Patch News History

January turned out to be an interesting start to the new decade, unfortunately not for all the right reasons. It started well with reasonable weather and a good turnout on New Year’s Day but when the Midweekers went to fly on 8th Jan we discovered the bullocks had returned to the field and managed to trash the fence and the patch. We think something must have spooked them as the fence was switched on but they had completely destroyed it, broken many of the posts, ripped all the wires apart, and even torn the roofing felt off the box lid. The patch looked like a battlefield, all the months of hard work had been undone is a very short space of time. While Captain Slow kept the bullocks at bay Woody and I managed to sort out some undamaged posts and using the spare reel of wire we were able to get a fence of sorts working again. On Friday the 10th we had an excellent turnout of helpers to work on the patch, lifting, stamping, and rolling until it was at least usable again. Lots of members have continued with the restoration and it’s not too bad now although nothing like as good as before. 1066 ordered some new equipment, metal posts, insulators, stronger wire etc. and we now have a fence that is hopefully better than before. I expect once it’s dried out a bit we’ll start to mow the patch and all being well by springtime it should be pretty good again. But we mustn’t be too disheartened, it’s perfectly useable at the moment for almost all models. Other than damage to the patch January was fairly normal with lots of wind and rain but despite that some new models were flown on the nicer days.

First up, test flown by me on 1st January is Chris P Bacon’s new Ripmax Wots Wot Foam-E. It’s another model designed by Chris Foss of course. I think this photo must have been after the first flight, Chris P is actually smiling… Chris P previously owned the much larger 1280mm (50”) span wooden Wots Wot ARTF which used a 5 cell lipo and weighed around 7lbs but it met its demise a few months ago. I had flown that one a few times and never felt comfortable with it, not quite sure why, it just didn’t inspire confidence. Oddly the adverts for it say “The new Wots Wot biplane is the latest model in the growing range of Chris Foss designed ARTF aircraft, and has (by general agreement) the best flying characteristics of them all!” so maybe it was just me. But I found Chris P’s new little Foam-E version to be totally different, it felt right as soon as it took off and I immediately felt at home with it.The Foam-E is just 1000mm (39.37”) span and weighs only 2.6lbs so it’s 78% of the size of the larger one but only 52% of the weight, I wonder if that explains why it felt nicer. Chris P bought this one from Sussex Model Centre and it came complete with a 920kv outrunner motor, a 40A esc, a 12×6 prop, and four 9g servos. He is using 3 cell 2200mAh lipos from HobbyKing and says that Ripmax have finally sorted out a decent battery compartment and hatch. I wonder if they’ve beefed up the undercarriage mounting as well…time will tell. You can watch some of that first flight in this month’s video where you’ll see that I was enjoying flying it.

Also flown on 1st January was Dougal’s Snub Nosed Skyfun. He’s flown it before and last month I explained why it’s got a snub nose but now he has fitted an HD camera to that flat front. The camera was a Christmas present  and it came complete with a waterproof housing which seemed sensible for landing on a damp and mucky patch.Dougal is planning to add FPV equipment with on screen display of altitude, heading, distance, and an arrow pointing back to the launch point so having a separate camera to record the flight in High Definition without all the screen information showing is a good idea. I’ve included some of the footage in this month’s video.

In Patch News a couple of months ago I included some photos of Page Boy’s Slec Funfly under construction and this month he sent me a photo of the model now that’s he covered it. He’s just got to add some trim and then fit the electrics so it shouldn’t be too long before we see it flying.It certainly looks nice and should be a good flyer, it has got an excellent pedigree.

We haven’t seen much of Cream Egg for a while, he keeps making excuses about work and decorating chores but we know it’s really because he’s always away on holidays. Last time he flew he broke his Hobbyking Voltigeur so he’s scouring the internet for a suitable replacement. Finally after months of deliberation he bought…another Voltigeur! And why not, he really liked the first Voltigeur and it really suited his needs so another one was the obvious replacement. The Voltigeur is designed for 3 cells but when he had his first one Cream Egg discovered that his 3 cell packs were past their best so he switched to some 4 cell ones he had spare. I assume he’s also using the 4 cell packs on this new one, it seemed to have loads of power. Don’t break this one, Cream Egg, look after it!

Captain Slow (the new PAM Chairman, please stand) spent Christmas visiting one of his sons who lives in New York and on his travels around the area took the opportunity to look for some local model clubs. He only found one where somebody was flying but took some photos for us to see.

The club is called Blue & Gray and has a good set up with a clubhouse and some outside work benches and so on.

The guy that Captain Slow met flew a 60” span CAP 232. Looking at the specs it’s a very high quality foamie that runs on either 5 or 6 cells. He also had a very nice looking EDF F-4 Phantom but didn’t fly it that day.

