Patch News History

After the unseasonable February weather normal service was resumed in March. Overall it wasn’t bad although there was one week of continual high winds and torrential rain which just happened to be the week I was in Marrakech! Farmer George put the bullocks in the field mid-month and, being a new young herd, they were very inquisitive and frisky. Some of us were in the field flying when the bullocks arrived and we only just managed to get the fence up round the patch before they reached us. There was lots of laughter as they discovered what an electric fence does! The fence is working well and, unlike the surrounding area, the patch is still in pristine condition. The Farts have cut the grass several times in March and it really is as good as it’s ever been at the moment.

At the end of February Norwegian Nick flew his Kavan Bird of Prey, it’s previous outing being back in January 2016. The Bird of Prey is a long discontinued kit that has a fibreglass fuselage and obechi veneered foam wings. The wingspan is approximately 58” and the all up weight is around 2lb 14ozs. Back in 2016 Nick was running a different fan/motor/battery set-up and although the model flew ok it seemed to make a lot of noise but lacked power. So now Nick has fitted a Mega 16 EDF motor, a YEP 60A esc and is using a 4 cell lipo instead of the original 3 cell.He also made and fitted a thrust tube out of glass fibre cloth to make the whole thing more efficient.It certainly worked as the model now has much more power and is significantly quieter. It flies really well and I expect we’ll see a lot of it through the summer months. You can see it flying in this month’s video.

On the 3rd of the month those of us who are on WhatsApp were alerted by Bob the Builder to a massive price reduction of the HobbyKing foamboard models. Various ones were in the sale including the popular Sukhoi SU-27 and Mig-29 and the prices were ridiculous, the SU-27s were slashed to £1.68 and the others were in a similar range.Bob ordered himself a couple of SU-27s, Woody went for an F-4 Phantom, and I jumped in quick with an order for six SU-27s, one for me and five for raffle prizes. Once postage was factored in those six cost just £2.50 each, ridiculous! Great spot Bob, thank you, and it shows the worth of being on the club WhatsApp list.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Woody’s Phantom flies, it’s a little different to the SU-27s and Mig-29s in that it has a box fuselage and a pusher motor right at the back rather than the mid mounted engine of the others. Personally I prefer the look on the similar T-45, I’ll wait and see how the F-4 turns out and then I might be tempted.

Bob the builder wasted no time in putting one of his SU-27s together and brought it along to fly one midweek day.

But he noticed a problem, luckily before flying, and had to take it home again to repair. Can you spot the problem?A couple of days later he was back and the Sukhoi flew perfectly with little trimming or adjustments required. Bob is using a 2826 2200kV motor with a 7″ prop and has opened up the prop slot as usual and it works a treat, not too noisy at all. I’ve lost count of how many foamboard fighters there are now, at least sixteen and more on the way.

During February I played around dropping parachutists from my Bush Mule and was generally pretty pleased with the results, although I did have to make several trips to the bottom of the valley! Several times I dropped multiple parachutists but they were really a bit too big for the cargo bay and sometimes got jammed in the door. So this month I scoured the internet for smaller parachutists and discovered some that were not only about half the size but also incorporated smoke bombs. As they were smaller I figured they wouldn’t drift so far despite having to be dropped higher to allow the smoke bombs to discharge. They came in packs of eight and were about £24 including postage from China so I bought one pack to play with. I tested them on a rather murky day when Kryten was on hand with his camera and they worked fairly well although not all the smoke bombs worked properly and they all landed in the bottom field! Considering the height I dropped them from Kryten did well to snap a reasonable photo.The smoke bombs are replaceable items but spares can only be purchased in packs of twenty four so it would be rather expensive to do very often but meantime I can use the parachutists without the smoke. Maybe I’ll order some more smoke bombs and save them for special occasions.

