Patch News – February 2017

February is a short month and I’m off to Marrakech at the end of it so I’m making an early start on Patch News, I’ve begun writing this edition on 18^th February. Hopefully I’ll be sprawled out by a pool in the sun when you read this.

The first couple of weeks of the month were not good for flying, wet and windy with quite a lot of low cloud and fog thrown in for good measure. But it seems to be improving now and today is absolutely glorious, let’s hope it lasts. (It didn’t).  But some Sundays still saw a good turnout at the patch despite the gloom. I’ll begin by following on from a couple of disasters I had in January. If you read the January blog you’ll know that firstly, I managed to lose my Spirit mini-glider when it disappeared into cloud (at great height) and I didn’t see it emerge so had very little idea where to look for it. And secondly, my new F-22 Raptor failed to get away from its very first launch and the two second ‘flight’ ended abruptly with a very broken nose.

Well February was much more successful. Firstly, I found the Spirit. Or I should say my wife found it. Almost a week after it vanished we were driving towards the field from the Old Winchester Hill direction when Doreen suddenly said she could see it! It was on the far side of the valley, about 2/3rds of the way up. I can’t work out why we didn’t spot it earlier; it was certainly visible from the road alongside the field and probably from the patch. Anyway I hiked off and retrieved it and found that, although the airframe was a not repairable, the electronics seemed basically ok.In the time it had been lost the weather had been foul so everything was very wet, but after a thorough drying out of all the parts everything worked perfectly. So that’s the motor, esc, 4 servos, and receiver that have lived to fly another day. Unsurprisingly the lipo seems to have developed a dodgy cell so that’s been binned. I salvaged all the usable airframe fittings and scrapped the rest. I’ve already used one of the carbon wing spars, the Depron fuselage of my Euro Fun-Fighter was too flexible so I cut a slot and glued in a Spirit wing spar, it worked a treat.The second success was with the Raptor. I managed to make a reasonable job of the repairs once I’d worked out how to straighten out crushed polystyrene. The hot water trick that works well with EPO foam seemed to do nothing at all to polystyrene but steaming the parts and gently pulling them back to shape worked fairly well. I ended up gluing pieces of crushed fuselage to Depron sticks so I could hold them over the spout of a kettle for long enough to heat them through! Eventually I jig sawed it all back together and added a little extra strength where possible. The end result wasn’t too bad, especially from the top, and it was certainly good enough for another attempt at flight.For the second attempt at flight I used an 1800mAh lipo instead of a 1300 which brought the C of G forward a bit, and I reduced both aileron and elevator rates a little. Success! It went away from the launch pretty well and I was able to get it trimmed out fairly quickly. At the time of writing it’s had 19 flights with no more problems. It’s got pretty good power for an edf model and will do large loops without falling off the top. It’s nice to fly now I’ve sorted the rates and expo to comfortable levels and looks good in the air. Also, importantly in these sensitive times, it’s pretty quiet for an edf, not nearly as noisy as some, and it’s actually quite a pleasant sound. Some of the first successful flight was recorded by Dougal Entendre and it can be seen in the video at the end of this Patch News.

Also in the video is part of the first flight of Catapult King’s Pulse’ish back in January, as recorded by Modelling Clay.

This month has seen lots of success stories. Last month I reported that Dwayne Pipe’s Mk19 Spitfire had flown successfully although I hadn’t seen it myself and had no photos or video of the event. But now I have, it’s flown several times and very nicely too. At first Dwayne had no undercarriage fitted and had to rely on hand-launches, but wanting to be able to take-off he retro fitted a non-scale one. This worked well enough but really didn’t look too good in the air. So now he has developed a drop-off undercarriage that is servo released, so he can take-off, drop the U/C on the first pass over the patch, fly around looking like a Spit should, and then belly land when the time comes. It works a treat and the first take-off and U/C drop features in the monthly video along with some of an earlier flight and an ‘interesting’ landing. I think Dwayne didn’t want his landing filmed so he decided to try and scare the cameraman (me) out of the way!

Chris P Bacon has also had success, eventually, sort of…! I gave Chris P lots of stick last month for fitting his new Wot 4 with one of those dirty, noisy, smelly I/C engines, an SC52 4-stroke that he bought second-hand. At the beginning of the month Chris P brought it up to the patch on 4 occasions and took it home again each time without flying it. There were various problems, all engine related, but eventually he got everything sorted and flew it.It flies well (of course it does, it’s a Wot 4) and performs much as you would expect. Chris P is having a few problems getting the tick-over slow enough to land nicely and on one flight he asked me to land it. I did a low pass and could see that the undercarriage had rotated about 45 degrees to the right! It seems that the vibration from the engine had shaken the retaining screws loose and one had fallen out. I came in to do a very gentle landing, expecting the plane to suddenly veer offline when the wheels touched but instead, the other screw came out and the whole undercarriage fell off!. Fortunately there was no other damage so with the help of a couple of screws and some thread lock it will soon be flying again.