Captain Slow also sent me some photos of something he bought while serving in Germany back in the nineties. Like most of us he has an old box in which he keeps long scraps of balsa and other bits and pieces and he’s just realised it once contained a Robbe Varta-Fly. You can see the specs in the photos but basically it was an early electric glider that used a brushed motor and NiCad batteries. Ooh I can smell the nostalgia…!

Chas Butler has now finished and flown his Limbo Dancer that I featured naked last month (the plane was naked not me, don’t get excited). He’s fitted it with a 900kv Pelikan 3548/05 outrunner fitted with a 13×7 prop fed via a 70A speed controller. It’s ended up weighing in at 3lbs 8.5oz with a 2900mAh lipo which means the wing loading is just 12oz/sq.ft.  Chas has been talking about trying it on 4 cells with an 11×8 prop but so far has only used 3 cell pack. It certainly had enough power when I filmed the first flight. On that flight he found he had too much elevator movement and not enough aileron so he made some adjustments before the second flight and it was much better. I think it will prove to be an excellent ‘all round’ sport model, the only thing I don’t like is the need to remove the wing to swap out the battery pack. Chas says there’s not an easy way round it as the fuselage is very tight for space. Just to prove me wrong, next time I saw Chas with the Limbo Dancer he’d managed to add a small hatch to the underside of the fuselage through which he was changing the batteries!He said it’s a bit fiddly and needs a bit of refining but it’s easier than removing the wing each time.

On 3^rd February last year lots of us flew in the snow at our field and I was able to fly my Bush Mule on skis, great fun. But the snow also found some pilots struggling with a lack of power due to cold batteries and cold hands despite using transmitter muffs. So I ordered myself a heater for my transmitter muff, the idea being to pre-heat my batteries before flight and then keep my hands warm during the flight. Needless to say the weather warmed up before I had a chance to test it so it wasn’t until this month that I’ve actually used it in anger. The heater unit consists of an adjustable temperature controller connected to a pair of pads containing heater elements and the power is supplied by a 2 or 3 cell lipo. Having found the controller to be very sensitive I rewired the pads in series rather than parallel as it could get dangerously hot running it on 3 cells but would probably be fine on 2 cells. I fitted the system into my Turnigy muff with strips of Velcro so it’s easy to remove when not required.I haven’t really tried pre-heating the lipos in it yet but I used it to keep my hands warm several times in January and found it work well. For most of the year it’s really not necessary but for the really cold weather it’s a definite bonus. For a cost of around £13 I think it’s very good, the only snag being that HobbyKing don’t have any in stock.

Kryten send me a few of the excellent photos that he was able to take in January and I also have also included a couple I had left over from last month for you to enjoy. Thank you as always Kryten.

Video time now and this month some of the video and photos come from Captain Slow, Bob the Builder, Dwayne Pipe, and Dougal Entendre, thanks guys.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

When I got home from flying the other day I saw that my wife left a note on the fridge. “It’s not working, I can’t take it anymore! Gone to stay at my mothers.” I opened the fridge, the light came on and the beer was cold. It’s working perfectly, not sure what she was talking about…

Colin Cowplain

Happy New Year to you all, I hope you all had a great Christmas and aren’t reading this with a New Year’s Eve hangover! Did anybody receive any modelling goodies for Christmas? If you did please let me know so I can share it with others. Personally I was given a very nice Help for Heroes Vulcan t-shirt and a ‘Gift in a Tin’ fighter plane. Sadly, as it’s of a Meccano type construction I don’t hold out too much hope for its’ flying characteristics. I know that Angie treated Dougal Entendre to a 4K ‘action cam’ for Christmas and he’ll soon be mounting it on a model alongside an FPV camera so we should be able to see some high quality in air footage.

This Patch News will be a little shorter than usual, partly because I was away for much of the month and partly because December saw some awful weather. Bob the Builder snapped this photo of Woody feeling the cold one day!The bullocks came and went a couple of times during December but the fence has done its’ job so the patch has remained in great condition. Unfortunately the field is very muddy down by the gate and the track and parking areas have also become very mucky with all the wet weather. But November had ended beautifully and Friday 29th November saw an event that occurred too late to be included in the November Patch News.The weather that day was glorious and in the morning I received a WhatsApp message from Iven asking if we would be flying in the afternoon. He said he’d flown in the morning and had managed a perfect spot landing and had left proof on the patch for us. When we arrived in the afternoon we found a pink box in the centre of the patch covered with a piece of wood weighed down by a brick, very odd. When we looked inside this is what we found.It turned out to be Ian’s 60th (yes I know he only looks 40, that’s because we’re old) and he had left us some cakes, brilliant idea, thanks Ian. As the weather was great there was a good turnout and the cakes went down a treat.

