Patch News History

We always expect to lose a few flying sessions due to wind and/or rain through the winter months and that’s exactly what happened during what was a very mild November with a lot of rain. We were rained off on a couple of Sundays mornings but strangely some Friday afternoons turned out to be really good. Of course the midweekers were able to choose the days with the best weather so managed to fly fairly regularly throughout the month. After flying on one Friday afternoon I snapped this glorious sunset as we were packing up.

With the weather being both wet and warm the grass has continued to grow so the FARTS (Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society) dragged out the mower a few times.

At lunchtime on Friday 18^th November as Chas and Captain Slow were driving down the track to the field they spotted a pick-up truck in the process of fly tipping a load of builders waste onto the track alongside the barn. As the driver saw the cars approaching he shot off down the bottom road and away before anyone could take a note of his number. The rubble completely blocked the track and prevented us from parking there. Fortunately following a quick call to Farmer George his son Will very quickly arrived with a tractor and trailer and made short work of picking up the waste and taking it all away. There are some truly awful people around who think they can do whatever they want with no thought of the affect on others. As a club we are lucky to have such great farmers who were able to resolve the problem for us within a very short time, we were very grateful for their help.

Not too many new models appeared at the patch this month but early in Nov this box of surprises turned up at my house. Well it wasn’t actually a surprise to me as I’d ordered it on Woody’s behalf when it was at a knockdown price in the Banggood UK warehouse. It’s another of the tiny gyro equipped fighters that come completely ready to fly straight out of the box and even come with a transmitter. This one is a P-40 Warhawk, the first one of these in the club and Woody soon found that it flies just as well as all the others in the range which includes the Trojan, Corsair, BF109, Mustang, Raptor, and the Spitfire. Woody’s Warhawk was just £68.43 in a Flash Sale and that included 3 batteries. As it came from the UK warehouse the package arrived in a couple of days. At the time of writing the UK Warehouse has sold out of the Warhawk but it’s available from China although the price is £101.63 and it would take three or four weeks to arrive. Many of the range are available from various UK retailers but I think most of them cost around £100. Woody loves the way it flies and has been using the one button press roll or loop function as well as perfecting his low passes. You can see a bit of his flying in this month’s video.

Bob the Builder has also splashed out on a mini warbird and he chose the Mustang. Bob had an ulterior motive with his purchase as he intends taking it with him when he visits family in New Zealand where I expect his grandson will be flying it. Needless to say Bob felt it was only right to test fly the Spitfire before taking it to the other side of the world. All went well and after a few tests he pronounced it fit to fly. Bob has checked with the airline and is happy that he’ll be able to take the Spit and it’s batteries on the flight as hand luggage. Have a great trip Bob, don’t forget to send some photos of flying in New Zealand.

In November I decided to bring out my foamboard Yak-130 that I hadn’t flown for a long time. It came from Banggood and is similar to the Su-27 and Mig-29 that many of us fly except that the front half of the fuselage is a box section rather than just a profile. I think it looks better than the others but overall its’ flying characteristics probably aren’t as good. I have added a rudder to improve the handling as, like the others, it is reluctant to turn when the nose is high and there’s not much speed. The rudder helps and also means the Yak can spin which is does very well although it’s reluctant to come out of the spin. I stopped flying it because it was noisy, like the others it has a mid-mounted motor and the propeller generates a lot of noise where it’s close to the foamboard. The solution with the Su-27 and Mig-29 is to enlarge the slot the prop runs in, mostly in front of the prop. It makes a big difference but on the Yak I could only enlarge the slot a small amount because the servos were in the way. The obvious answer was to move the motor back towards the rear of the slot and after many months of ignoring the problem I finally got round to doing something about it! I cut the ply motor mounting plate away from its’ original position directly on the foam and made up a balsa box to space the motor 20mm further back. The prop is now well clear of the foam at the front but still far enough away from the foam behind it to not be a problem. The result is a big noise reduction, still not quiet but much better than before and I’m happy to fly it now. On the first couple of flights the motor started cutting out and I found the speed controller was overheating so I added an air scoop to the hatch on the underside and that seems to have solved the problem. As soon as I started flying it again that big bully Gordon Bennett decided the Yak was fair game and started attacking it, something I obviously discouraged…! After a few battles the inevitable coming together happened and the planes spun down locked together. At first look it seemed that the only damage was to one of the fins of Gordon’s Mig which had been suitably chewed by the prop of my Yak and we both flew again with no further problems. However I later realised that the side of my fuselage had been hit up by Gordon’s prop…How dare he, I’ve a long memory and revenge will be sweet Gordon, revenge will be sweet!

Back to the tiny planes again now, this time it’s Mini Mike who’s bought himself a Bf109. On the first flight Mike found the plane climbed constantly and he was having to hold in almost full down elevator to stop the climb. Before the next flight he asked for some ideas from an expert (me!) and carefully listened to the advice about switching between the gyro stages, setting everything up, and flying tips. So much better informed he then had a second flight and this time it was…exactly the same! Ok so obviously more investigation is required but I’m sure Mike will soon get it sorted out and flying as well as the others. Watch this space, I hope to be able to report more success in the December Patch News.

