Patch News History

In the June edition of Patch News I said that the June weather hadn’t been up to much and that maybe July would be better. It was, much better! Much of the month was hot and sunny and we had a new UK record temperature towards the end of the July. The great weather meant some good turnouts at the patch and the Farts have been cutting the grass regularly, although it hasn’t grown much this month, and the patch is now in superb condition.  The bullocks moved out early in July and haven’t yet returned but I doubt it will be long. Captain Slow has been missing his favourite, number 73, so 1066 snapped this keepsake and sent it to him via the WhatsApp group:

The first new model I’ll feature this month is this profile Edge 540 in Castrol colours. It belongs to Dougal Entendre and was put together by his son Cameron from a kit that Dougal bought several years ago. I was away on the day that Dougal tested it and the only information I have is that “it flew ok”. All I can go by is the photos but I have to say that it’s one of the ugliest models I’ve ever seen! I Googled it and found several photos of the full-size original and I think that’s pretty ugly as well so it must be the colour scheme.

The same day the Edge 540 flew Woody brought along a much prettier model, his new E-flite F-15. This is what the E-flite website says: The E-flite® F-15 Eagle 64mm EDF jet is a replica of the world-renowned air superiority fighter flown by the U.S. Air Force. It’s equipped with a 4S-compatible brushless motor and a 40-amp ESC that are matched to an 11-blade fan to deliver fantastic speed, thrust and a turbine-like sound. The factory-installed power system and servos help make it quick and easy to assemble the lightweight yet durable EPO airframe with bolt-on wings so you can be flying in less time than it takes to charge a battery. Optional-use fixed landing gear with a steerable nose wheel is included so you can taxi, take off and land on runways, or you can leave the landing gear off for improved performance plus easy hand launches and landings on grass. You can also fly with or without the wing-mounted drop tanks and missiles depending on the look and handling you prefer. And it all adds up to deliver one of the easiest to enjoy and easiest to fly Eagle models ever!

Woody bought the Bind N Fly version that comes with a Spektrum receiver with AS3X gyro and Safe Select technology: This is the first high-performance F-15 model equipped with exclusive Spektrum® AS3X® and SAFE® Select technologies. AS3X works behind the scenes to smooth out the effects of wind and turbulence to deliver a locked-in feel that makes it seem like you’re flying a much larger jet. Optional-use SAFE Select offers pitch and bank angle limits along with automatic self-levelling that can be turned on and off at the flip of a switch making this the easiest to fly Eagle yet! And if you don’t want to enable the SAFE Select features, simply bind the receiver normally and only AS3X will be active.

Dougal did the test flight and with the Safe technology switched off and a 4 cell lipo the F-15 didn’t get away from the launch, the thrust just seemed to push it down more than up elevator could overcome. So Woody changed to a 3 cell lipo to save nose weight and move the centre of gravity rearwards a little and Dougal managed to get it away from the launch and flying nicely. Since then I’ve flown it several times and found that with Safe switched on it goes away from the launch easily but is then a bit too limited in roll to fly with any fun. So I’ve been turning Safe off straight after the launch and flying it normally when it performs really well. It will happily cruise around on half throttle and has plenty of power for the more exciting stuff on full throttle so I can’t really see why you’d want to use the suggested 4 cells. Woody has flown it with Safe switched both on and off and found it’s certainly easier to handle with it on but it will really only fly quite large circuits around the field as the roll is limited a bit too much.I’ve found that the fan alignment isn’t quite right and opening the throttle pushes the nose down which is ok in normal flight but makes landing slightly awkward, you have to be prepared that when you shut the throttle the nose will go up and you need to add some down elevator.  It might be possible to correct it with an elevator/throttle mix but we haven’t tried it yet. It looks great in the air and my only complaint is that it’s too quiet! You can barely hear the fan at all and it’s much quieter than many prop driven electric models. See it for yourself in this month’s video.

Captain Slow lived up to his nickname in early July when he launched Dougal’s Tomahawk pusher motored model, he didn’t move his hand away quickly enough and his knuckle was nicked by the propeller.Fortunately it wasn’t serious, it could have been much worse, but it does serve as a warning to be extra careful when launching pusher models. It also proved the worth of the first aid packs that all members are issued with. You do have yours with you at the patch don’t you? They are of little use left in the car…

While I’m on the subject of Captain Slow I’ll show you what he’s done to one of the fins on his foamboard Mig-29.We’ve been enjoying lots of really close formation antics with the foamboard jets, they’re almost indestructible and are very cheap anyway. With their mid-mounted motors even if the planes nudge each other the props rarely touch anything but on one occasion Captain Slow’s Mig obviously climbed up into the path of my SU-27. I find the abusive adornment totally uncalled for when I was the completely innocent party…possibly…

On 11^th July Dwayne Pipe ran the annual Chuck Glider Competition at Buriton recreation ground before the start of the club meeting. The comp is always popular and we had a reasonable turnout on the warm and almost windless evening. There were six rounds flown with the total time of all six flights producing the score, no discards allowed. The winner of the comp, obviously the most prestigious, demanding, and skilful comp of the year, was Andy Palmer (Colin Cowplain) with Mark Agate (Dougal Entendre) second, and Percy Vears (Ron Vears) a very close third.

We were pleased to see Mike Critchley visit the field after being absent for a few months while he was ‘working’ at sailing around the Caribbean and Norway. As you can imagine we were all very sympathetic to the poor chap!He brought along a new Multiplex EasyGlider for me to trim out and I discovered that it didn’t need a single click of trim on any surface. Mike already had an EasyGlider when he joined the club but I think he damaged it and decided to treat himself to a new one. As well as flying with us Mike also flies with MVSA and the EasyGlider is an ideal model for slope soaring as well as flat field flying.