Last month I featured several models under construction one of which was Bob the Builder’s version of a Ghost Rider 50. Dougal has been flying an electrified Ghost Rider 50 for several years and Bob decided to build his own version. It’s now flown and, as you will see in the video, Dougal did the test flight but soon handed the transmitter to Bob. Bob calls it EGhost and says this: Based on a Ghost Rider 50 like Mark’s. I wanted something one step up from a Splot. Stable in windy conditions, big and colourful enough to see at distance, tricycle undercarriage for easier touch and go’s, good for inverted flight, plenty of power to get out of trouble, easy and cheap to build & repair, easy battery changes and will fly on a range of 3 or 4 cell batteries 2200-4000mAh. Very pleased with it so far.Bob was good enough to let me have a flight and I must say it’s a very good all round sports model, it will do all the aerobatics you want but has good flying characteristics with no nasty handling problems, a winner for sure.

Chas sent me a couple of photos of a Limbo Dancer that he’s built and in November he was just starting the covering so I expect it will be flying very soon. Chas has fitted a Pelikan 900Kv motor which spins an 11×8 propeller. The speed controller is 70A and he intends to use a 4 cell lipo battery initially. Depending on how it performs he might change to a 3 cell pack and a 13×7 prop. The radio gear is JR and he’s fitted Hitec servos. I look forward to seeing it fly, in its’ day the Limbo Dancer was one of the top fun-fly machines.

One new model that has been built and eventually flew right at the end of December is this little cracker from Catapult King. He really liked the look of 1066’s Pichler HiSpeed so Catapult took a few photos and some of the Pichler’s vital statistics and came up with a model that he’s named Yellow Tail. This is what he says about it: When talking to Steve he mentioned it would be better if it were a little bigger so the wing span is 1.2m, the fuse is based on my Sunbird. It’s the first time I have attempted a ‘skinny wing’ so I can only hope it holds up. I was going for a 4s battery but will probably use a 3s to start with. The motor is a Turnigy 2836 950kv motor and 40A ESC. The prop will start as a 9×5 but may go up to a 10×6 depending on how things go, after all this is supposed to be fast. Just need to glue the hinges in and add the control horns and I’m ready to go.Well Catapult has now finished the model and it certainly looks fast so how did it fly? 1066 has been rather disappointed with the relative lack of speed with his Pichler on 3 cells and is threatening to switch to 4 cells. I’m not saying that Catapult was rather apprehensive about the first flight but he did bring along a change of trousers!Catapult chose to use 3 cells for the first flight and asked Dougal to do the honours. It was a fairly breezy morning but the Yellow Tail went away well and after a little trimming it flew fine although, like the Pichler, it wasn’t as fast as expected. After a few minutes of getting used to it Dougal landed the model with no problems.After a few adjustments the model went away from launch perfectly for the next flight and Dougal soon passed the transmitter over to Catapult. It was fine for the first couple of minutes but then Catapult did a gliding downwind pass and got bitten when the Yellow Tail suddenly tip-stalled and spun in.The very thin wing and sharp leading edge means the Yellow Tail needs speed to stop it tip-stalling. Fortunately the damage wasn’t too bad and the model will be repaired. I took some video of the flights, I’ll include it next month.

Page Boy has bought himself a second E-Flite Harvard after damaging the undercarriage of the first one with a heavy landing. The damage wasn’t bad but he says he cheered himself up by buying a new one, what it is to have money! On a forum one day he spotted a German guy who had produced a 3D printed radial engine for the Harvard so he asked how much they cost. Back came the reply ‘Give me your address and I’ll send you one, no charge’. Page Boy thought he was joking but shortly afterwards it turned up. What an excellent chap!

You might remember that in last month’s Patch News I showed Dougal Entendre’s badly damaged Skyfun which was the result of getting lost after flying into cloud where the spotter couldn’t see it. Having examined the wreckage and declared it a write-off Dougal has since had second thoughts and come up with this, a Snub Nosed Skyfun. It flies much the same as before but unsurprisingly has lost a little directional stability with the flat front.At the moment Dougal is only flying it in normal RC mode but the plan is to fit his new 4K video camera on the front and then re-fit the FPV gear but with a drone controller for extra functions such as RTH (return to home).The snub nose means Dougal can do “Aargh, I’ve been speared” impressions!

One of the tractors that brings the manure to the large pile by the barn got a flat one day and was stranded while waiting for some help. Dougal had his car 12v tyre pump with him but decided it may not be quite up to the job!Shaun the farm worker later explained that the tyre must have been low on pressure and it rolled off the rim. There was quite a tale of involving various other farm vehicles etc. and it took about 4 hours for them to get it sorted.

As I explained earlier I’m a little short of material this month but fortunately Kryten has come up trumps with lots of his excellent photos. First up is this “Who can’t land a Wot-4 properly?” moment!Oh yes, that’ll be Chas then!The rest are all self explanatory:

This month some of the video and photos come from Captain Slow, Bob the Builder, and Dougal Entendre, thanks guys. 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

Cessna: “Southampton tower, Cessna Alpha Lima, student pilot, I am out of fuel.”
Tower: “Roger Cessna Alpha Lima, reduce airspeed to best glide!! Do you have the airfield in sight?!?!!”
Cessna: “Uh … tower, I am on the south ramp; I just want to know where the fuel truck is….”