Following the first successful flights of his Flite Test Alpha last month young Charlie decided it needed a bit of colour. For the first few flights the Alpha had been in bare white foamboard and the damp grass proved to be a problem, the paper covering the foam started to peel away when it got wet. So this month Charlie painted it to match his jumper! I reckon this was so it wouldn’t show when he got the paint all over his jumper! It looks much smarter with the new colour scheme and should be better protected from the wet grass at the field. Charlie is now concentrating on making a few adjustments to get the Alpha flying even better. You can see how it flies in the video and in the FPV photo below.

1066 has been working on a new foam model of his own design and this required the use of an incidence meter to be sure he had the correct relative incidence between the wings and the tailplane. Fortunately 1066 has a meter that he reckons he made about thirty years ago but hadn’t used it for several years and had even thought about binning it a few times. It’s lucky he didn’t bin it as the meter did the job beautifully on the new model. I don’t have any info about the model yet but hopefully I’ll be able to feature it next month.

Now for the last new model of this month and it’s yet another of the tiny fighters, this one being a Spitfire that Cream Egg bought at the Popham Model Show back in August. He only got round to flying it in Nov, it took 3 months to fit 4 dry cells in the transmitter! Like all the others (well except Mini Mike’s) it flies beautifully and Cream Egg is delighted.

Unfortunately Kryten wasn’t able to make it to the field this month so I have no new photos but here are some of his photos from previous months that I haven’t used before. The last photo is a still taken from one of Dougal’s FPV flight videos and shows Charlie’s Alpha cruising past. I think it’s an excellent photo as it includes the patch, pits, and pilots. By the way, did you know that you can enlarge any Patch News photo by clicking on it? 

Video time now which includes footage taken by me, Dougal, and Peter Fothergill. 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

A young and foolish pilot wanted to sound cool on the aviation frequencies so once, when he was approaching an airfield at night, instead of making the usual call to the tower, he said: “Guess who?” The controller promptly switched off the runway lights and replied: “Guess where!”

Colin Cowplain

The October weather was definitely autumnal, we had some really good flying days with sunshine and light winds but also a lot of wet and windy weather that prevented flying. The temperatures were generally higher than average and the grass continued to grow so we mowed a couple of times and Woody showed off with his one-handed mowing…
We mowed over his mistakes later! Leo’s mum Jill snapped this atmospheric photo which she called ‘Over the hill’. I’m not sure if she was referring to the scene or the members:

Several new models graced the sky in October, I’ll start with Gordon Bennett’s new Pitts Special. The Pitts is very small at just 434mm (17”) wingspan and 393mm (15.5”) long and Gordon brought it up to the patch in the box that the model was supplied in.
Its’ full title is the E-Flite UMX Pitts S-1S AS3X – BNF Basic with AS3X and SAFE Select.
I thought it was just intended for indoor flying but apparently it can be flown inside or out.
Gordon has only flown his outdoors and says it handles a breeze surprisingly well. It was certainly flying well when I saw it and I filmed some of the flight for this month’s video. This is from the E-Flite website: Due to its overwhelming popularity, E-flite® has brought back the UMX™ Pitts® S-1S with updates and upgrades that make it the easiest to fly, most convenient, and most affordable Pitts model yet! It now includes optional-use SAFE® Select, is both 2S and 3S compatible, and provides real-time battery voltage telemetry to compatible Spektrum AirWare™ equipped transmitters. Because of its ultra-micro size, the UMX Pitts® S-1S can be flown indoors in gymnasiums and other suitable spaces, or outdoors in many yards, parks, and sports fields.
Gordon uses Spektrum radio with the AS3X and SAFE and I think he flies it with 3 cells.

Peter Fothergill has been successfully flying his Max Thrust Riot whenever possible and is learning fast and is now well on the way to taking his BMFA ‘A’ certificate. To accompany the Riot he recently also treated himself to a Volantex Phoenix 16oo S electric glider.
I have a Phoenix 16oo myself but mine is an earlier version and there are a lot of changes. The earlier ones were sold as 3 cell models and were known for burning out motors (yes mine did) but the new version is sold as a 2 cell model. I wonder if both versions use the same motor but Volantex have found there aren’t any problems if it’s run on 2 cells.
The wings on the new version plug into the fuselage sides rather than being screwed down on top and are a different shape with a partially swept leading edge. Also the fuselage is shorter on the later one but I think the tail is identical. It seems a little odd to go for 2 cell 1500mAh packs rather than the almost universal 3 cell 2200mAh ones but the model performs well on 2 cells and is no doubt lighter than the earlier version. Peter is getting on well with his and is getting used to the slightly tricky task of landing a glider than doesn’t always want to come down when the pilot thinks it should. Some of the first flight can be seen in the video as can Peter taking off and then landing his Riot absolutely perfectly.