Back to Captain Slow now, he’s actually finished assembling his Sonic Modell Mini Skyhunter, that must be a record.He bought the model from Banggood where it is available from their UK warehouse so there’s no waiting for shipment from China, no import duty to pay, and less risk of it being damaged in transit. I pictured it last month in its ‘naked’ state but now it’s complete and flying. The Skyhunter is 1238mm span and is moulded from EPO foam with carbon fibre tail booms. Captain Slow has fitted a Turnigy Aerodrive SK2826 1130kV motor and runs it on 3 cells although he actually fits two 3 cell 2200mAh packs to get the correct centre of gravity. There is loads of room for two packs and he could connect them in parallel to double the flight time but it flies for ages on just one anyway. The first flight was fine until I asked Captain Slow to do a nice low and slow pass for me to video and he discovered that it tip-stalls quite easily. It took everybody by surprise, not least of all Kryten who had a close-up view of the Skyhunter while Captain Slow regained control! But no harm was done and the centre of gravity has since been moved forward which has largely tamed the tip-stall. The model is designed as an FPV platform so no doubt Captain Slow will be fitting his gear into it very soon.

Gentleman Jim has bought a Parkzone Wildcat. Yes I know he’s already got a Parkzone Wildcat but now he has a new one. Jim bought the first one at one of the Blackbushe model shows a few years ago for a much reduced price.If I remember correctly it was just the foam parts, no motor, esc, or servos were with it so he sourced those himself. It flew very well right from the start and has served him well despite having a few minor hiccups along the way. When Jim asked me to launch it in July I thought he’d done some general tidying up and repainted it but apparently not, he’d seen that Sussex Model Centre had some new ones so he splashed the cash and treated himself.I believe this one was Plug and Play, so it came complete with everything except the receiver and battery. The motor is described as a 480 size brushless outrunner of 960kV and it has plenty of power for the 975mm span model. So how does it fly? Er…just the same as Jim’s first one really, very nicely indeed. See it in action in this month’s video.

Dougal Entendre has put together another model to further his FPV flying experience, a Skyartec Skyfun. It’s Dougal’s second Skyfun and the cockpit is from his original one which has been kicking around in his loft for a few years. You can tell it’s old, that yellow tinted canopy isn’t tinted, it’s just old! Following the cutting of Captain Slow’s hand Dougal was concerned about launching the pusher motored Skyfun safely so he decided to make a take-off dolly. He spotted a child’s toy trolley at the local tip, dug deep, and parted with a whole £1 to secure it.After many long hours of engineering design he finished up with this, the All-Terrain Tranny Agate Trolley Dolly: Does it work? No! You can see the attempts in the video, so far none have been successful but it’s provided loads of fun for us. However, the Skyfun hand launches perfectly well and nobody has caught the propeller although Captain Slow hasn’t launched it yet… One of the trolley dolly attempts knocked the FPV camera off it’s mounting so Dougal taped it out of harm’s way inside the discoloured canopy but found the view wasn’t quite clear enough to fly FPV!The Skyfun flies well, it’s fast, agile, and much nicer for FPV than the Tomahawk. But Dougal has to be careful when chasing other models, the speed difference can be great as he found when he almost bashed Basher Bob’s Calmato.Don’t worry Dougal, for a small fee Patch News will blame Basher Bob (or anyone else you’d like) every time.

Chuck Berry has built a Sukhoi SU-27 and joined the foamboard jet jockeys. Well almost, he had a problem with the linkages prior to flight so it hasn’t actually flown yet but Chuck has since sorted the problem so it will fly very soon. The mid-motored jets have highlighted the fact that many people are unsure which way round the prop should be mounted. The golden rule is that the lettering on the always faces the nose of the plane. It doesn’t matter if the prop is a tractor or pusher, or if the motor is at the front, middle, or back of the model, the lettering ALWAYS faces the nose. The direction of rotation obviously depends on the type of prop but the golden rule never changes.

Chuck has busily accumulating a set of FPV gear and has bought one of these, a ZOHD Dart from Banggood.It looks like it could be a bit of a handful to me but it gets good reviews so I hope I’m wrong.

I’ve also been flying a new model in July, a Volantex Ranger 1600 that came from HobbyKing. I bought one for the big raffle a few months ago and was impressed by what I saw in the box. It has a plastic fuselage and foam wings and tail, reinforced with carbon spars. The 1600mm wings simply clip in place and are easy to remove for transport. The model comes ready fitted with a 2212 1400kV motor, a 30A esc and four 9g servos so all you need is a receiver and battery. The suggested lipo is a 3 cell 2200mAh but I’m using some old 3 cell 4000mAh packs and, reading the reviews, some people are using even bigger packs. It’s designed to take FPV gear but is an excellent flier anyway if you don’t want to fly FPV and will do all the usual aerobatics. I fitted mine with an undercarriage as I want to try some FPV landings with wheels (I’ve only belly landed FPV up to now). Adding the UC was an easy mod, I simply cut a hole in the underside, fitted a ply plate with hot melt glue, and screwed a wire undercarriage to the plate. It works well and the Ranger is good for touch and go’s as well as loops, rolls, inverted flight and so on as you can see in the video. I haven’t had a chance to fit the FPV gear yet but will get it done in the next few days.The Ranger is available in various sizes, HK only list the 1600 and 2000 versions but Banggood also have them with 1200, 1380, and 1980 wingspans, and those the last three come fitted with undercarriages included.

Woody got bored with his old Wot Trainer trainer when he damaged it a while ago and passed it over to Captain Slow who has now repaired it and re-motored it with an AXI 2820/10 that he’s has since about 2003.The model needs some nose weight so Captain Slow uses two 4 cell 2200mAh packs in parallel giving a capacity of 4400mAh. With an 11×7 propeller the motor pulls 40A and produces 620W. The Wot Trainer has a 1660mm span and a 270mm chord so there’s plenty of wing area to carry it’s 3kg weight and it will cruise around at half throttle.

