve 1066 Hastings has been enjoying his Speedy electric glider this month. The model has a 1600mm span built up balsa wing and a fibreglass fuselage, and is sold by HobbyKing as a 3 cell model.Steve first flew the model on 3 cells but wanted a bit more power so he switched to 4 cells. Unfortunately I wasn’t there to witness the event but apparently the extra power proved too much for the fibreglass fuselage and the motor ripped the nose off! I would imagine the prop was out of balance for it to do that. Steve duly completed the repairs and stiffened the inside of the nose with some ply strips.

The motor looks like an inrunner but it’s actually an outrunner inside a case. The case means there aren’t any rotating parts to keep the wires etc away from, something that can be a problem in a glider with a slim nose. He wasn’t over keen on the kit and said it was a bit of a pig to put together but now it’s sorted I think he’s very happy with it, it certainly performs very well. I shot some video of it flying in very strong winds on 1^st March but as this is the February blog you’ll just have to wait until next month to see it.

A model that has been to the field but is as yet unflown is Tony Neal’s new BAE Hawk. It’s another one from HobbyKing and is very similar to their T-45 Goshawk but in fact it’s slightly larger and uses a 70mm fan rather than 64mm.

It’s a bit odd as HK call it a Red Arrow BAE Hawk but it’s not in Red Arrows colours; in fact it has American markings! However, it looks great and I think it will fly very well, certainly the Goshawk is an excellent flier and if anything this one should be better.

Tony’s model is complete and ready to go but he wisely decided not to risk a maiden flight in the blustery winds that prevailed on the day he brought it along. Hopefully it will fly soon and I will be able to report on it in the March blog.

Gentleman Jim Hobday chose one of the calmer days to fly his Grumman Wildcat. It’s been around for a while now and is a great little flier. Jim bought it at Blackbushe a couple of years ago as a bag of foam Wildcat parts rather than a complete kit.

It seems to be the Parkzone one but I imagine it was a replacement airframe for people who had crashed theirs. So Jim had to find a suitable motor along with all the usual fixture and fittings, something he obviously got right as it flies really well.

Woody has bought himself another Pilatus PC9 to replace the one he ‘wore out’… I test flew it and discovered Woody needs a lesson on how to locate the CG! But all was well and after the addition of lots of nose weight and some elevator adjustments it flew nicely. I forgot to take a photo of the model; I just got this one of a rather dispirited looking Woody being assisted by Gentleman Jim.

I also snapped this general one of the pits on a cold and windy day.

Captain Slow has discovered that his Ugly Stik has the usual ARTF undercarriage…Almost Ready To Fail.It neatly fell off on what looked like a pretty gentle landing and on closer examination it seems there was almost no glue holding the mounting plate in place.

I suppose it meant it came off with minimal damage to the surrounding area but the manufacturers really need to improve undercarriage mounting for people who don’t fly from lovely tarmac runways. John has now glued it back in properly so hopefully it will stay put.

We had a very welcome surprise visit to the patch a couple of Sundays ago when a full-size Tiger Moth decided to drop in and see us! We have often seen it around the area and occasionally we have been treated to a low pass or an impromptu aerobatic display. This time he circled the field quite closely a couple of times so we landed all models to avoid him, and then he came in from the bottom corner, parallel to the road, for what we thought would be a low pass. But he touched down and stopped level with the patch and waved us over. He apologised for interrupting our flying (as if we minded!) and explained that he liked seeing us fly, saying he had tried R/C modelling a few years ago but kept crashing so now he just sticks to full-size as it’s easier! He was only down for a couple of minutes, and then he taxied up to the top corner and took off again heading back towards the bottom corner.There was a pretty strong crosswind blowing but it didn’t seem to bother him at all. Some of us took some video and photos which I have made into a short video that you can see here: Tiger Moth

It’s interesting so see how much the Tiger slows down when he turns into wind after take-off; it shows just how strong the wind was that day.

An Irishman arrived at JFK airport in New York and wandered about the terminal with tears streaming down his face. An airline employee asked him if he was homesick.

‘No’ replied the Irishman ‘It’s worse, I’ve lost all me luggage’

‘That’s terrible, how did it happen?’                                         

‘The cork fell out of me bottle’

Colin Cowplain