Following on from his success with his Arrows Hobby Viper ducted fan model 1066 has been spending again, this time on an Arrows Hobby F-86 Sabre, another ducted fan plane.
At 860mm span the Sabre is bigger than the 773mm Viper and it uses a 64mm fan running on 4 cells rather than the 50mm fan and 3 cells of the Viper. 1066 says he didn’t think the quality of the Sabre was quite as good as the Viper but overall it was perfectly satisfactory.
The completed model certainly looks nice and you will see in the video that it flies very well indeed. This is what Arrows say about it: While Arrows has introduced a number of EDF jets, from the hand tossed Viper to the high-end MiG-29 and F-15, our engineering team began with the Marlin 64mm EDF, still the best EDF trainer made. The F-86 is the successor to the Marlin with fixed gear for strength and the same full 5-channel performance with flaps. The plane has excellent performance and agility at high speed and stability during landings. The smooth 12-blade 64mm fan sounds more realistic than older 5-blade 64mm units others use. Because of the more powerful 2840-3150KV motor and a 40 amp ESC, this plane is capable of top performance even though it is larger than other 64mm F-86’s, with manoeuvers such as rolling, diving, looping, and inverted flight. The quick release landing gear allow for fast transition from ground take-off to hand launch and facilitates easy transport. The EPO foam is tough and at 820mm length and 860mm wingspan, it is a perfect 1/10 scale of the original full-scale plane. The contours, panel lines, and markings are highly accurate and realistic. The special water-based paint has a very realistic look. Assembly is fast and easy using only a few screws.
As Arrows mention the undercarriage is easily removable but so far 1066 has left it fixed in place and is enjoying doing proper take-offs and landings. The Sabre would obviously look better in the air without the wheels hanging down but hand launching and belly landing would make it more susceptible to damage so I think 1066 has made the right decision. The ideal solution would be to have retracts but with our small patch and grass that is sometimes not as perfect as we’d like retracts can be more trouble than they are worth.

In the August Patch News I reported on the Lancaster that Percy Vears had built. Sadly on its first flight we found there was a major glitch whenever the retracts were operated and the Lanc crashed. The damage wasn’t too bad and Percy did the necessary repairs and fitted a separate battery to power the retracts and when ground tested all seemed well.
So in October we tried again and this time I decided to not try switching the retracts until the Lanc has reached a decent height. The plane took-off ok but was a fair bit out of trim and very twitchy which seemed strange as on the previous attempt the Lancaster was only slightly out of trim and wasn’t twitchy. But by the time I’d got onto the downwind leg I’d pretty much sorted things out and the Lanc was at a reasonable height. Then the plane pitched up but levelled out with some down elevator but after a few seconds went into a right hand spiral and nothing I tried made any difference. The only clue as to what went wrong was that the transmitter telemetry screen had switched from displaying how many the milliamp hours were left in the flight pack to showing the receiver voltage. The display only switches from the chosen setting when something reaches an alarm level so although the receiver battery voltage was showing at 4.9v (which should have been ok) presumably it had dropped to a dangerous level previously before recovering when the plane crashed. When Dougal watched the video he thought maybe the plane had a rearward C of G, that would explain why it was so twitchy I suppose.  I really don’t know what went wrong, I’m pretty sure it didn’t tip stall into a spin so can only think it was a drop in receiver voltage that caused the spiral and lack of control. Take a look at the video and see what you think.
The result wasn’t pretty and I’m not sure Percy will repair it this time.

Most of you will have seen some photos on the PAM WhatsApp group that Chas took at the LMA static show at Gaydon. He took a lot more than he sent to the group so here are a few more for you to see. As you can see there were some superb models on show, thanks Chas:

Long term club member Stanley Knife has been struggling with his eyesight recently and has sadly decided to sell off lots of his modelling gear. One of Stanley’s models that I flew a few times and really liked was his Durafly Excalibur electric hotliner. When Stanley put it up for sale Dougal Entendre snatched it up and in October he flew it at the field a few times. It has a 1600mm wingspan, a V-tail design and a serious spar structure for high speed flying. It comes with a 3542 800Kv outrunner motor, a 60amp Aerostar speed controller, and a 13×7 carbon fibre prop but if I remember correctly Stanley had fitted the optional 13×8 ‘pro’ prop for more performance. It is intended to be powered by a 4 cell 1800-2200mAH lipo and Dougal fitted a suitable 4 cell pack for the first couple of flights. The Excalibur flew just as I remembered with loads of power for vertical climbs and it really shifts around the sky! The only problem Dougal found was that on the glide one blade of the folding prop got caught under the canopy which prevented the motor starting again. The problem was quickly sorted with a piece of tape along the canopy/fuselage join. I’m quite surprised it didn’t simply rip the canopy off! Dougal wondered if the 13×8 prop was a little too much for it and then tried flying with a 3 cell pack fitted and found it still went extremely well, just slightly slower on the climb. HobbyKing are now selling a V2 version of the Excalibur which features a new colour scheme and a few other minor changes so if you’re tempted and are willing to pay the mad postage from China go for it!

