Patch News – February 2018

February certainly sorted the men from the boys, for much of the month the weather was very cold and very windy. We did also had a few reasonable days when it was just plain cold, days that seemed almost balmy without the biting winds. When I arrived at the field on Sunday 25 February my car thermometer was reading zero degrees but the wind chill made it a fair bit lower at the patch. I took the photo below of the six idiots that turned up to fly:From left to right they are: Dougal Entendre, Woody, Colin Cowplain, Bob the Builder, Captain Slow, & 1066. We flew but it did seem a bit bonkers and Woody said we should be known as The Certifiable Six!

This was taken one windy day earlier this month; note the models placed inverted to stop them being blown away:One midweek morning we packed up a little earlier than usual as we could see dark clouds rolling in. Just as we reached the cars we were treated to a couple of minutes of snow but fortunately it didn’t settle at all.But it could have been worse, looking back through my old photos I found this one from February 2012:It’s of my then almost new Multiplex Twister in the snow of the patch, looking pristine in its’ Blue Angels colour scheme. I still have it but it’s a bit tatty now. Unsurprisingly I was the only one daft enough to go flying that day!

The good news on the patch is that the sheep have gone again. They weren’t in the field long before being moved to the bottom field and they’ve now disappeared completely, presumably having been moved to lower ground because of the heavy snow that’s on the way. The patch is looking pretty good, the F.A.R.T.S. have rolled it a couple of times and an electric fence has now been purchased to protect it from the livestock in future.

Woody has been braving the strong winds a lot this month with his little Minimoa two cell electric glider and I snapped this rather blurry photo one day to prove he was capable of battling upwind in adverse conditions.It might not be terribly pleasant flying on days like that but it certainly teaches you a lot.

Bob the Builder has fitted electronic stabilisers to a couple of his models and they are a great help, they take out nearly all the bumps and stop the model being chucked around all the time. Bob uses OrangeRx ones which are usually available from HobbyKing although they seem to be out of stock at the moment. I have a couple of them myself and can vouch for their abilities. I fitted one to the Twister that I pictured above because, being of high wing configuration, it was almost impossible to fly steadily inverted, it always tried to roll back upright. The stabiliser transformed it and inverted flight became easy. For Spektrum users they are also available built into DSM2 compatible receivers, I believe Dwayne Pipe has some of these and is happy with them.

In the last Patch News I posted a photo for a CAPTION COMP but only three people have entered. There is a particularly good prize up for grabs on this one and I think it’s worth more than three entrants so here it is again:I realise it’s not a particularly easy photo to caption but please have a go. You can enter as many times as you like and I will choose a winner from the comments on both the January and February blogs. The prize will be awarded at the meeting on 22 March so get commenting!

PAM members were invited to attend the Alton Model Flying Club indoor meet on 13 February at Medstead Village Hall and five of us went along. The event is held every month through the winter and is run by my old mate Dave Durnford. He will be running two more before the summer break, on 13 March and 10 April. The hall is quite small, a typical village hall and not dissimilar to the larger of the two at Buriton, so it’s not really suitable for shock flyers unless you are really competent at prop hanging. But it’s ideal for smaller models and most of the Alton members were flying Parkzone Night Vapors or Mini Vapors. The Night Vapor is just under 15” wingspan and weighs around 0.6oz. It flies on a single cell 70mAh lipo and has three channels, rudder, elevator, and throttle.It’s called Night Vapor because it has lights so you can fly it in the dark. Goose Berry has one that he was flying at the event and he was kind enough to let me have a go with it. I could be tempted to get one but I think they only come as Bind ‘n’ Fly for Spektrum and I don’t think I could take the stick if I were to buy a Spektrum transmitter! On the evening we went they were running some light-hearted competitions, pylon racing, carrier deck landing, and balloon bursting. They set out four posts with balloons attached as pylons, and a couple of tables laying on the floor formed the carrier deck. Both the pylon racing and carrier deck landing comps went ok but the Night Vapors proved to be incapable of bursting balloons! You would have expected the props to have made short work of the balloons but they just couldn’t burst them! If we ran that comp at Petersfield you lot would be sharpening up the props for weeks beforehand but the Alton members are a more genteel crowd.Captain Slow took along a small electric helicopter to fly, and I took a couple of drones, one of which is fitted with a camera. They ran the pylon race with different slots for fixed wing and rotary models so when Captain Slow was competing with his heli I was flying a drone in the same slot. I very quickly discovered that while I’m ok at drone flying generally, moving slowly, hovering, turning etc I’m totally incapable of flying one quickly around a pylon course! I may as well confess now (he’s probably already told you 15 times anyway) that I managed to take out the Captain’s heli just as he was doing rather well in the comp. My new motto is ‘If in doubt knock ‘em out’!Dwayne Pipe flew a drone as well, and also a small electric biplane, both of which came from HobbyKing.The drone is a Mini X6 Micro Hexa-copter which is 130mm across (the website says ‘wheelbase’, maybe that’s how drones are usually described) and it comes complete ready to fly. The transmitter has two selectable flight modes, a basic super stable mode and a sport mode in which it can do flips and 3D tumbling. Not seen any flips or tumbling Dwayne, get out there and strut your stuff! The transmitter is also reversible from mode 2 to mode 1 with a simple gimbal rotation, the transmitter swivels across the stick centreline, you might be able to see it in this photo:It’s very clever but I’m slightly confused as Dwayne usually flies mode 3. Maybe he has to fly mode 2 with the drone, I will pay more attention next time Dwayne flies it.