Last month I featured Dougal Entendre’s new Tomahawk flying wing that is kitted out with FPV (First Person View) equipment. After the initial flights he fitted a pair of larger, ex-Wingnetic, fins to aid stability and got on pretty well with the FPV flying. But he was getting lots of signal break-up so ordered a few different pieces of equipment.I was fascinated by the FPV and ordered some gear for myself, leaning heavily on Dougal for advice. It’s quite a steep learning curve as neither of us really know much about it but in March we both managed several successful flights and began to feel reasonably at ease while flying. So what do you need? A basic set-up consists of a small camera to mount on the model, a transmitter (with an antenna) that sends the images back to a pair of goggles that are fitted with a receiver, and a video recorder (DVR) if you want to record what you see in the goggles. We both have diversity goggles which means the receiver has two antennae and uses whichever one is receiving the strongest signal at the time. Dougal’s goggles have a built-in battery but mine use a separate three cell lipo. Comparing the goggles mine seem to have a slightly better screen image but Dougal’s have a better DVR. We are still very much at the learning and experimenting stage and the antennae seem to have quite a large effect on the performance. Both our systems work on 5.8GHz, so avoiding any interference with our 2.4GHz RC sets, various other frequencies can be used but 5.8 is the most common. Watching Dougal’s 26” span flying wing made me think I needed something rather larger and slower to start with. Obviously you don’t want something that has a propeller in front of the camera and I eventually decided to fit the gear to my foamboard Sukhoi SU-27. As it’s a very cheap foamboard plane it doesn’t matter too much if I break it, it has a centrally mounted motor so the propeller isn’t a problem, and it will fly slowly when required. It’s not the perfect model, something like a Bixler would be better but I don’t have one. My Bush Mule twin would be perfect but I don’t want to risk crashing it while I’m learning. As I’m able to fly midweek I’ve been able to get more FPV flights in than Dougal and I think the Sukhoi is probably easier to fly. I’ve found the temptation is to fly at slow speed and unintentionally pull in up elevator at which point the plane simply stops moving forward so now I force myself to fly faster and lower. It is essential (legally and sensibly) to have a spotter alongside the pilot and stay in line of sight view so they can take control if there’s a problem with the FPV. Now we are getting more used to flying FPV we find it tempting to fly further away than we should (we can see perfectly well where we are) which causes shouts of “Turn NOW” etc. from the helper, (in my case mostly Captain Slow) very amusing!. There is some footage from both models in this month’s video.

If you fancy having a go at FPV a HobbyKing Bixler is the perfect model to begin with and Stanley Knife has one.It’s a simple but efficient electric glider style model with a high mounted pusher prop so ideal for FPV. Stanley’s is a Bixler 2 but HobbyKing still sell the original Bixler 1 and also the latest version, the Bixler 3. They’ve grown in size with each version, the Bixler 1 being 1400mm span, the 2 is 1500mm spam, and the 3 is 1550 span. Version 3 comes with an undercarriage but an aftermarket undercarriage is available for versions 1 & 2 if you want one. It’s become Stanley’s model of choice when he wants to fly something gentle and I can see why, it flies extremely well.

A little while ago Dwayne Pipe announced his intention to build a TSR2. He knew I’d built an electric powered pusher version many years ago and picked my brains about it. I built mine in 1992 from a Jeremy Collins plan that was featured in RCM&E and it was designed for an IC engine, ‘minimum power OS25FSR’ was stated. I made lots of changes to make mine lighter but kept the outline the same as the plan. Originally it flew on a 7 cell NiCad pack but the power was marginal so I altered it to take 10 cells and then it flew well.In those days it simply wasn’t possible to have a ducted fan version but times have changed and that’s what Dwayne intended to try. He planned to use a HobbyKing 70mm 5 bladed ducted fan sold as a spare for their Durafly Vampire with a 3300Kv motor so he scaled down the fuselage a little to suit the fan housing and save weight but kept the original 30” wingspan. Mine had an all moving tailplane as per the full-size but the mechanism would have been in the way of the fan so Dwayne’s has a fixed tailplane with elevators. The TSR2 has very small intakes that are made even smaller by inlet cones so Dwayne has added a series of cheater holes in the fuselage sides under the wing. The fuselage has plenty of room for a 4 cell lipo of either 2200mAh or 3300mAh capacity and he’s using a 60A speed controller. At full throttle the motor pulls 49A and the fan gives 2lb 6oz of thrust which is the same as the weight of the model with a 2200mAh battery.So does it fly? Yes, and it’s surprisingly similar to mine all those years ago. It takes a good heave to get away from the launch but once it’s away it goes well. It rolls well and even inverted flight is ok but it won’t loop. Well it might after a 500ft dive but not from level flight, it gets to vertical and just stops, exactly like mine used to. But it’s superb at fast low passes and really looks the part during those. Dwayne is going to enlarge the cheater holes to try to get a bit more thrust and also has some covers for them so they don’t look like airliner windows! He’s also increasing the size of the elevators and will try moving the centre of gravity back a little. But even before the mods it’s a great success and you can see parts of the first three flights in this month’s video. UPDATE: On 28th March, having carried out the mods I mentioned above, Dwayne had a further two flights with the TSR2. It went away from launch much better both times, had a bit more power and it will now loop. Superb!

Dougal Entendre got tempted by a little F3A (pattern ship) called Skylark on the Banggood website. Banggood describe it as a trainer so Dougal should just about be able to cope with it! I assume they mean an aerobatic trainer as it’s most definitely not a model for beginners. It’s available in blue, green, or red colour schemes and Dougal plumped for a blue one. The model is a 950mm span EPO foamie and comes as airframe only, all the electrics have to be provided by the builder. Dougal doesn’t rate Banggood packaging as the box was quite badly knocked about when it arrived and one end was completely open, presumably where it had been inspected by customs. The model inside was a bit bashed cosmetically but basically sound so Dougal put in a lot of effort to get his son Cameron to assemble it for him…lazy bugger! The instructions call for a 2216 motor, 40A esc and a 9×6 prop. This is all powered by a 2200mAh 3 cell lipo that also powers the receiver and 4 x 9g servos.It’s a pretty little model and certainly looks as if it should fly well. But the initial take-off proved ‘interesting’, the Skylark was way out of trim and it took a couple of minutes for Dougal to tame it. But once trimmed it seemed reasonable and, having done a bit of sorting later at home, the next time out it flew very nicely. I think it will prove to be a good all round model well suited to our field. The hairy first flight is in the video.