Woody has been building again and brought along his newly completed Splot to show us. At the time of writing he hasn’t flown it but no doubt I’ll report of how it flies next month.
Woody has fitted the Splot out with a Ripmax 25 motor and a 4-Max 40A speed controller. He’s used Hitec HS81 servos in the wing and standard ones in the fuselage for rudder and elevator. When he brought it along to the field we said it felt heavy and Woody explained that he’d had to add an awful lot of weight to the nose in order to get the correct C of G. After we all very helpfully explained everything he’d done wrong Woody went away to try and move the battery further forward and hopefully be able to ditch some of the lead. Apart from the rather excessive weight the model looked really good in its Gulf Porsche 917 colour scheme of the 1960’s & 70’s. I’m not sure if Woody intends to fly the Splot like Pedro Rodriguez or Jo Siffert. Personally I preferred the Gulf Ford GT40 but then I can’t fly like Derek Bell or Jacky Ickx so maybe I should shut up for a change!

Back in the August Patch News I wrote about two models that young Charlie had bought, a Flite Test Alpha kit and an Eachine Spitfire. He’s flown the tiny Spitfire a few times with no problems but that changed on the last Friday in October. We had mown the patch that afternoon and by the time we started flying the sun was low in the clear blue sky on the upwind side of the patch so we were mostly flying downwind, over the valley. With the combination of a tiny model and the poor light Charlie got disorientated, was blown too far downwind, and lost sight of the Spitfire somewhere out over the valley. Charlie and mum Nadine disappeared down in the valley and later returned looking shattered, saying they hadn’t realised how steep and deep the valley was. Fortunately the model was undamaged. Having passed the initiation they’re now members of the Death Valley Appreciation Soc!

Meantime Charlie has been building the Flite Test Alpha, a foamboard jet style model.
The kit contained foam pieces which were laser cut & scored and also control horns and  linkages plus a few other bits. The foam is different to the foam Flite Test originally used, the most notable difference being that it’s covered with white paper rather than brown. According to the website it’s 3/16″ thick water resistant bifold Maker Foam.
There is a very comprehensive build video on YouTube to guide beginners through every stage. Charlie has fitted a 2212 2200kv motor from 4-Max with a 6×4 propeller, a 30A speed controller and is running it on 3 cell 1000mAh lipos. The Alpha is controlled by elevons so only needs 2 servos which he bought from Sussex Model Centre with the kit.
After a check that everything worked as it should Gordon launched the Alpha while I stirred the sticks. The plane climbed away with very little trim required and I flew it around for a few minutes doing all the usual checks. Like many of the foamboard models there was a tendency for lack of control when the speed dropped but otherwise it was fine. Charlie took the controls on the second flight and had no problems at all, he flew around for several minutes before ending the flight with a perfect landing on the patch.

Kryten captured some cracking flying shots for us in October, I love the tiny Pitts ones:

Video time now which this month includes footage shot by me, Dougal, and Nadine:
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

During the Covid-19 lockdown a pilot I know was doing some decorating at his house.
I went round to his house to check it out and saw he’d made a great job of the landing…

Colin Cowplain

The start of September was rather windy but mostly dry, the first signs of autumn were upon us. Farmer George put lots of sheep in the flying field but they didn’t really cause us any problems and they were gone again by the middle of the month. They returned in the last few days of September but I doubt that they’ll be with us for long. The bullocks are currently in the lower field so we’ll probably be graced with their presence quite soon. With the end of the dry spell the grass recovered and shot up so the patch had to be mown for the first time for ages. Fortunately I was away on holiday so I missed that little treat!

Dwayne Pipe caused some general chaos when he managed to fly his foamboard Sea Vixen into Harper’s Oak one Friday afternoon. He says he thought the plane was on the field side of the trees and was quite shocked when it suddenly stopped dead, surrounded by leaves! Several members wandered over to enjoy the spectacle… no sorry… they wandered over to help, yes, that was it! I promptly managed to snag myself on the barbed wire fence and proved that blood thinners really do work rather well, the stream of blood running down my left looked fairly dramatic but really wasn’t very bad at all. The Sea Vixen was lodged at the end of a branch, fairly high up in the tree, too difficult to reach by climbing so we began our retrieval efforts by attaching a large screwdriver to the bungee from Dwayne’s EDF launcher and tried to throw it over the branch, hoping to shake the model free.
All this achieved was getting the screwdriver stuck in the tree so there was much pulling and waving about of the bungee in an effort to free it, all to no avail. Then Woody decided the only thing to do was to pull really hard on the bungee which ultimately proved to be successful but also very dangerous as when the screwdriver finally became free it speared Woody’s thumb. This produced a lot more blood along with lots of laughter! Of course it could have been a whole lot more serious had it hit Woody’s head or chest. At this point it started to rain and we decided to abandon the plane for the time being and come up with a better plan.  So the following morning four of us returned armed with a step-ladder and various poles, gaffer tape, tie-wraps, rope, and anything else we thought might be useful. Bob the Builder had brought a sturdy cardboard tube to which we fixed pieces of plastic pipe to make it reach the model. The whole contraption was very bendy but with the mixed skills of three engineers and one postman (all retired) we were able to reach the model.
One wit said it was like watching an episode of Last of The Summer Wine or Dad’s Army! Woody insisted that we should guide the pole through the central propeller slot but I think he was just reminiscing about his days as a postman. Eventually after a lot of guidance from the other three Woody managed to get the remains of the plane back on terra firma. I say remains because by this time the poor Sea Vixen had seen much better days.
Never mind, overall the mission was a success. Dougal, who had returned to work earlier that week and missed the whole thing was heard to remark “I can’t leave you lot alone for five minutes without you getting into trouble.” I think he has a point…