His biplane is a Double Helix Slowfly which has a wingspan of 420mm and weighs 40g with the battery. Like the drone it comes ready to go, just charge the single cell 150mAh lipo and fly. Construction is from EPO and carbon which makes it pretty strong, Dwayne’s is in its third year of indoor flying and he says it takes a lot of punishment. It looks like a good introduction to indoor flying but sadly the HobbyKing website shows it as discontinued and as far as I can see it isn’t available anywhere else.

I also took along an old indoor model that I built several years ago and found damaged up in our loft. I repaired it and updated it to use 2.4GHz radio and a lipo battery but kept the original geared brushed motor. Unfortunately I have no idea where the centre of gravity should be and I can’t remember what caused the crash that damaged it.It’s a Pogo and is based loosely (very loosely) on the Convair XFY-1 vertical take-off and landing test aircraft.The Convair did take-off vertically, fly around normally, and land vertically but it was never considered a success and only one was built. The hall was really too small for mine but later in the evening, when nobody else was flying, I had a go with it. With the limited space all I could really attempt was to prop hang it and I’m not very competent at that anyway so all I managed was a few fairly out of control hops. But I didn’t break it so I’ll persevere.

The Alton club members made us feel very welcome and I intend to go to the next one on 15 March.

Sticking with Alton MFC events, I mentioned at our last club meeting that George Worley of 4-Max would be giving them a presentation on 2 March at Medstead Village Hall. But due to the forecast of heavy snow that day the event has been postponed until Friday 23 March. All PAM members are welcome to attend and if you pre-order something from George and collect it on the night you will receive a 10% discount if you pay in cash.

I took this photo of Bob the Builder recently and every time I look at it I’m reminded of someone else…but who?Oh hang on, I think I know, I recognise that mad, wide-eyed look! It’s Doc Brown from Back To The Future! There was an amusing moment at the patch recently; I was flying and heard 1066 ask the customary “Ok to launch?” as he came and stood alongside me. I was aware that Captain Slow was holding 1066’s model and was ready to chuck it. Then 1066 said “Oh, wrong model” and they both wandered off back towards the pits. I assumed that 1066 hadn’t switched his transmitter to the correct model but that wasn’t the case, Captain Slow had actually picked up the wrong model from the pits! As they walked to the patch 1066 hadn’t noticed as he was busy checking the switch positions on his transmitter. And I thought we called him Captain Slow because he likes to fly slowly…! Must add that one to the pre-flight Check List: Ensure helper is holding the correct model!

I’ve only spotted one new model this month but it’s certainly a good one. Catapult King is never one to do things the easy way and this time he has produced a Grumman X-29. Some of you will have seen it at the last club meeting but for those that weren’t present this is what Catapult says about it: ‘The model is a Grumman X29 USAF experimental plane of which only two were made. I originally found a build on the Flite Test web site but it was a little ‘boxy’ and I found this Steve Shumate plan on RC groups. This plan looked like it could contain an EDF so modifications were done accordingly. It turned out to be 1200mm long and 720mm wide and weighs in at a flying weight of 1.2Kg. It is made mainly from Depron though the control surfaces are balsa.  It’s powered by a Dr. Mad Thrust 64mm 10 blade EDF, a HobbyKing 80amp ESC and Turnigy 4s 2650 lipo which is drained in two minutes flat, I haven’t measured the current draw yet. All of the servos are HXT900’s and I’m using seven channels on the receiver mainly because I wasn’t sure if one servo would be strong enough to rotate both canards so they are independent which means I could mix in ailerons; at the moment they only compliment the strakes (elevators). I think following the maiden flight there may be need to improve the airflow both in and out.’ Dougal Entendre was tasked to do the first couple of flights and all went well. It only just got away from the first launch but once it got going it was fine. After moving the centre of gravity forward a little the second flight was more stable and Dougal started to look like he was enjoying himself. You can see both flights in this months’ video.Having a quick look at the figures shows there is something wrong with the powertrain. To drain a 2650mAh 4 cell pack in 2 minutes would mean pulling around 88A providing about 1300w of power. That equates to getting on for 500w/lb which the model certainly didn’t have! Also the battery would have been very warm if it had been delivering 88A for 2 minutes but it was barely warm at all. My first thought would be that the batteries weren’t fully charged but if they were and the motor really was pulling 88A then the ducting certainly needs opened up as it must be restricting the airflow. I expect by now Catapult will have measured the current draw, that has to be the starting point and will show what is going on. All in all it’s a brilliant plane, looks good, flies well, and is a rare and challenging aircraft to model.

We often moan about the lack of facilities at our field, we’d all like to have some sort of clubhouse where we could get warm, maybe have a cuppa or even a bacon sarnie, and of course, the all important loo. Wouldn’t that be great? But then I watched a video that convinced me that we should immediately bring in two new rules: 1. No FPV flying and 2. No toilet. The thought of finding 1066 like this… Urgh!Actually the photo is a screenshot taken from a Flite Test video and the video is well worth watching, they are planning some interesting developments, something amazing, something that would never happen in the UK:If you aren’t familiar with the Flite Test website I can thoroughly recommend it, there’s lots of information and fun stuff to be enjoyed, find it here: FLITE TEST

You might be interested in a new How To article about parallel charging that HobbyKing have added to their website, it should anwser any questions you may have. You can read it HERE

Time now for this months’ video which includes footage taken at the indoor event, some onboard stuff from my FunGlider, the X29, a Spit doing low passes, a Vampire, and more.Please watch the video full screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around. If the video won’t play for you CLICK HERE

‘It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.‘ – US Air Force Manual

Colin Cowplain