Colin Cowplain

The November weather was pretty much as we would expect with quite a few wet and windy days interspersed with some reasonable flying days. Lots of us managed to fly several times during the month, mostly the ‘midweekers’ of course who were able to pick the best of the weather. The patch is in excellent condition and has now all but stopped growing so the Farts didn’t need to mow much at all this month. When we arrived at the field on the last Sunday in November we were surprised to find very murky conditions. We quickly tracked down the cause of the problem…But he’s been forgiven as Captain Slow has kept up his much appreciated fortnightly battery charging and swapping service, something that has renewed importance as the herd of ‘new’ bullocks arrived towards the end of the month.They’ve already been testing the fence but will hopefully soon learn that it’s best to ignore it. I wonder what number bullock Captain Slow will befriend this time, perhaps we should start a book…the winner gets a joint of beef!

There weren’t too many new models flown in November but there was quite a lot of action to report on anyway. The first new model I’ll show you is an indoor one designed and built by Dwayne Pipe. I though Dwayne Pipes were only found outside…? I spotted it at the Havant indoor flying session that’s run by Waltham Chase Aero Modellers.Dwayne has scaled down the foamboard Sukhoi SU-27 that so many of us are flying at the patch. It has a wingspan of just 15” (380mm) and is made from 2mm thick Depron. The speed controller and Spektrum compatible receiver are combined in a one piece unit that came from Banggood and Dwayne is using a pair of 2g HobbyKing servos to control the elevons. At the moment the motor is an 8.5mm diameter inrunner drone motor that swings a 6” prop.Unfortunately, as you will see in this month’s video, it’s rather underpowered at the moment and can’t manage much more than a circuit before the motor overheats and the plane lands. To overcome this Dwayne is planning to fit a Microaces motor that is designed for aircraft rather than drones which should fit the bill nicely. The Sukhoi is remarkably stable and flies very slowly so with more power it should be a great indoor flier, well done Dwayne.

Chas Butler is also putting together an indoor model, a Clik R2 SuperLITE that’s constructed from EPP and carbon fibre. It has a wingspan of 840mm (33”) and an AUW of 130g. The motor is a 1620kv unit that swings a 9×2.5 carbon fibre prop and is fed by a 10A speed controller. It has one 6g servo and two 4.5g servos, presumably the 6g one drives both ailerons and the 4.5g ones are for rudder and elevator. The battery is a tiny 2 cell 280mAh lipo.Chas says he hasn’t decided what receiver to use yet but has found this one which seems a likely candidate.It weighs just 2.4g and for comparison the 20p piece weighs 5g! This is how a completed Clik R2 SuperLITE looks.

The month saw some ‘interesting’ FPV moments. The first one was when I was flying my Ranger 1600 FPV one day and spotter Captain Slow suggested I flew further to the south west than previously. But as I got to a reasonable distance (but well within spotter sight) I suddenly lost the radio link although the FPV was working perfectly. The model came down, fortunately with minimal damage, and everything seemed to be working correctly. But back at the patch the radio was dead and I found that the lead from the esc had become unplugged from the receiver. I knew it wasn’t a result of the crash as it has been working before and I couldn’t see why it would have come out on the walk back so I decided it must have been loose while I was flying and was making/losing connection causing the crash. I put it all back together and found nothing else wrong. Next time out I did a careful low power range check and got almost double the stated range with no problems. So I flew it again and all seemed fine for two flights. But on the third flight I flew back to the area where I’d lost control and it promptly happened again! The model came down relatively unscathed within a few yards of the previous crash and again everything was working perfectly, and all the connections were still sound. It seemed likely that the radio was short on range and the crashes were in the same location because that was the furthest I’d gone each time. I checked the location on Google Maps and found the distance was only about 400 metres so it should have easily have been within range.The next morning I rang Mike Ridley, the Multiplex service agent. Mike lives in Sholing so is very handy for PAM members and he’ll service virtually all RC gear except Spektrum. Don’t blame me, I’m just repeating what he said! Within minutes of arriving Mike had found the problem. A while ago I had found a split in the receiver aerial insulation where it exits the case and I’d covered it a piece of heat-shrink tubing. But Mike found that the coax shielding underneath the insulation was also damaged. It’s only the bare 30mm or so of wire at the end of the aerial that does anything, the rest of the aerial is shielded and if the shielding gets damaged it affects the range. I told Mike I’d done a low power range check and he explained that it doesn’t necessarily show up a problem. He fitted a new aerial and did some tests to ensure the receiver was back to normal. He also checked that the transmitter power output was correct. I’ve since flown the Ranger several times to extreme range and had no problems at all so I’m happy again. While I was with Mike I bought a new transmitter aerial for Woody as he’d broken the hinge pin on his. Oh, and the cost?  The grand total of £15. Mike also gave me a 2.4GHz Radio Use & Installation Help Sheet that I’ve added to the News section of the website. I thoroughly recommend Mike Ridley, Model Radio Workshop. 