Has anyone noticed the new HobbyKing Frenzy that they are advertising at the moment? It looks identical to a Max Thrust Riot to me, I have a Riot I can’t see any difference at all apart from the colour scheme. In the past HobbyKing have had some really good prices but now the UK warehouse has closed and it’s no longer possible to order models from the European warehouse the postage from Hong Kong make their prices unviable.

Today the Frenzy is showing as costing £192.51 but there is a ‘shipping discount’ of £33.69 making the price £158.82 which is a good deal. But the cheapest shipping to the UK comes up as £98.34 which brings the delivered price £257.16. At the moment Kings Lynn models are offering a Riot for £169.00 with free delivery which makes it £88.16 cheaper than HobbyKing. I’ve been a huge fan of HobbyKing in the past and have bought loads of stuff but sadly with the current set-up it simply doesn’t make sense to buy from them. It’s a great shame and I really hope they can sort out a better deal for UK modellers soon.

There weren’t many new models flown in September but Norwegian Nick showed up with a couple of interesting ones. The first is a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, an interesting and fairly unusual subject for a model but it’s actually an ideal subject for foamboard.

The Blackbird was a Strategic Reconnaissance (SR) aircraft that flew at over Mach 3 and 85000 feet altitude. Amazingly its’ first flight was in 1964, 58 years ago…does everyone feel old now?! Nick built his from a plan drawn up by Laddie Mikulasko which is available from Sarik Hobbies. They offer three different deals, you can buy just the plan for £17, or a laser cut Depron pack for £25, or a Short Kit containing both the plan and laser cut pack for £38.50.This is the description from the Sarik Hobbies website: Designed by Laddie Mikulasko, this is a quick and easy 693 mm span electric profile sport-scale build from the CAD drawn large single sheet plan. All Depron construction with some balsa and spruce strip, and uses an economical BL2212/06 2200KV motor, 40 Amp ESC and 3S 3000 Lipo with a 6″x4″ in. APC-E prop. A delight to fly.
Nick’s model is 693mm span and 1270mm long, so rather larger than I first thought when I saw the photos. It weighs 488gms and uses three channels, having elevons and throttle but no rudder. Nick has fitted the suggested 2200kv motor and 40A speed controller but is flying it with a 2200mAh 3 cell lipo battery as he doesn’t have any 3 cell 3000mAh packs.
I would imagine you’d get a really long flight time with a 3000mAh pack so the 2200’s should be fine. Nick says the test flight was ok but the model was a little tail heavy, presumably because he used a smaller battery, but that should be easily sorted for the next outing. Unfortunately nobody shot any video of the flight but I’ll hopefully get some for next month’s Patch News. Kryten took all of the above photos of Nick’s model both on the ground and in the air and I have to say it looks very Blackbird’ish, I like it a lot.

Nick’s second new model is a Sea Vixen that he built using Dwayne Pipe’s templates but instead of using Hobbycraft foamboard Nick has built his from Depron.
The Sea Vixen weighs 354gms, I wonder how that compares with the foamboard ones. Nick is using the same 2200kv motor as in the Blackbird but for the test flight he used a 1000mAh 3 cell lipo and found that the voltage sagged just a few seconds into the flight. Apparently the 1000mAh packs are now 5 years old and obviously past their best so next time out Nick is intending to use some new 1300 or 1350mAh packs. I may be wrong but I think some of the other club members are using 2200mAh packs in their Sea Vixens so that might be worth trying although maybe it would be difficult to obtain the correct centre of gravity. Again, I don’t have any video but Kryten took some excellent photos.

Dougal Entendre had lucky moment early in the month, it turned out alright but could have been very different. I’ll let Dougal explain what happened: I hadn’t flown the Ghost Rider for at least a couple of months, and before I flew it I said that the gremlins had had plenty of time to get to work on it, so I checked it over carefully before flying. All went well on the first flight until right near the end, when I noticed a sudden change in aileron trim. On landing I found that the left aileron was stuck with several degrees of up deflection due to servo failure in that wing. I still had two batteries to use up, so remembering how some pylon racers are designed to have only one aileron, I disconnected the failed servo and taped the left aileron in the neutral position.
The subsequent flights both went OK, though as expected, aileron sensitivity was reduced. Surprisingly though, the roll rate was much faster to the right than to the left.
I would have expected it to roll faster to the left as the one working aileron went down into the higher pressure area below the wing. Checking the radio showed there was no aileron differential programmed in. The control horns are on the underneath of each aileron, and are set back from the leading edge, so they do give some differential (more up than down) at large deflections. I think the main reason for the faster roll to the right is due to the top hinge though. There’s quite a large gap on the lower surface, and a sealed tape hinge on the top, so an upgoing aileron probably disrupts the airflow more than when it has the same downward deflection. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it!

