Patch News – February 2016

The wintry weather certainly continued during February with more wind and rain but the worst of it always seemed to arrive at the weekends. I was desperately short of material for this edition of Patch News until about a week ago when the midweek weather improved and I was able to fly on four consecutive days. Overall the Midweekers didn’t fare too badly, in fact some midweek days were almost perfect, but I do feel a little sorry for the members that have to work for a living… a little sorry, but not too much!I may as well begin with a confession. If you haven’t already been heard on the grapevine you’ll be pleased to hear that I made a teeny weeny faux pas early in the month…barely worth mentioning really… Captain Slow and I were flying our little Spirit mini gliders, sometimes fairly close together, sometimes well apart, when suddenly we both heard a thump. Captain Slow said ‘What was that?’ I replied that I thought maybe it was a car on the road and continued flying quite happily but about 15 seconds later he said ‘You’ve crashed!’  Only then did the horrible truth dawn, somehow the swine had substituted his own Spirit for mine and I had crashed behind us!I still can’t figure out how it happened. At one stage we had been alongside each other, just hovering pointed into wind, so maybe it was then. I think I must have had the throttle shut when it crashed as the motor and speed controller are both fine, and the model isn’t too badly damaged.Obviously it wasn’t my fault at all, I blame Captain Slow completely, but so far I haven’t worked out exactly how it was his fault. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out! All joking apart, it could have been quite serious as the crash was not far behind us and not all that far from the pits, not good. I wouldn’t want to be hit by a Spirit, even with the motor powered off, and even though they only weigh around 12oz.

Want to know how to straighten out the crushed parts of and EPO fuselage? Here’s how I do it.Remove the electronics then just stick it in a bucket of very hot water (but less than boiling point) and top up with more very hot water occasionally. After several hours it’ll be as good as new…ish! What’s the hammer for? No, that’s not to bash it back into shape; it’s to stop it floating!

Now onto happier things. JP and Monty have both managed to get a bit more flying in with their new Vampire and Stuka models. Obviously Monty has to attend school in the week so he’s a bit restricted on flying time but during the half-term week he got to fly JP’s Vampire as well as his own Stuka. The Vampire has now had quite a few flights and we know from others in the club that they perform well, but the Stuka was a completely unknown entity and I expected it to be really susceptible to tip stalling. But not at all, it seems to be very well behaved indeed. The patch hasn’t really been suitable for taking it off so every flight so far has been hand launched but it goes away beautifully each time. There is plenty of power to haul it out of trouble anyway and for most of the flight it stooges around on half throttle. Monty seems to have got used to it well and has already landed it without problems. You can see him flying both the Vampire and Stuka in this month’s video (at the end of this blog) some of which was taken by JP.

A few of the midweek days have had near perfect flying weather with light winds so I dug out my Boeing PT-17 Stearman. It’s only 32” span and is really only suitable for flying in light winds so I tend not to fly it much in the winter months. Norwegian Nick brought along his DH82 Tiger Moth for much the same reasons so I was able to photograph them together.They aren’t the same scale, the Stearman should be a bit larger than the Tiger Moth but they look nice together anyway. Oddly enough, both models were prizes in the club Big Raffles so are probably not models either of us would have chosen had we been buying for ourselves but we are both very happy to have them for the price of a few raffle tickets. We also flew them together but Nick’s Tiger is lighter than the Stearman and wants to fly much more slowly so it wasn’t easy to keep in formation.Gentleman Jim took this cracking photo of my Stearman but unfortunately wasn’t able to get them both in a shot together. Another day maybe…

Only a couple of new models appeared this month, the first being Stanley Knife’s lovely Bowers Fly Baby built from the Seagull kit. It’s an ARTF so it’s more of an assembly job than a build but the end result is a very nice model which has enough scale details such as a dummy engine, rigging wires, and braces to keep it interesting. The designer, Pete Bowers, developed an interest in all things aviation as a child and became an aero-modeller.

He studied aeronautics at the Boeing School in Seattle and after the war was employed by Boeing until he retired. He was also very interested in photography and one of his photographic accomplishments was that he arranged a “formation” photograph of the Dash 80, Boeing’s 707 jetliner prototype, and his own replica of a 1911 Curtiss Pusher. Pete arranged for the Dash 80 crew to fly a low approach at Boeing Field while he flew formation with a pickup truck carrying the cameraman.

Pete was one of the early members of the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) and when they held their first design competition he designed the winning entry, the Fly Baby. It was designed as a simple home-build aircraft and Pete thought he might sell 500 sets of plans, hence the 500 in the original’s registration but there have been over 5000 sets sold to date.

He produced various versions including a Fly Baby biplane that I always thought was called Fly Baby Bipe but the website says it’s Bi-Baby.