Dougal snapped this photo of 1066 at a flying session that I missed. Later I asked 1066 what had happened and he said the battery suddenly died when he was prop-hanging at very low level. Well he would say that wouldn’t he!

I don’t have much in the way of flying shots this month but here’s an FPV one from Dougal which he describes as a close encounter of the inverted kind, one from Captain Slow of Dougal’s new Edge, and finally a Paritech Viper that has absolutely nothing to do with the club but I found it on another website and I simply love it!

Video time now and this month it includes contributions by Dougal Entendre, Captain Slow, and 1066. Please watch it full screen, it so much better with small models flying around:If the video won’t play please click HERE

When I returned from holiday, my suitcase didn’t arrive in the baggage area so I went to the lost luggage office. I explained to the woman there that my case hadn’t turned up on the carousel. She smiled sweetly and told me not to worry because they were trained professionals and that I was in good hands. 

“Now,” she asked, “has your plane arrived yet?”

Colin Cowplain

Well June has come and gone but if anyone was expecting summer they probably missed it. We did have some hot days at the end of the month but it was always quite windy. Not really what we would hope for in ‘flaming June’, maybe July will be better. The bullocks returned halfway through the month but they hardly ever bothered us.They have learnt not to touch the fence and if we put one round the pits area they avoid that even though most of the time it’s not actually turned on. Captain Slow’s favourite (number 73 that featured in the caption comp) has become even more friendly and actually wanders over to see him and be stroked now. Two words John: Beef burger. The patch is in great condition and has been mown regularly by the FARTS. Dougal Entendre seems to be taking things a little too seriously and was genuinely seen trimming around the box with a pair of scissors!

I’ll start the June report with an incident that actually happened on 31^st May. This photo shows rather unusual damage to Dougal’s FPV Tomahawk flying wing. Note the chewed up aileron and fin and lack of propeller.Dougal had been following John Warren’s Sunday Flyer, a nice steady biplane that’s easy to follow but it’s fairly slow and Dougal inadvertently overtook it. The trouble with FPV is that once you overtake something you have no idea where it is, you can only see forwards, so when he throttled back to allow the Sunday Flyer to get in front again he didn’t realise he was in effect reversing into it! The impact did nothing to John’s model but its propeller inflicted the damage you can see on the Tomahawk. The FPV video captured the action and this photo taken from the video shows the moment the prop came off! I’ve rotated the photo 180 degrees, the model was actually inverted. The Tomahawk spun in to the deck, fortunately without further damage, but John’s Sunday Flyer carried serenely on as if nothing had happened. You can see it all happening in this month’s video.

Staying with FPV for a while Captain Slow re-positioned the FPV gear in his TwinStar after the initial couple of flights in May to make it a more user friendly layout, it was all a bit fiddly to access before but it’s much better now. The TwinStar has had dozens of non-FPV flights with no problems and seemed an obvious choice for a first FPV plane. The model is unusual in that it has old fashioned brushed motors rather than the now normal brushless outrunners.  That means it also has to have speed controllers suitable for brushed motors, again rather old fashioned items. When Captain Slow started flying it with FPV gear he suddenly found he was losing control and it seemed likely that it was just him not being used to flying with goggles although he thought something was wrong.Having come down near Harper’s Oak on one flight, fortunately with no damage, he asked me to take it up. All was ok at first but when I got a bit more adventurous I suddenly lost control. I throttled back and regained control but when I opened the throttle again I lost control again and the TwinStar crashed. It was damaged but repairable but we couldn’t work out what was wrong until Captain Slow did some tests at home and discovered that the BEC in the speed controller could only handle about 1A so as soon as more load was put on the servos the radio shutdown until the load was reduced. It’s odd that the problem had never showed up before fitting the FPV gear, we can only think that the extra load plus probably more use of the servos and higher throttle settings for FPV tipped the balance. Pre-FPV Captain Slow only ever really stooged around very gently, as is his wont, so presumably he never hit the limit of the BEC. Anyway he’s now putting together another model, a Sonic Modell Mini Skyhunter which is designed for FPV.This was how it was coming along mid-June, should be ready sometime in July…2025.

Iven has been splashing out lately…quite literally, he’s bought himself an Ares Gamma along with a set of matching floats and also a set of floats for his E-Flite Apprentice. Iven keeps a boat on the Thames that he visits most weekends during the summer and he thought floats would be an ideal way of flying while he’s there. Bearing in mind that he’s only just learnt to fly and passed his ‘A’ cert the floats have so far proved a step too far for his abilities but he’s getting there. In the meantime he’s been flying ashore, alongside the Thames, mostly successfully. He’s found that the Gamma is really only suitable for light winds and it becomes difficult to control in much of a breeze.He’s also bought a couple of the tiny E-Flite AS3X (3 axis stabilisation) models, the latest one being a UMX Timber.It’s 700mm wingspan, has the usual 4 channel control plus flaps yet only weighs 121g (4.3oz). It has a ‘brick’ style 6 channel rx/gyro/esc/2 servos in the fuselage, lightweight aileron servos, and a centrally mounted flap servo. The radio and 3000kv motor are powered by a 2 cell 280 mAh lipo battery which also powers the LED NAV lights, landing lights, wing-tip strobes and beacons so it should be ok for night flying. This tiny model has the lot!It also has optional plug-in leading edge slats just in case the flaps don’t slow it down enough for you.

Of course landing in a tree isn’t something that only happens to beginners…is it Dougal?!Dougal’s incident happened one very showery Sunday morning when some of us dashed from the barn during a brief dry spell and flew just east of the patch. I’d just pointed out to the others that we had positioned ourselves directly downwind of a tree when Dougal did his signature low inverted pass straight into the tree! Once we’d all stopped laughing 1066 went into tree climbing mode and managed to safely retrieve the undamaged Sticky. We’ve had Harper’s Oak for many years, now it seems we also have Dougal’s Deciduous!