The other FPV incident happened to Dougal Entendre. Last month I reported that his Skyfun propeller had thrown a blade and the vibration tore the motor out, breaking the motor mount and taking the top off one of the fins as it went. This month the Skyfun returned with a new motor mount and repaired fin and was soon flying as well as ever. But not for long. If you were at the club meeting on 28th November you’ll have heard the tale, seen the video, got the T-shirt etc. so I won’t go into detail here, suffice to say Dougal inadvertently flew into some thick cloud and, lacking X-ray vision, the spotter (me) couldn’t see the model. Dougal throttled back but I didn’t see it emerge from the cloud and although Dougal had a nice clear picture of the ground on his goggles he didn’t know where he was. Several of us scanned the sky for the model but we couldn’t spot it. Eventually the Skyfun ran out of battery and came down. By comparing Google Maps with the video of the flight that was recorded in his goggles Dougal figured out the location and retrieved the model. All the electronics seem to have survived but sadly the airframe didn’t. In this month’s video you will see some of the cloud Dougal found but also some nice fluffy bits that I played with.

Meanwhile Captain Slow has been flying his FPV Skyhunter and getting used to flying with goggles. He prefers to remain seated while flying as he’s less likely to lose his balance. It is fairly easy to lose balance while flying although I’ve found you gradually get used to it and I rarely have a problem now. Landing can be a bit tricky to get right with FPV as judging the height isn’t easy but on one of his flights Captain Slow managed to land right on the spot.Obviously more luck than judgement but I suppose I must give him credit where it’s due. At least he didn’t run off the patch into a hole as Dougal did when I let him have a go at landing my Ranger while he was flying it FPV! You can just about see the slightly crumpled nose that was the result of my earlier receiver problem, not Dougal.Dougal and I had swapped goggles to compare my cheap Quanum box goggles with his expensive Aomways. Dougal was happy with the quality of mine but found then big and cumbersome. Can’t say I’m surprised, he shouldn’t have tied a windsock to the front of them, it’s not as if he could even see it while he was wearing the goggles!On the plus side at least he couldn’t see Captain Slow camping it up in the background either!

Woody has built himself another foamboard Mig-29. This one came in a different colour scheme to all the others and I must say I think it looks rather nice. As is usual for Woody he’s got lights all over it, not sure how many but it’s a lot, about eleven I think. They are very bright and show up quite well especially on gloomy November days.Woody fitted it with a 7” prop rather than the normally used 6” in the hope of keeping the noise down but it doesn’t seem to have worked. He’s opened up the prop slot since I took this photo and that has reduced the noise a lot.It flies much like all the others and certainly has plenty of thrust. You can see it in action in this month’s video. Want one? The version with the new colour scheme is currently in stock in the HobbyKing UK warehouse for around £17.

Chas has had a bit of a clear out and on 17th November he took a car load of stuff to the Southern Counties Autumn Swapmeet at Mountbatten School Romsey. Wow, he’s certainly packed a lot of stuff in there!Chas reports that he couldn’t get the stuff out of the car quick enough for the buyers and the prices were very good. A seller’s table cost £9 for the morning including admission and admission for buyers was £4. That’s definitely a swap meet to bear in mind for anyone who has some modelling stuff to move on. They also held one in March this year so presumably there will be another in March 2020.

John Warren has joined the foamboard fun with a Sukhoi SU-27. I’m afraid I don’t have any photos to show you, I’m sure I took some of John with his Sukhoi but I can’t find them now, I must have inadvertently deleted them. Not to worry, you can see in this month’s video that the test flight went well. But I do have a photo of his Jocasta. John has now added his ‘corporate colours’ of white trim to the previously all red model and very smart it looks too.He had a bit of a moment with the Jocasta this month, while he was flying he had to call for help when it started to fly erratically. Dougal took over and at first all seemed well but then suddenly the Jocasta did its own thing again. He managed to regain control and land safely back on the patch where the cause was investigated.I’ve seen unpinned hinges that have come out but John had pinned this one only to have it break on the hinge line.

The winter building season is upon us and although there was a lack of new models at the patch this month there are plenty of models being built. All the ones I’ve seen so far have been ‘proper’ built-up wood models. The members of the PAM WhatsApp group will have already seen some of them, please send any photos for publication to me personally rather than the whole group. First up is Page Boy’s 1370mm (54”) wingspan Slec Funfly.Slec produce the laser cut kit in two versions, I/C and electric and Page Boy’s is the electric one of course. It should end up weighing just under 4lbs when fitted with a 650kv motor swinging a 12×6 prop, a 60A esc and a 4 cell lipo.Page Boy reports that the laser cut kit is of very good quality. The original glow version was first produced by Precedent and their FunFly won several events including the Nationals Fun Fly Class 2 back in the 80’s.