Captain Slow finally brought his long awaited Wots Wot Foam-E up to the patch for its’ first flight in September. I forget when he bought it but it seems to have been quite a long time ago. But never mind it’s not good to rush these things. The Wots Wot is a foam biplane with wingspan of 1000mm and it comes with the motor, speed controller, and four 9gms servos already fitted. The motor is a 920kv outrunner connected to a 40A esc which swings a 12×6 propeller when powered by a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo battery.
Here’s what the Ripmax website says about it: The Wots Wot Foam-E makes for a perfect all round sports foam aircraft. The Wots Wot Foam-E combines the slow speed characteristics of the Wot4 Foam-E and the precision and ‘locked in feel’ of the Acrowot Foam-E. The Wots Wot Foam-E has been specifically designed to suit a popular 3S 2200mAh Li-Po battery resulting in a model that will fit in a hatchback car boot fully assembled! For a little more flight time, try the Hi-Energy 2700mAh pack instead. Using the latest in foam moulding technology you will notice the edges are very crisp and sharp without the weight penalty of a denser foam. The control surfaces use ‘live’ style moulded foam hinges but they also have plastic hinges moulded into the foam for extra security. Assembly is easy and requires only a cross head screwdriver. It’s so quick it takes longer to fit the decals than to assemble the airframe! In the air biplanes are associated with slow scale flight but not the Wots Wot, thanks to four large ailerons the roll rate is fast and authoritative and the short moment of the design gives great elevator and rudder power. The Wots Wot really excels during slow speed flight and can be really docile with low rates on. Up the rates and open the throttle for flicks, spins and knife edge loops. The stall is benign and thanks to the biplane layout it really slows down nicely for landing.
Captain Slow aborted the first take-off because just as the model lifted off there was a horribly loud vibration noise. Although he’d run up the motor previously he hadn’t reached full throttle and upon investigation Captain Slow found the motor mount was very loose, hence the vibration. After a few minutes work with a screwdriver all was well so he tried again and this time the Wots Wot took to the skies with no further problems. Captain Slow tells me that he ran out of elevator travel on the first landing and he needs to increase the expo on the ailerons but otherwise all was good. I think he’s going to enjoy this model. A couple of years ago I did the test flight of Chris P Bacon’s identical Wots Wot and was really taken with the biplane, it felt solid and totally under control right from the start. Oddly I never really felt comfortable with his larger 50” wingspan balsa and ply Wots Wot on 5 cells. You can see Captain Slow’s first flight and second landing in this month’s video.

Last month I reported on the first flight of the beautiful Lancaster built by Percy Vears. Sadly it suffered with extreme glitching and crashed but Percy has provided an update on the repairs and a fix for the glitching: I’ve completed all of the repairs – just some minor cosmetic items like redoing some of the panel lines.  I’ve also taken advantage of making one or two minor improvements whilst doing the repair. The problem that caused the glitch and subsequent crash was caused by the 5A UBEC – no obvious reason for that!  I tried replacing the UBEC with a 2s lipo and the system worked perfectly.  I also tried using the 3A BEC of a spare ESC – again no problem, so came to the conclusion it must be the 5A UBEC responsible.  Rather than replacing it with another 5A UBEC (which tend to be expensive!), I’m using two 3A UBECs – one to supply the receiver and servos, and the other to supply the retracts.  All systems now function correctly.
Well done Percy, I look forward to the next flight which I sure will be trouble free.

This month Kryten has sent through some more of his excellent photos for us to enjoy:

Video time now, this month with footage recorded by Dougal, and Peter Fothergill. 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

An F-111 fighter was flying as an escort to a B-52 bomber and generally making a nuisance of himself by flying loops and rolls all around the lumbering old bomber.
The pilot radioed over to the B-52 crew “Anything you can do, I can do better.”
Not to be outdone, the B-52 pilot replied that he would accept the challenge.
But the bomber simply continued on with its flight, flying straight and level as before.
Perplexed, the fighter pilot asked “So? What did you do, I didn’t see anything?”
“We just shut down two engines.”

 Colin Cowplain

The hot dry weather of July continued into August and with temperatures in the mid-thirties at the field we sometimes wilted a bit but at least we didn’t have to mow the patch or contend with the bullocks. Members took full advantage and enjoyed lots of flying.
In the middle of month we had a few light showers but not enough rain to green up the field. Later, towards the end of August, there were stronger winds and a little more rain.