I was away for a few days in early June but Captain Slow took some photos and video of some new models brought along by Newbie Nick and Matt Takhar. They both have Precision Aerobatics Addictions and when I asked Nick about them he said his is the larger Addition X finished in green covering and Matt has a little pink one! The Addiction X is 1270mm span and is powered by Thrust 40 motor connected to a 45A esc and a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo. Matt’s little pink one is 1000mm span and uses a Thrust 20 motor, a 30A esc and a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo. Looking at Captain Slow’s video they both performed very well, I’ve included some snippets in this month’s video.

Matt’s other new model is an Extreme Flight Laser EXP V2. It’s 60” span and according to the website it weighs around 5.5 – 6.0lbs. Matt hasn’t sent me any details yet but I know he’s swanned off to New York for a few days muttering some pathetic excuse about work so I suppose he can be forgiven. The stock set-up uses a Torque 4016/500 MKII Outrunner, Airboss 80 esc, a Xoar 16 x 7 prop, and a 6S 3300- 4000mAh lipo. I forward to seeing  the new models myself and will hopefully get some more info and video soon.

Captain Slow had an exciting moment while flying his Extreme one morning, there was a sudden bang and the motor ripped out! He managed to land without further damage and retrieved all the parts that came off.The model comes with the motor pre-installed, clamped in place between two pieces of foam but Captain Slow found a distinct lack of glue around the area, a problem that he has now rectified with copious amounts of sticky stuff!

Norwegian Nick can always be relied on to build interesting models and his latest is an English Electric Lightning. This is what Nick says about it: I had some scraps of Depron left over from earlier projects so I looked through some old Q&EF mags and found this Lightning and thought I would have a go as you do. It’s built from a free plan in the July 2009 mag designed by James Rutter. It’s a profile twin edf Lightning with a wingspan 16in, length 25in and weighs 8 1/2 oz. The two fans are GWS 40mm run by a pair of Feigao motors. The escs are 10amp run off a single 850mAh 3s lipo.
After having an intermittent power problem I found that the cable to one of the speed controllers was hanging by a thread. Repaired now and works fine. Also I have swapped everything over so the battery is on the right hand side which I hope will stop the left turn on launch. As Nick mentions there was a dodgy esc connection and when hand launched the model went to the left and plonked down in the grass. Not sure how much of it was caused by the connection and how much was due to most of the weight being on the left hand side of the fuselage. The connection problem prevented a second try that day but I’m sure it will be fine next time out, should look great in the air.

The foamboard fun continues and both Woody and Bob the Builder have put together new Sukhoi SU-27’s. We’ve been enjoying lots of close formation flying with up to four in the air at once and of course the inevitable touches sometimes occur. I’ve also managed to land mine on top of Captain Slow’s a couple of times!But the foamboard is remarkably strong and with the mid-mounted motors the props rarely hit anything so virtually no damage is done. Although Captain Slow did manage to make a few cuts in my Sukhoi the other day…the swine!

Early in June decided I needed an FPV model that was a bit more taxing to fly than my Sukhoi. The Sukhoi was a great choice for learning to fly FPV but I wanted something that was a bit faster and not quite so easy to handle and land. Looking around my vastly overcrowded model room I spotted my Delta, built from Correx several years ago as one of the annual club builds. It was always a good flier and quite fast but equally, being a delta, lands reasonably slowly. As it was built from around £2.50’s worth of Correx and has had hundreds of flights it’s also regarded as disposable, perfect for FPV in fact. So I swapped the FPV gear into it, the main difficulty being that having the motor at the front meant I had to fit the camera out on the wing to avoid looking through the propeller. That hasn’t proved to be a problem and I quite like being able to see the prop spinning (or not) through the goggles. Ever since Dougal and I started flying FPV we have been hoping for a day with low cloud to explore but it hasn’t happened…until one morning late in June. The Delta climbs rapidly and the cloud was low so I quickly reached it and found it to be quite dense, I could skirt along the underside but felt the model would disappear if I entered it properly. Spotter Captain Slow said he could still see the model easily enough so there weren’t any concerns. I did the same on the second flight with no problems but it was really the wrong sort of cloud, a bit like driving in fog.By the time of the third flight the cloud had lifted and there were areas of blue sky so I didn’t think I’d be able to reach the clouds but a couple of minutes into the flight I decided to give it a go. I soon reached some gloriously fluffing bits of cloud and was able to fly above some small patches and see blue sky above me and bits of the ground below me, great stuff. I got tempted by a lovely looking cloud formation a little further on and headed for it. Captain Slow was dripping on about me being a long way off but what the heck, I could see perfectly!A few seconds later he said he’d lost sight of me so I throttled back and came down out of the cloud. I still had a perfect view on the goggles but there was one tiny problem, I hadn’t got a clue where I was! I circled aimlessly, looking for something I recognised, aware that the timer was now telling me I had two minutes of battery left. I spotted some unrecognisable buildings and knew they weren’t anywhere near where I should be so I headed away from them. Now Captain Slow was telling me to climb in the hope that he might be able to see me but to add to my problems I could see the motor was stopping now and again, presumably the radio going into failsafe. The picture on the goggles was still good but I was getting yellow and red signal indicators instead of green so I knew I was at the limit of the FPV range. When I saw two red indicators I turned to try to get a better signal while desperately searching for a landmark. I tried to take notice of what I could see, the rounded end of a valley, a couple of circles in cut crop, a telegraph pole, a field boundary, and suddenly nothing! The inevitable happened, I saw the motor stop and the goggles lost signal as the plane was very low and heading steeply towards the deck. It’s all in the video…There were only three of us flying that morning, me, Captain Slow, and Geoff Berry. After a quick recap of where the model was last seen we headed up to the masts where the gliders fly, it seemed the most likely area to search. We spread out in different directions, I was looking for the landmarks I’d seen from the air and headed off north along the South Downs Way. Things started to get familiar, there was the rounded end of a valley, cut crop, a line of telegraph poles, a field boundary…and an undamaged Delta sat of top of the crop, phew!Looking at Google Maps later it shows the model land 1.16km from the patch, nothing wrong with the range then.The map is looking due north, the masts are over towards the right. Lesson learnt, listen to the spotter and don’t get carried away by a perfect picture on the goggles. Captain Slow says I should be renamed Colin CloudPlane.