Remember the tale of Captain Slow’s Art-Tech Diamond? In short, the motor threw a prop blade and the whole of the front of the model was torn apart by the vibration! The model was repaired but the supplied and pre-fitted motor continued to give fixing problems. So Captain Slow decided it had to go and fortunately, realising the Spirit nose was similar to the Diamond, he was able to graft on a Spirit motor mount.Since taking this photo he has completed the repairs and fitted a Spirit motor and folding prop, and the model has had several successful flights. So you could say a deceased Spirit has returned from the grave…

Time for a quick competition: No prize, but can anyone spot which current club member is in this very blurred pic?It was taken from a video that is several years old. Do you think he looks like the same young man in the red boiler suit in this photo? Well it’s not!That is a very young Phil ‘Wonky’ Wiltshire, taken during a PAM pylon race competition many moons ago.

February 19^th saw four new models being test flown; people must have been waiting for decent weather. First up is a new delta from 1066. It’s the same wing planform as the Delta Challenge models but this time he has gone for a three step Kline-Fogleman section and has fitted a 6mm square carbon spar.As you can see it has a profile fuselage on the top of the wing but there’s a box underneath to house all the gear. The model is mostly Depron but has some Correx to strengthen the underside for landing. I made the mistake of taking one photo and then saying ‘Now show me the bottom’…Oh dear! 1066 has fitted a larger motor than in his previous delta, this one has a 35mm 1400kv motor, the previous one had a 28mm 1200kv. He’s also upped the esc to a 60A and fitted a 9 x 6 prop. I think it looks much nicer than the earlier version; the multi-colour packing tape finish works well. It flew well but the testing was cut short by a so far undiagnosed radio problem (bloody Hitec…no hang on, they own the totally perfect Multiplex!). I didn’t manage to get any video of it flying yet but hopefully I’ll manage to take some to include next month.

John Warren brought along his newly completed Sunday Flier. John flew a Sunday Flier to death (literally!) for several years and he liked it so much that he decided to build a new one.The first one was built donkeys years ago from a magazine free plan and was fitted with an I/C engine. When John joined PAM he swapped it over to an electric set-up and eventually added ailerons, the original design being rudder/elevator. The new model has proper inset ailerons on the lower wing, and a purpose-built battery housing in the top of the fuselage between the cabane struts.Sadly the first flight didn’t go to plan (I blame the test pilot, some bloke called Colin Cowplain!). The model took off with virtually full right rudder to try to keep her straight and despite the application of full right on both rudder and ailerons the model went round to the left and crashed close to the pits area. Not good. Dougal Entendre recorded the whole short flight and edited ‘highlights’ are in this month’s video. The wings survived pretty much unscathed but I fear a new fuselage is required. I’m sure John will soon have it rebuilt and flying successfully.

Modelling Clay was given a pass-out (he’s a newly-wed you know) and brought along two new models, a Splot that be built from the plans, and a HobbyKing Extra 330LX that he was one of his many, many large raffle wins.The Splot was built pretty much as per plan but converted to electric power of course. He fitted a 28-36 1400kV NTM Prop Drive motor, a 40A speed controller, and a 2200mAh 3 cell lipo. Using a 10 x 6 prop it pulls around 490 watts so with a weight of just 2.1lbs it’s got loads of power.Modelling used Emax metal geared servos, and covered it in HobbyKing film. I reckon it looks really nice.

I get confused with all of Modelling’s raffle prizes, there have been so many, but this one is a HobbyKing Extra 330LX with a profile fuselage, a wingspan of 1200mm, and it’s mostly made from EPP foam. It has a lightweight ply frame to stiffen the fuselage and carbon reinforcement in high stress areas.He used a 12 x 6 prop on a 42-35 750kV NTM Prop Drive motor for the first flights but says he’s going to swap to 13 x 8 prop for more power. The motor is powered by a 3000mAh 4 cell lipo via a 70A speed controller.At the moment he’s getting around 600watts but that will increase with the larger prop, and with an all up weight of 3.2 lbs he should have plenty of power for prop hanging.

I filmed quite a lot of the Splot first flight but only got the take-off of the Extra as I was called to help with the trimming. They both flew well and, as you’ll see in the video, Modelling did a very good first landing with the Splot.

While I’m talking about Modelling I thought you might like to see a photo I snapped of him at the AGM. It’s all in the reading material sweetie…!

Basher Bob has many friends in the club and one of them, Chris P Bacon, was kind enough to send me something he spotted on the HobbyKing website. Chris P is now convinced that Basher is secretly producing his own lipos…

As you will have realised I’ve been looking through some old photos and I found was this one of our President.You might want to ask him why he’s wearing a dress and what on earth ex-member Ken Boucher is doing to him???

OK, it’s time for this month’s video, turn your sound up for this one. 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

Three of the more senior PAM members were walking up to the patch one morning:

Gentleman Jim said ‘It’s windy isn’t it’?

Dwayne Pipe replied ‘No it’s Thursday’

Basher Bob said ‘So am I, let’s go for a beer’

Colin Cowplain