Early in August we received the sad news that club member Ian Daniels had passed away. Ian was not a long-term member having only joined the club in June 2021 but he was a very popular chap with a long history of both model and full-size aviation. We were aware of Ian’s illness when he joined the club and on 31^st July he lost his battle aged just 59.
Five members attended Ian’s funeral at The Oaks crematorium on 22nd August where they learnt lots about his very full life including that he had been a ski instructor and had lived in St. Lucia for a while working as a scuba diving instructor. Ian will be greatly missed.

In the last Patch News I featured Dougal Entendre’s Salto H101 glider which he’d electrified and test flown but I hadn’t had time to edit the video I’d taken of it flying.
It’s done now and you can see ground based and FPV footage of it in this month’s video.

Young Charlie took a trip to Sussex Model Centre in Worthing and came away with two models, an Alpha and a Spitfire. The Alpha is one of a series of three produced by Flite Test, the others being called Bravo and Charlie. I can’t help thinking the Charlie would have been more appropriate but SMC didn’t have one! This is from the Flite Test website: The Alpha was designed to be a quick and easy to fly build, an all-around best performer out of the Triad series. The FT Alpha is compatible with the FT Bravo and FT Charlie kits. Each airplanes’ wings are built to be removable from the fuselage, and can be swapped with any of the other Triad planes, giving the builder essentially 9 planes to choose from. There is no need to re-calibrate the center of gravity on the aircraft after swapping, the CG remains the same no matter what combination you configure. This is great for the flight line and swapping with others, making it an enjoyable experience for all. We want you to have an amazing experience both in building and flying. This kit comes with everything you need to complete the FT Alpha Aircraft. Push-rods, control horns, firewalls and all other items needed to make this airframe electronics ready are included in the kit. If you choose to purchase our power pack F and battery, balance, flight performance and assembly will be quick and easy.
The website also has a series of build videos so Charlie should be able to build the Alpha without too many problems, he’ll learn a lot and will also have more idea about completing any repairs should they prove necessary. I expect mum Nadine will help and also learn! The Alpha is 736mm span so is a reasonable size and it appears to fly well in the videos.

The Spitfire Charlie bought at the same time is one of the tiny ones sold by Eachine although the models seems to appear with a variety of manufacturer’s names. Like the others is comes totally finished and ready to fly and the box even includes the transmitter. Also like the others the Spitfire is fitted with a switchable gyro which makes it easy to fly when it’s in the beginner mode. Charlie is having no problems at all flying the Spit although so far he’s tending to fly it at a very high altitude where some of the very slightly older people (me!) with poorer eyesight struggle to see it. Soon he’ll twig that we don’t fly low because we’re clever, it’s because that’s where we can see them!
Dougal managed to catch Charlie’s tiny Spit in his FPV sights briefly during one flight.
I promise it really is there in the photo, just below the cloud and slightly right of centre!

I featured a couple of new edf models last month that were built by Percy Vears during the lockdowns, both of which flew well. Last month’s video included his 3 cell Gnat flying and this month the video has the Mig-15 being pit through its paces on 4 cells, its very fast!
Percy has also been building a Tony Nijhuis designed Lancaster over the last few years and in August he brought the recently completed model along for a test flight.
It’s a beautiful model that I have covered in previous editions of Patch News. During preparation for flight Percy noticed that one aileron and the elevator glitched momentarily when the electric retracts reached the end of their travel, rather worrying.
We did a check to see if they were pulling a lot of current and overloading the BEC but there didn’t seem to be a problem so Percy decided we should ahead with the flight.
I was nominated as test pilot and the Lancaster looked great as it trundled across the patch and rose into the air beautifully, it just needed a little up trim to maintain level flight.
On the downwind leg I raised the retracts and the plane veered very violently to the right and downwards, much more than I thought the glitch would cause. I got it back level and decided I should continue round the circuit to land but when I lowered the retracts there was the same violent reaction which I manged to recover but then at low level it did it again and the Lanc hit the fence by the lower track. With the benefit of hindsight maybe I should have continued to climb for height after the initial glitch and not lowered the gear until I had plenty of height but who knows. At the time I just wanted to get it down.
The damage looked pretty bad, mostly at the root of the starboard wing but Percy was confident he could repair it fairly easily and just a week or so later he reported that he had already fixed the worst of the damage and was tidying it up cosmetically. Percy is going to fit a separate retract battery and will do some extensive testing before flying it again.

Not content with building two EDFs and a Lancaster Percy also found time to build himself a new Splot, saying his original one was getting a bit tatty in it’s old age.
The new one is far from tatty, very smart in fact, and uses the same power set-up as his previous Splot and it flies just like the first one, very well like all Splots do.

It’s always encouraging for the lesser mortals when one of the so called experts gets it ever so slightly wrong and I thought we would all enjoy seeing the result of one of Dougal Entendre’s infamous low inverted passes going a little awry when encouraged by others.
Dougal responded to the shouts of ‘Lower’ and pushed it just a tad too much when flying his Mini Blitz and the inevitable happened! Fortunately there was only minor damage.