Photo and video contributions this month come from Captain Slow, Dougal Entendre,  Gentleman Jim, and Gorgeous Gary. As well as models flying this month I’ve included some photos from the D-Day 75 Anniversary:

Video time now, 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
 

Terrified passenger to stewardess “How often do planes crash?”
Stewardess “Just the once!”

Colin Cowplain

First, as Capt. Edmund Blackadder once said, “We’re in the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun”. Dougal Entendre sent me that quote to celebrate the emergence this month of the latest club model, the Sticky. More on that later, the month of May saw lots of other exciting things as well.

The month began with the resurgence of the Colin Cowplain Flyer Fitness Club. After letting the members relax for a month or so I did some more parachute drops from the Bush Mule. I never expect anyone to do the retrieving and everybody moans about it but they still go running off after the wayward chutes! One rather blustery day the wind was obviously going in totally different directions at different heights and on one drop all the chutes ended up in the valley and the next time they went way down over the lower field. That time Dougal went off in hot pursuit not realising just how far they would go. He returned, ages later, puffing, panting and moaning, and that evening sent me a Google Maps screenshot with the parachute tracking marked showing a distance of 650m from the patch.It didn’t sound too bad to me but I suppose there and back was 1.3km and it was uphill most of the way back. Anyway he failed, he only found five chutes, the sixth was last seen heading in the general directions of Chichester at a great height, much higher than when I dropped it! The things I do just to keep the members fit and healthy…

On 12th May the field was being used as a car park for the Sustainability Centre Green Fair so some of us visited the Mini Airshow that was being held at the Drone Zone base on Popham Airfield. It was called MA5 (Mini Airshow 5), and MA6 is already on the calendar for 9th May 2020. It’s billed as a drone racing event with some fixed wing aircraft as an aside but when we went the aircraft side seemed to be bigger than the drone racing.The drone racing was interesting for a while but didn’t really do much for me although the people were very friendly and keen to tell us all about it. The aircraft side of things was really good with a fair cross-section of models from Wot-4s through to enormous turbines. Some of the display flying was excellent, I always find the turbines impressive and there were also several large WW1 aircraft that were nicely built and flown well. Several large 3D machines powered by petrol engines were very ably flown, some with smoke systems. About the only thing lacking were the trade stands, there was just one and that was all drone based bits and pieces although Dougal did manage to pick up a couple of speed controllers and some small props at good prices.

It was good to see Chas Butler return to the fold and fly regularly throughout the month. Chas must be one of the longest serving club members but had been absent from the flying field for a few years until this month. Chas is an excellent flyer with a B certificate and he gave sterling service as the club Secretary for twenty one years before deciding he’d done his bit and taking a step back. He’s returned flying a Radian electric glider and an electric Wot-4 and using a JR PCM9 transmitter with a 2.4GHz module. Later in the month he showed up sporting an extremely snazzy green transmitter which I believe is a JR XG11, very upmarket! Good to see you back Chas, now just stop working and fly with the Midweekers!

Geoff Berry also flew with us again in May, this time with a Max Thrust Riot, a model that’s similar in many ways to a Wot-4. Geoff seemed to be enjoying it and was flying very well indeed, partly due no doubt to his lovely Multiplex Cockpit SX9 radio (same as mine!). I failed to get any photos of the Riot on the ground but I did take some video and Kryten took some lovely flying shots.

In the January Patch News I mentioned that for Christmas my daughter had bought me a couple of indoor skydiving ‘flights’ at iFly in Basingstoke. On their website it says “Turn Dad into a flying legend’, does she not know I already am one?! Anyway, in May I went and did my bit and thoroughly enjoyed it. Basically the set-up is a transparent vertical 14ft diameter wind tunnel with a mesh ‘floor’ to stop you falling to the bottom if the fans stop. The average height that you ‘fly’ at is about 6ft above the mesh but you can go up to a max 39ft. An instructor is in the tunnel the whole flight to keep the student in the right place and stable. The air speed is controlled by an operator who is watching what’s happening the whole time and they adjust the speed from between 90mph and 180mph. The experience begins with a pre-flight briefing where you’re taught what to expect, what to do, and basic hand signals. Then it’s time to get kitted up, all the necessary gear is included in the price of the flights. On the first flight I got generally accustomed to the experience of floating around in a 120mph gale and was shown the correct position to hover mostly unaided. Before the second flight I was offered the chance of flying up to the top of the tunnel (securely held by the instructor) for an extra £7, how could I refuse?The controller raises the air speed when signalled by the instructor and up you go, weird! It was all over far too quickly but I really enjoyed the whole experience. I was surprised how busy the place was considering it was a Monday morning in school term time, it’s a very popular experience. Have a look at the website HERE

Catapult King never shies away from tricky projects and in May he turned up with an SR-71 Blackbird.This is what Richard says about it:

Following on from the influx of mid prop jets recently I thought I would do a Depron ‘quicky’ build of some sort and came up with the SR-71 with a pusher prop (needless to say it turned out not to be so quick). A colleague found a 3D-view print which I exploded until I got a fuselage that would be fat enough to hold a 3s-2200 lipo. The power train was going to be from my old HK AXN.