Chas is building a Tony Nijhuis designed Westland Lysander that’s 1/9th scale giving it a wingspan of 1676mm (66”).The final weight should be around 6lbs and Chas will be powering it with a 595kv 4-Max motor with a 14×7 prop, a 70A esc and a 4 cell 4500mAh lipo. He hasn’t made a decision on the colour scheme yet but this one is a contender.

Bob the Builder is building a Ghost Rider 50, he likes the way Dougal’s flies so much he’s decided to make his own.Actually he says it’s ‘based on a Ghost Rider 50′ so presumably he’s made a few changes. It’s 1300mm span (51”) and is fitted with a PropDrive 1100kv motor that should produce around 800W on a 4 cell lipo. That ought to be plenty as Bob thinks the model will weigh 4lbs. Wonder if it’ll make him fly like Dougal? Answers on a postcard to: Bob the Builder, Not Even Close, Never-In-a-Million-Years…

I have details of several other models that are under construction plus a few other interesting snippets and photos but I’ll save those for the December edition of Patch News when I’m likely to be rather short of material.

I haven’t had any of Kryten’s superb photos this month so you’ll have to put up with a few that I snapped with my mobile. These were while we were flying inside the live fence to avoid the bullocks and nobody hit it:

Video time now and this one includes footage from Captain Slow and Dougal. Please watch it full screen, it so much better with small models flying around.

If the video won’t play for you please click HERE

And finally, a festive joke to warm the mince pies of your hearts:

A plumber, a prison warder, and an airline pilot all died on Christmas Eve and rose to heaven.

St. Peter met them at the pearly gates saying “Since you died on Christmas Eve before I can let you in you’ve all got to show me something that represents Christmas.”

The plumber put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He then lit it, and said “It’s a Christmas candle”
St. Peter said “Yes, there are candles for Christmas, go on in.”

The prison warder produced a set of keys and shook them saying “These are Jingle bells.”
St. Peter said “Well there are bells at Christmas so you can go in.”

But when the pilot rummaged in his pockets all he could find was a pair of stewardess’s panties.
St. Peter demanded “And just what do those have to do with Christmas? “

“These? Oh these are Carols…”

Merry Christmas everybody
Colin Cowplain

I said in the last Patch News that September had started with great weather but finished with strong winds and rain. Well the awful weather continued into October and although we did have a few good days much of the month was pretty lousy. Undeterred by the rain some of the keener (or should that be more stupid) members still managed to mow the patch a few times and hopefully it won’t need to be cut again for a while as it’s now turning colder.One particularly horrible very wet and windy Friday afternoon only three of us were able to make it for mowing, but at least we were cheered up by Woody supplying cakes as it was his birthday. Thanks Woody.

Following the departure of the late lamented 473 and all of his mates the field stayed bullock free for the whole of the month. The young replacements have now moved into the lower field but they’ll probably go inside for the winter before coming to our field. That’s what we’re hoping but we’re keeping the fence in place just in case.

Probably as a result of the poor weather not many new models were flown in October but the regular pilots flew whenever possible and there were a few other things that kept us entertained anyway. One midweek day early in the month we were pleased to see a Gypsy Moth exploring the area. It didn’t seem to be aware of us at all but it flew several fairly low and close passes and stayed in the general area for a few minutes. Luckily Kryten was on hand with his decent camera and he managed to snap this photo despite the rather murky weather conditions.I took some rather poor quality video with my mobile which you can see in this month’s video. Later in the month, on one of the few midweek days of perfect weather, we were treated to a very low fly-by by what I think was one of the Solent Flight Ikarus C42’s from Lower Upham Airfield. They are often in the area when we are flying but rarely come very low or very close to us. On this occasion the pilot seemed to be practising engine out procedures as several times the plane came down very low with the engine idling before open the throttle and climbing away. Mostly it wasn’t close to us but on one occasion it came almost overhead and I managed to take some video.This photo is a screenshot from the video which you can see in this month’s video. Needless to say we quickly landed all models on both these occasions and didn’t fly again until we were sure they’d left the area.