The Seagull model spans 68.9”, weighs around 7.5lbs, and is designed for either a 10-15cc I/C engine or an equivalent electric motor. Viv’s is electric of course and uses a Turnigy SK3-5045 500kv motor. He’s running it on 6 cells and a 16×10 prop which pulls around 900W. It has plenty of power and flies very well. As expected it has nice flying characteristics and it good for mild aerobatics but surprisingly, when slowed right up it does drop the right hand wing quite dramatically. I doubt it will ever cause problems as the tip stall only happens at very low speed. At the time of writing it’s only had one flight, some of which can be seen in this month’s video, but I’m sure it will become a firm favourite that will be flown lots more over the next few months.

The other new model seen this month was 1066’s latest 3D machine, an EPP Mini Sbach 342 from HobbyKing.It’s part of the same range as Dan Handley’s EPP Mini Edge 540T 3D that I featured last month and, like Dan’s, it flies brilliantly. The original Sbach 342 is a German high performance two-seat aerobatic and touring monoplane designed by Philipp Steinbach with Albert Mylius and built by XtremeAir GmbH.It is a composite structure low-wing monoplane with a fixed conventional landing gear with a tailwheel. It is powered by a 315hp (235 kW) Lycoming AEIO-580-B1A piston engine driving a three-bladed propeller. It is the tandem version of the single-seater XtremeAir Sbach 300 which was designed by the same team in 2004.The model features an EPP skin over a plywood and carbon fibre built-up structure making it super-light, strong and flexible. Steve has fitted an NTM Prop Drive 28-30 1200kv motor with a 10×4 prop, a 30A speed controller, and uses 1500maH 3 cell lipos. He has now flown it in a reasonably strong wind which it handled it remarkably well so it’s not just a calm evening flier. I had a flight with it and I have to admit that even though 3D isn’t really my thing I enjoyed it a lot. I flew it on medium rates and didn’t try switching to high rates but it did everything I tried with ease. You can see 1066 flying the model in this month’s video.

The better midweek weather that we had at the end of the month meant Chairman Ron was able to bring the mower up to the patch and all those present mucked it and got the patch into reasonable condition. Gentleman Jim photographed both the Chairman and Vice Chairman Woody doing their bit. The patch is never going to be perfect through the wet winter months but it’s not bad now and pretty much all of our models should be able to take off without problems.

Gary H has sent me some pics of two models he’s got underway. The first is an AcroWot, an ARTF but it’s the proper wood one not the foam version, and, as Gary is an OS lover, he has fitted an OS motor.So what I hear you ask, nothing special in that. But there is…it’s an OS ELECTRIC motor that will run on 5 cells!It’s almost finished and ready to go so will fly in early March. Welcome to the dark side Gary, you won’t regret it.

The second model in an own design delta, which is also electric powered. See, he’s caught the bug already! Gary has seen how well the other club deltas fly, scrounged a sheet of Correx, and gone for it. He’s got an Overlander 400W 1500kv motor, a 3 cell lipo, and an 8×6 prop so it should go well. Hurry up and get it finished Gary, you’ll love it, they are great fun to fly in any weather and are very strong.

Following on from Captain Slows’ homemade model storage rack, last month I included some photos of Basher Bobs’ modelling shed and suggested I might be able to run a monthly feature if other members were to send me some photos of their sheds. Well the ever reliable 1066 duly obliged with this very helpful one…Pillock!He later relented and sent some more useful ones including his storage area and his battery charging station. You can see that Steve does parallel charging and has two chargers running from a power supply purchased on eBay. There are dozens of them on eBay typically something like this: DC 12V 24V 5V Universal Regulated Switching Power Supply for LED Strip CCTV – UK  You just select one with the maximum current you want to be able to use (I suggest the bigger the better). On that particular site a 12v 33A/400W power supply is £14.99 with free postage, so much cheaper than buying a ‘proper’ one from a model shop. I don’t know enough about electronics to know if they are any good or not but Steve has been using his for some time now without problems. I believe he has one charger permanently set to charge 3 cell lipos and the other one 4 cell lipos. There’s something to be said for that, less risk of trying to charge with the cell count set incorrectly. Please send me photos of YOUR modelling room and/or storage area and/or charging set up, your ideas can help others.

Finally, unusually I’ve got this far without mentioning Dougal Entendre. I don’t want him feeling left out so here he is flying his Sportjet on the very cold and very windy last Sunday in February.

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

It was a busy Monday morning at Heathrow and whilst taxiing past the parked aircraft stands, the Captain noticed some passengers boarding a Finnair A320. He turned to the First Officer and remarked: “Look at all those people disappearing into Finnair.”

Colin Cowplain