Having printed this off, I cut out a silhouette of the plane which even then was bigger than planned. There are two CF tubes running the length of the fuselage and a triangle of CF spars to support the wings. In addition this was skinned with 2mm balsa on the top. I thought there would be a weak point where the fuse meets the wing so I put a 4mm ply section in here as that’s also where the battery would go. I placed the electrics around until I found suitable places for each piece then started building with Depron. The fuselage first and getting the shape of the cockpit area was horrid, then equally difficult was getting the engine nacelles and cones roughly correct, this is what made the ‘quicky’ not so quick. The plane is covered with black and red packing tape with mylar tape on the underside to protect the Depron on landing. 

I wasn’t sure how the air from the elevators would react as it immediately goes through the prop so initially all four control surfaces were set up as elevons and as we saw on the maiden flight there was far too much throw and it did have to come down like an arrow didn’t it? I wasn’t going for the Concord droopy nose look. Subsequently the front has been rebuilt with ply all the way back to the wing area. The inner control surfaces are now elevators but the outer surfaces still have 50% elevator mixed in to support them and the throws have been drastically reduced and I now have a plane that is almost there. The power train is a 3cell 2200 lipo, a 30amp ESC, the motor is a 2200Kv something (from the AXN) and a 6×4 prop. It’s certainly fast enough I just need to get that trim right as I’m not sure it was designed to do a pirouette as seen in the video. Oh, and it is awfully difficult to spot the orientation so when things go slightly wrong they tend to go very wrong very quickly! 

Thanks for that Richard, it was a brave undertaking and you’ve done really well to get it flying so well.

While holidaying in the Lake District Basher Bob went to a Splash-In and took a few photos for us all to enjoy. Thanks Bob, it looks like a good event, shame there isn’t something similar locally as I’m sure several of us would like to give flying from water a try. I doubt we’d get away with it on the Heath for more than a few minutes.

During the recent HobbyKing price slashing of the foamboard jets Woody picked up an F-4 Phantom for £1.68! The Phantom is different to the other jets as it has a rear mounted motor and a box fuselage instead of a profile one. Personally I don’t think it looks much like a Phantom, at the very least the tail should have anhedral. I think Woody only bought it because it come in Blue Angels colours and of course Woody being Woody he’s added lights. As the motor is at the back the model required a fair bit of nose weight, more being added after the first attempt at flight. I was the nominated test pilot and had just about got it somewhere near in trim when it suddenly just stopped flying and crashed, fortunately with very little damage. With some additional nose weight the second flight went much better although the wings appeared to be twisting in flight, on a low fly-by we could see and hear a slight fluttering, not good. After a couple of minutes I was downwind heading towards us when the model just suddenly dived into the deck, this time with major damage. I think I probably went to full throttle as I turned into wind and the wings suddenly twisted making the model uncontrollable. You can enjoy the crash for yourselves in the video!

Meanwhile the fun continues with the other jets, Woody had the motor come loose on his Sukhoi, very loose!And Basher Bob did an ‘alternative landing’ with his Sukhoi, don’t worry Bob, it’ll buff out ok!

As I mentioned last month Captain Slow has now bought some FPV equipment. He’s fitted the gear into his Multiplex Twinstar, an ideal plane for getting used to flying FPV. His initial set-up was a bit of a compromise with the FPV transmitter being stuffed back between the servos due to the short antenna. He’s since bought an antenna extension and has managed to fit the gear in a much better way. At the time of writing Captain Slow has only had a couple of FPV flights with the Twinstar and he’s discovered it’s not especially easy to fly FPV but it’s very easy to get a long way away rather quickly! With a little guidance from the spotter all was well and he landed safely back on the patch. More to follow…

Time to get all Sticky now. Sadly the Sticky didn’t prove as popular as previous club models and only five appeared for the judging at the May club meeting.Dougal produced one that used the old wing from his now defunct Spad which meant it lacked dihedral but gained ailerons. So it’s Stickyish really and that earned him the Most Original Design prize.Unsurprisingly Woody’s creation was finished in Blue Angels colours. He won the prize for Least Likely to Fly as both wings had a huge amount of washout. Later Basher Bob took the wings home to straighten them as best he could.The prize for the Best Looking Model went to Percy Vears for his Baron Von Stickthofen finished model, nice one.The other builders were John Warren, who finished his in the now familiar red and white Warren Inc. colour scheme, and Basher Bob who had built a scaled up version, Extremely Sticky maybe?

John couldn’t make the flying on the Sunday, he gave some pathetic excuse about sunning himself on the other side of the world! Dougal’s flew very well right from the start, the aileron wing definitely proved to be an advantage. Having had the wings straightened somewhat by Bob Woody’s Sticky flew reasonably well, it looks pretty good on the video but Dougal says it was a tricky Sticky. I’ve since had a go with it myself and I’m not sure what has changed but it didn’t fly well at all, maybe the wings have warped again. After a few adjustments I got it flying fairly well but then the motor came off mid-flight. Fortunately it landed on the patch with almost no damage. Percy Vears’ Sticky flew well on the second flight after the centre of gravity had been moved forward, and Basher’s larger version flew very well straight from the start and needed no trim adjustments at all, well done Bob. This month’s video will show you how they flew on the day, Dougal’s was definitely the best flier. No doubt John’s will be flown next month so I’ll let you know how it goes.

Gentleman Jim brought along a Wot-4 Foam-E Mk 2 + in May. I’ve lost track of all the different versions of Wot-4s that have been produced but this is what the advertising blurb says about this one:

The ever popular Chris Foss Wot4 Foam-E Mk2 has been updated into the MK2+. The previous Wot4 Foam-E gained a reputation as one of the best sports models available and the Mk2+ builds on that with numerous new features. The model comes supplied with a powerful pre-installed brushless outrunner motor, matching 40A brushless electronic speed controller and 4 x 9g micro servos. All you need to add is your preferred receiver/transmitter combo and a 3S 2200mAh Li-Po of your choice.