We are continuing with the foamboard fun and I’ve lost count of how many there are now in the club, must be about twenty I think. Captain Slow and I seem to have got into the habit of flying in close formation and sometimes the inevitable collisions occur. These are always Captain Slow’s fault of course, I always do my best to avoid contact despite what he says! There is very rarely any damage from these collisions, sometimes a nick from the prop but almost never anything more. On the day of the Gypsy Moth visit we were practising our formation flying when Captain Slow managed to carelessly hook his Mig-29 tailplane into the dangling battery lead on my Sukhoi, very poor piloting by him I thought. Kryten snapped a couple of great photos, the first when we were in close formation shows the battery lead dangling underneath my Sukhoi, and the second when we were actually locked together.Of course we both immediately shut our throttles but then found there was a distinct lack of directional control which meant Kryten had to take rather sharpish avoiding action but all was well. This is how they ‘landed’.There was no damage at all to either model so once we’d managed to disentangle the planes we carried on flying. The things we do just to help Kryten get some decent pictures…

Dougal Entendre has put together another 3D model, an MX2 3D EPP from Hobbyking, exactly the same as Chuck Berry’s that I featured a couple of months back. It comes as airframe only so no motor, esc, or servos are included but most of us already have suitable electronics to hand anyway. It’s currently showing as around £45 on the HobbyKing website but I think Dougal said he only paid £35, a real bargain. This is what Hobbyking say about it: Its fuselage is torsionally very stiff yet light with loads of space beneath the long top hatch for your radio and power system. The wing is a one piece affair featuring EPP construction, a very accurate symmetrical aerofoil with 2 additional spars to minimise flex and twist. The control surfaces are something else – the elevator, rudder and ailerons feature a 3 layer construction (EPP-Depron-EPP) making for stiff surfaces and NO flex at extreme throws! Snap rolls ‘Snap’ and control response is instantaneous. The light – yet rigid – airframe adds up to one great flying 3D ‘foamy’. Waterfalls, harriers, flat spins, rolling circles this model has the precision to perform these and any other moves you can think of! Assembly of the airframe in a quick 10-15 minute process with the help of a little medium CA. The radio and power system layouts are very straightforward, the long top hatch making for easy access. This is a great model for general park flying and hard core 3D. You will be hard pressed to break this model, it will take hard knocks and just keep bouncing back every time! Dougal has fitted his MX2 out with the Propdrive 2830 1100kv motor that was previously in his now defunct Laius, a 40A ESC and a three cell 1500mAh lipo. At the moment the prop is an APC-style 10×5, but he wants to go up to at least a 10×6 or 11×5 as it could do with a bit more power and there was still 45% battery capacity left after a 5 minute flight. Dougal tells me that he stripped the plastic gears on the 9g elevator servo just with the aerodynamic loads, so he needs to replace that one with something beefier, and probably the rudder servo as well.1066 has (had?) a Hobbyking Sbach 3D EPP which is a variation of the same base model but according to 1066 the engine mount/front bulkhead (a weak point of the Sbach) is stronger on the MX2.  Dougal’s first flight with the MX2 looked very promising, I think it will be as good as 1066’s Sbach, judge for yourselves in this month’s video.

Captain Slow has now fitted some FPV gear to the Mini Skyhunter that he first flew back in July. That first flight was ‘interesting’ because the model had a drastic tip stall so Captain Slow has taken steps to eliminate it. He has moved the centre of gravity forward by fitting two 3 cell lipos instead of one and that seems to have solved the problem.The FPV gear consists of a Foxeer Predator Mini camera, an Eachine TD600 video transmitter, and Quanum Cyclops goggles. Captain Slow is slowly getting round to slotting in an SD card to record video of his flights but refuses to rush! He had several FPV flights in October and all went well, no problems with either the equipment or him flying it. He finds it better to sit down when wearing the goggles and he has a tendency to lose his balance. That’s understandable, both Dougal and I occasionally find ourselves a bit off balance at certain times although it happens less and less as we get more experienced. We only ever fly one FPV plane at a time which means there is often a spare set of goggles doing nothing so sometimes another club member will watch a flight to get the feel for FPV.In this photo Gentleman Jim was keeping an eye on Captain Slow while he explored the area with the Skyhunter.

1066 has been searching for a hotliner (fast aerobatic powered glider) for a some time now but he hasn’t been able to find anything he really likes, at least not at a price that he really likes. Eventually he bought a rather battered second-hand Multiplex Gilb on eBay and has spent some time tarting it up. I’ve not heard of the Gilb so I’ve done a bit of searching on the internet and discovered that Multiplex introduced the model way back in 1995. The wingspan is 2150mm, length 1070mm and all up weight is in the 2500-3200g range. It was reviewed in QFI (Quiet Flight International) in July 1995 but as I don’t have the magazine I can’t tell you what it says. On one of the forums someone was talking about various brushed motors and using 10-14 cells, ah yes, the old pre-brushless motor days with nicad/nimh batteries! 1066’s model came ready fitted with a Tornado Thumper 3536-06 1270kv outrunner motor and a 70A speed controller. 1066 is using various four cell lipos, mostly in the 3000-3300mAh range and the power is reasonable although he’d like a bit more. I’m not sure what prop size he’s using but he said he’d tested one with 2” more pitch and the current went up to 90A so he can’t fly with that one!He had to do quite a lot of work to the model to get it ready for flight and quickly discovered that more work was needed, it was well out of trim. I wasn’t present for the first flight but apparently the model was a real handful. After some more work it’s now flying pretty well although there’s still a bit to do to get it flying as 1066 would like. It’s pretty quick so not easy to video but I managed to get some footage which is in the video.