Catapult King has been building again and he can always be relied on to come up with something unusual, no box like trainers with thick sectioned parallel chord wings for him.This time he’s built a Purple Piper. What’s that I hear you ask, I’ll let Catapult explain: The plans were first released in Radio Modeller in June 1989 but I got them from Outerzone. The designer is John Rutter who took the wing from an old Mirus as the fuselage for that model apparently wasn’t much use. So he designed this new fuselage and called it the ‘Pink Piper’ namely because his was pink. Mine’s purple so it seems fitting to call it the ‘Purple Piper’. Originally an IC design I’ve obviously changed it to electric. It currently uses a Turnigy 2836 – 1000Kv motor with a 3s 2200 battery. As we saw, with a 7 x 4 prop it only just flew so I changed that for a 9 x 5 which was better but that prop can just hit the rubber band wing dowels. I will change both the motor and prop for a 1200 to 1400Kv and an 8 x 6 prop when I can find some in stock. I think that combination will be successful; we’ll have to wait and see. As Catapult says the model was a little under-powered but, as you can see in the video, it actually flew pretty well, just rather too slowly. The next time out with a bigger prop was much better but the Purple Piper could still handle a bit more speed and by the time you read this it will probably have been re-motored. Any model with a Mirus wing is definitely something 1066 will drool over and if it ends up being fast as well I reckon he’ll be borrowing the plans.

Several PAM members attended the Popham Model Show in August and some came away with goodies! The show was excellent with some good models and equally good displays.
There were many more trade stands than last year so hopefully the show will just keep on getting bigger and better. Young Charlie fell for a second-hand HobbyKing Lancaster on one stall and despite Dougal and I urging caution he decided to go for it and haggled the price down to £80. Another member who splashed the cash was 1066 who picked up an Arrows Viper at a very good price. Once home he put it together in just a couple of hours.
This is from the Kings Lynn Model Shop website: Sleek, powerful and perfectly formed the Arrows Hobby Viper will be something of an eye-opener to anyone who still thinks EDF jets have some catching up to do. Experience the Viper in action and you’ll quickly realise that nothing could be further from the truth. Packing a jet-like 50mm 11-blade fan that’s spun up by a precision 2627 4500KV brushless motor, this 3S-fuelled pocket rocket will find favour in the hands of all who seek smooth, flowing aerobatics, a cloud punching performance and exceptional speed. But that’s not the half of it, the Viper is also a beautifully practical jet that exhibits exceptional low speed handling, is small enough to transport in one piece, retract free (hassle free) and enticingly budget-friendly. All this grace and performance from a 3S LiPo will almost certainly have you reassessing your EDF spend. So good is the Arrows Viper we’re convinced it’ll become a frequent flyer in your air fleet and, as we all know, that equates to superb value for money. As Arrows Hobby so rightly says in its promotional blurb, “Small (and simple) is beautiful.”  I’ve looked at the Viper a few times but keep telling myself I don’t need one!

1066 flew his Viper while I was away and watching the video that Dougal shot of the first flight made me very jealous, I think maybe I do need one after all, I feel a pain in the wallet coming on! You can see what you think of the Viper’s performance in this month’s video.

Bob the Builder has been at it again and has produced a model he’s called Bigger Basher as it replaces his smaller Basher that he lost sight of one day with the inevitable result!
The Bigger Basher is based on a Flite Test Simple Stick and is made from 5mm Hobbycraft foamboard with the paper covering left on and stuck together with hot melt glue. The wingspan is 840mm (the width of the foamboard) and the spar is a section also made of foamboard. The motor is mounted on a foam box that slides into the front of the fuselage and held in place by three wooden dowels which makes for easy motor swaps and repairs. The undercarriage is currently held on by Velcro but Bob says it doesn’t work too well so he’s thinking of changing it. The motor is a Propdrive 2836 1400kv which swings a 9×6 prop and the power comes from a 1300mAh three cell battery. Servos are all standard 9gm ones as used on various other models. The Bigger Basher is covered in packing tape to add colour and strength. It’s proved to be an excellent aerobatic flyer, cheap and quick to build.

Geoff Hill produced not one but two new models in August. Well strictly speaking only one is new, the Orion E is what Geoff calls an “attic rebuild”. I think we can all relate to that!
The Orion E is a powered glider that has been brought up to date with a Turnigy DST 1200 motor, a 30A speed controller and a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo. The receiver is Flysky FS-GR3E.

The genuinely new model is a Coachman, a four channel trainer plane which Geoff has built from an RCM&E magazine plan that was published way back in November 1996.
It was designed for i/c engines but Geoff has extended the nose and fitted a Racestar 3536 1200kv electric motor which is powered by a 3 cell 3650mAh lipo. The Coachman is fitted with a Radiomater R88 receiver and although it flies ok it still requires a bit of tweaking .

Kryten took lots of great photos for us in August, some static shots and some airborne. I’ve used some of his static shots in the write-up and here are some of his airborne ones:

Video time now with footage taken by myself, Dougal, 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​

Son: Mum, when I grow up I want to be a pilot.
Mum: Make your mind up son, you can’t do both.

Colin Cowplain