Like the previous version, the Mk2+ only requires minor assembly to get airborne. No glue is required, only a cross headed screwdriver, a 10mm spanner and some double sided tape to mount your receiver.

Buried inside the structure there are numerous changes to the internal design. The tailplane has been re-designed for improved styling with solid tips and inset elevators for improved style yet still providing good control authority.

The wing has an extra carbon wing spar and the fuselage has extra carbon bracing making the airframe even tougher. The tail wheel has also been re-designed to be bolted on, allowing easy removal if accidentally broken. The control surfaces use ‘live’ moulded foam hinges with plastic hinge re-enforcement for extra security and peace of mind. Just like the previous version the control surfaces have carbon fibre re-enforcement for optimal control authority.

Well it all sounds good but unfortunately Jim’s came with a twisted fuselage which meant the tailplane was badly out of line with the wings. Jim added some packing under one side of the tail to bring everything back in line and it’s fine now but Jim was less than impressed with the quality of the model in general. Anyway, it’s all ended up looking good, rather like every other Wot-4 really! Jim asked me to do the test flight and after a few clicks of trim it flew beautifully, one of the nicest models to fly that I can think of actually. I’d love to know how many Wot-4s have been produced over the years, I would imagine it’s now in the hundreds of thousands, so the basic design has to be good. I think Jim will enjoy this one for a long time.

Kryten took lots of excellent flying photos this month including the above Sticky ones. Here are some of his others:

Video time now which this month includes contributions from Dougal, Basher Bob, and Captain Slow:Please watch the video full screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around.

My girlfriend just asked me, “When we go to Egypt, can I go on a camel?” 
I said, “Of course you can” and booked it for her. She’s going tomorrow…
I’m leaving in three weeks and going by plane!

Colin Cowplain

What a great month April was, not many April showers, an amazing Easter weekend, and loads of flying. The bullocks that joined us in March soon got used to us again and ignored us most of the time but did occasionally wander over and became annoyingly inquisitive. They seemed to have quickly learnt not to touch the fence, even if it was laid down, but they sometimes came right up to the pits area and had to be herded away before they chewed a model or two. I think they just want to be friends and have very little idea of the needs of model fliers! Matt snapped this photo of Captain Slow’s idea of herding them away… It makes me think of John Le Mesurier in Dad’s Army “I say, would you mind awfully popping down to the gate, there’s a good chap”.Can you think of a decent caption for the photo? Answers in the Comments section please, there will be a small prize for the one I like the most. Happily they moved out again at the end of the month so the field will hopefully be bullock free for a few weeks. The patch is in excellent condition and has been mown regularly by the Farts (Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society). One Friday afternoon Matt made an appearance and was cajoled into pushing the mower for a few minutes. Such a rare and momentous occasion seemed an unmissable photo opportunity!New member Iven has flown with the Midweekers on many occasions and has been practising hard for his ‘A’ cert.Before taking his certificate he was already on the lookout for a follow-on model that will test his skills a little more than his E-Flite Apprentice. He was very taken with Basher Bob’s Durafly Slow Poke and before you could say ‘PayPal’ one was on its way to him. Iven soon had it assembled and at the patch ready for flight.I test flew Basher’s Slow Poke for him and remember saying “If you can’t land this you can’t land anything”, it was a delight to fly, but Basher has never seemed totally at ease with it, maybe he’s changed some settings since that first flight.  He did raise a few eyebrows one day when he announced that he’d had a slow poke in the back of his car…When Iven asked me to maiden his new Slow Poke I was interested to see if it flew as well as I remembered Basher’s had. It did, the model needed no trimming and flew beautifully. Iven had a go with it and coped with no problems at all, I think he’ll enjoy it a lot. The 1200mm wingspan Slow Poke is made of EPO foam and comes as a ‘plug and play’ model, just add your own receiver and battery and off you go. I see that Iven is using one of the new Spektrum receivers that doesn’t have any external aerials. It worked perfectly and not having any aerials to route or worry about damaging must be a plus point. Finally, something I like about Spektrum!The motor is a 3648 700Kv outrunner that swings a 12×8 prop. It has a 40A Aerostar esc and uses a 3 cell 2200mAh lipo. Basher has been flying his on a 4 cell lipo but I really don’t think it needs 4 cells. Having proved the Slow Poke Iven returned to his Apprentice and passed his BMFA ‘A’ cert a couple of weeks later, well done Iven.You may have noticed that Bob has reverted back to Basher having been Bob the Builder for some while now. Bob first became Basher following his involvement in a series of mid-air collisions, none of which were necessarily his fault, but he always seemed to be there. But then things changed, the mid-airs stopped and we rechristened him Bob the Builder…until now. Yes, he’s been at it again! One fine April day I was flying my FPV Sukhoi and both Woody and Basher decided to fly their foamboard jets to give me something to follow. Woody was flying his Sukhoi nice and steadily when Basher’s Mig made a sudden turn and cut right across him, resulting in the a series of prop hacks to the leading edge of his left wing. Both models landed safely and Basher’s was completely unmarked, typical!Both the models were out of sight of my FPV camera at the time so I didn’t see any of the action but Iven happened to be videoing from the ground and caught the action. I’ve included the footage at the end of this month’s video so you can all enjoy it! Strangely, although Woody was the victim of the collision for some reason the incident seemed to upset 1066 much more than Woody and he really laid into poor old Basher.Violence towards OAPs is not something to be encouraged, especially as I’m one of them!