Captain Slow has also bought himself a second-hand Multiplex model, this one’s a Pilatus PC-6 Turbo Porter that he found on the BMFA Classifieds webpage. The following photos are all taken from the advert. The Turbo Porter is a moulded foam model that has the usual controls plus flaps and a scale sprung undercarriage with large wheels. It can be converted for operation from water with the addition of a float kit. The 1250mm span model comes fitted with a Permax 3530 1100kv motor with an 11×5.5 prop, a 40A esc, and 6 metal geared digital servos. The suggested lipo is a 3 cell 2100-2700mAh, a pretty standard size that we all have. The cheapest I can find it new online is £170 and some retailers list it at over £200 so I reckon Captain Slow got a bargain at just £75.I haven’t yet seen the plane for myself but Captain Slow says it’s in good condition and he just needs to change the esc connector and fit a receiver and battery. We should get to see it sometime towards the end of next year then.

I always feel poor old Kryten gets a bit of a rough deal in Patch News, he provides us all with some superb flying shots of our models but never gets any photos of his own models in action. My mobile takes excellent photos of stationary models and pilots, and it’s pretty good for video as well, but it’s just not up to the job when it comes to capturing flying shots. This was the best I could get of Kryten’s E-flite Apprentice:But I did manage to capture Captain Slow measuring Kryten’s spot landing attempt one day. It was an excellent spot landing but as an aside, why on earth has Captain Slow got ER embroidered on his socks?Is he still wearing socks he purloined when he was merely Acting Lance Corporal Slow all those years ago?

Dougal had an interesting incident while flying his Skyfun using FPV one day. On the second flight of the day I was Dougal’s spotter and the model seemed to be flying well but suddenly I could see something hanging underneath it.At almost the same moment Dougal said he’d lost power. He glided the Skyfun in for a deadstick landing and on the approach I realised it was the motor that was hanging down. When we reached the model we could see what had happened, the prop had thrown a blade and the ensuing vibration had snapped the metal mount. At some point the second prop blade had also broken and one of them had chopped the top off one of the fins as it flew off! The motor was left dangling by its wires and Dougal was lucky that it hadn’t pulled the plugs out from the esc wires, we would probably never have found it. I’m not sure if the motor mount is a stock item or a special Skyfun part but I expect Dougal will soon have it sorted and flying again.

It was good to see Gorgeous Gary on the last Sunday in October, he’s been absent for a while blaming holidays, work, and life in general. He brought along a couple of models, his foamboard Sukhoi SU-27 and his Ripmax Jive.Gary was slightly nervous having not flown for a while but the Sukhoi soon put a big smile on his face. The Jive was also ok although that strange dirty, noisy, smelly thing on the front seemed a bit reluctant to run at first.I was flying when Gary was trying to start it but I could hear comments of “There’s an answer to that” etc. How cruel, you’d never hear me saying things like that! It was all in good fun and the Jive was soon up and flying.

My Volantex Ranger 1600 is flying well on FPV and I made a few changes to it in October. The Ranger 1600 comes without an undercarriage although the 1200, 1400, and 2400 versions all have one. I wanted to use mine to practice FPV take-offs and landings so I fitted an undercarriage from another model. It worked well enough but the wire was too weak and bent on anything less than a perfect landing so I’ve now replaced it with one made of stiffer wire. It’s proved to be much better and has stood up to many touch & go’s and landings without bending. I have also fitted another FPV set-up whilst retaining the original one so I can choose which to use at any time. The original FPV equipment is all fitted inside the Ranger fuselage with the camera mounted in an existing hole under the nose. But the model also comes with a moulded foam insert that clips on in place of the usual canopy so I fitted the latest set of equipment to that. The second set-up consists of a Caddx Turbo Micro camera that I spotted in the Hobbyking sale for just £8.02 and a Speedy Bee VTX-DVR from Banggood for £11.92. So for just under £20 I got what has turned out to be a good quality camera and a transmitter that sends the video stream back to the goggles and also records the video onto a micro SD card, ridiculously cheap.The set-up works well and having the camera mounted higher up has proved to be much better as the original camera tends to pick up dew and grass cuttings on the lens during take-offs, not ideal. The higher mounted camera avoids all that and although it’s only around 100mm higher than the original it makes a surprising difference when taking-off, I can actually see where I’m going instead of just grass!

Time now for a few of Kryten’s excellent action photos:

Video time now and this one includes quite a bit of FPV footage from both me and Dougal. Please watch it full screen, it so much better with small models flying around.If the video won’t play for you please click HERE

A class of school children were taken on an airport tour and their last stop was in the control tower. They were given a talk by an air traffic controller who explained how everything worked and he then asked if there are any questions.
One lad says “Have you ever had a real emergency?”
“Well there was one time when we ran out of coffee…”

Colin Cowplain