One Sunday morning saw lots of full-size activity around the field. As well as the often seen paragliders up by the masts a few high-tech hang gliders were flying and some overflew the patch at great height. Then, just as we were packing up to leave, four full-size gliders started circling in a thermal right above us. It was a lovely site and as we strained our necks to watch Basher laid on the ground for an easier view… the real reason for the photo above.The gliders were very high and I didn’t manage to get all four in a photo but you can just about see two and a half here. This month’s video includes a snippet of three of the gliders circling upwards in the thermal.

Basher also had a go at taking out my Sukhoi with his own Sukhoi on one of my FPV flights, it’s in the video…Dougal and I continued with our FPV learning and we’ve progressed with our flying. Dougal did the first low level pass through the Harper’s Oak group of trees one Friday afternoon when I wasn’t present so I was forced to copy it the following Sunday morning! We also both made some more FPV purchases. Dougal had been using some cheap Crazepony box goggles that performed reasonably well but they weren’t as clear as the not quite so cheap Cyclops box goggles that I have, so when he spotted some second-hand Aomway goggles for sale Dougal snapped them up.The Aomways are not box goggles so are smaller and lighter to wear and have a much better resolution but even second-hand cost four times as much as the Crazepony ones. And they still look almost as stupid!Not sure who that bald bloke is! My Cyclops goggles are big and cumbersome but have a good picture quality and the only complaint I have with them is the low quality recordings of the built-in DVR (video recorder). Dougal spotted an FPV transmitter that has a built-in DVR on the Banggood website for around £15 so I ordered one to try. As the recorder is on the tx rather than the rx in the goggles there is no signal break-up that might occur on the downlink and the video quality is much better than the one built into the goggles.The recorders save the videos to micro SD cards, either in the goggles or on the tx depending on which type you are using. Dougal then realised that his video quality wasn’t as good as mine and that could only be down to his cheap camera. I’m using a Foxeer Predator Mini V2 camera that cost about £32 from HobbyKing but Dougal was using a very cheap camera he bought some while ago. So he’s now bought a Foxeer Monster Mini Pro V3 from HobbyKing that cost around £18 and has similar specs to mine but with slightly fewer features. He’s mounted it on his Tomahawk flying wing on a small servo so he can look from side to side using the rudder control.Its early days but the video quality is definitely much better than with his previous camera and the swivel mount is also looking worthwhile. Captain Slow is also now getting into FPV and has ordered the same goggles and tx as me and the V3 version of the Foxeer Predator Mini camera. He’s not certain which plane he’ll fit the gear to yet but his Multiplex Twinstar is looking like an obvious choice.

Gentleman Jim hasn’t managed to get to the field much recently but he did bring along a very pretty little Freewing Space Walker to fly a couple of times in April. Jim bought it on a whim while browsing in Modellbau UK at Medstead.Its 1120mm span and weighs just 850g so probably not a model for a windy day but it does fly very nicely. The EPO model comes complete with four 9g servos, a 3130 1200kV motor, a 30A esc, and a 10×6 propeller. It requires a 3 cell lipo in the 1600- 2200mAh range and a receiver of your choice but is otherwise complete. It was a bit blustery on the day of its first flight so the Space Walker got chucked around a bit but it flew well anyway. The weather was much calmer for its second outing and it was much more pleasant to fly, I think Jim will enjoy this one.

Ok, now for some amazing news, you’d better be sitting down for this one: Captain Slow has finished his Zagi!It only took him five months to complete the ‘buy today, fly tomorrow’ model, incredible! After much deliberation about the choice of motor and how to hold the Zagi to launch it Captain Slow settled on a Pelikan 2200kV inrunner motor and fitted a small balsa block as a launching hold under the nose. As the original was designed for a small brushed ‘can’ motor and relatively heavy nicad battery Captain Slow found that the brushless inrunner motor at the back and much lighter lipo battery at the front meant a lot of lead was required to achieve the correct centre of gravity. You can see some of the weights along the leading edge in the photo.But although the Zagi felt very heavy it flew extremely well and the extra weight didn’t seem to bother it at all. Captain Slow wanted it as a windy weather model anyway so the extra weight is probably not a bad thing.After only a couple of flights the motor started making an odd noise and when he landed it Captain Slow’s finger discovered that the motor was hot, sizzlingly hot in fact! The rear bearing had come loose and the motor was totally ruined. I remembered I had a similar size inrunner at home so donated it to the worthy cause and, although the 3900kV is really much too high (it’s really an EDF motor) it fitted ok and with a 4.5×4.1 prop it does the job perfectly. The Pelikan motor was using a 6×4 prop but that pulled more than 60A with the new motor. The Zagi flies much better than expected, it’s aerobatic and despite the weight it glides very well. It was almost worth the wait…

Following on from his TSR2 success last month Dwayne Pipe has continued to make a few changes and improvements to the model and it is now flying very well indeed. It still needs a good heave when launched but it goes away well now and it both looks and sounds great in the air.I believe Dwayne will be telling us all about the model at the next Official meeting on 16th May.

Kryten was good enough to send me a few more excellent quality photos this month, including the one above.

Video time now which this month includes contributions from 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 click HERE

Before I went to the airfield today I said to the wife “I am just going to polish the wings and clean the screen”
“You’re going flying, aren’t you”  she moaned. “No I am just going to clean the plane” I promised.

I got to the airfield and did my cleaning jobs on the aircraft. On the way home driving through the village I came across a pretty young woman in distress with a punctured wheel on her bicycle.

“Can I help you” I asked. “Please could you give me a lift to my hotel at the end of the village?”
I placed her bicycle in my boot and drove to the hotel. She was very grateful and invited me in for a coffee. One thing led to another and a jolly good time was had.

I drove home and was greeted by the wife saying “What time do you call this, you’ve been flying haven’t you”
“No, I went to the airfield, and cleaned the aircraft. On the way home I met a woman in distress took her back to her hotel and made mad passionate love to her.”

“You’re such a swine” she said “You promised me you wouldn’t go flying.”

Colin Cowplain