You may remember that at the end of December Matt Takhar’s Velox misbehaved itself (nothing to do with the pilot obviously…) and required a new fuselage. At 81” wingspan the Velox is a large impressive model that’s powered by an Xpwr 40 (40cc equivalent) motor running on 12 cells and has a Castle Phoenix Edge HV120 speed controller. The gear was all transferred into a new fuselage by ProBuild who put the first one together and Matt did a bit of tarting up with some new stickers. So in March the model was brought out once again and the first flight went perfectly. It has an impressive amount of power and really eats up the sky which makes it difficult to video but I got some of it. But during the second flight there was a bang and I thought the motor had kicked the prop loose. Matt called dead-stick and headed for the patch but on the approach we saw a sudden ball of flame followed by a plume of smoke! Matt did very well to make a perfect landing on the patch and Nick rushed over to disconnect the battery.Fortunately there was no fire and the ball of flame turned out to be the speed controller exploding! The model survived unscathed apart from some minor burn marks inside where the controller was mounted. Probuild/Castle Creations have agreed to replace the esc as apparently it’s not supposed to do that!

Speaking of fires: “No, I’m sure it’ll be perfectly alright, nothing can possibly go wrong”:“OOPS!”Don’t worry, I don’t know what the pall of smoke was but it was nothing to do with Woody or any of us!

Nothing to do with Petersfield Aero Modellers or the patch but I spotted a video that I thought you’d like to see. It is Gernot Bruckmann flying an indoor model and winning his 4th World Championship in a row. I saw him flying outdoors for Multiplex at the Multiplex Airshow in Germany two years ago which is odd as he uses Jeti radio, maybe with Multiplex servos. I have to say he’s not bad! The video is worth watching if only for the take-off: 

 

Kryten has just sent me some superb flying photos that he took last month. In particular Page Boy’s Harvard and Bob the Builder’s Tiger Moth look fantastic.

Monthly video time now, this month it includes helpings from Iven, Dougal, and Captain Slow, thanks chaps:

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

A chap was sitting at an airport bar when he noticed a beautiful woman sitting next to him. He thought to himself  “Wow, she’s so gorgeous she must be a flight attendant. But which airline does she work for?”

Hoping to pick her up, he leaned towards her and uttered the BA slogan: “To Fly. To Serve?” She gave him a blank, confused stare and he immediately thought to himself “Hmm, she doesn’t work for BA.”

A moment later, another slogan popped into his head. He leaned towards her again, “Something special in the air?” She gave him the same confused look. He mentally kicked himself, and scratched American Airlines off the list.

Next he tried the United Airlines slogan: “I would really love to fly your friendly skies?” This time the woman turned on him and screamed “What the *@#! do you want?”

The man smiled, then slumped back in his chair… “Ah yes, Ryanair”.

Colin Cowplain

What a Fantastic February! The first Sunday of the month saw the field covered with a light dusting of snow whilst being bright and sunny with light winds, perfect for me to try the skis on my Bush Mule. The snow wasn’t very deep so wheeled models (and their pilots) coped with the conditions ok as well. A great day with a decent turnout. Later in the month we had a long spell of dry weather with light winds and a fair bit of sunshine. The last Sunday was absolutely glorious and we had thirteen flyers come out to play, I would think that’s a record for February. I played around with a couple of cameras on the Bush Mule throughout February and managed to capture some reasonable video of touch and go’s in the snow, general scenery, and also dropping parachutes later in the month. I also tried to get some air to air video with a camera on my SU-27 and had a very close encounter with Woody’s Mig-29! I’m afraid the quality of some of the screenshots from a cheap video camera is poor but you get the idea.

At the end of January, too late for the last Patch News, Matt Takhar flew his new 67” wingspan Pilot-RC Extra 330SC. It’s almost identical to Newbie Nick’s Extra that I featured last month but it’s a second generation model not a first. Matt has fitted a 470kV Potenza 60 motor with the HobbyWing speed controller and uses a 6 cell 5000mAh lipo battery. It swings a 20×8 wooden prop and, as you’ll see in this month video, has loads of power. The video is of the understandably cautious first flight and, like Nick, Matt is now getting more adventurous, flying lower, closer and more aggressively. The Extras are lightweight to the extreme, the structure really is only there to keep the various components apart and I would hate to see the result of even a heavy landing.

When we had the snow at the field many of us realised our lipos were suffering in the cold and not giving the power they do in warmer weather. I spotted a heated lipo bag on the HobbyKing website but it was out of stock. However, an alternative heater for R/C car tyres that doubles as a transmitter muff heater popped up on screen and figured I could warm my batteries in the muff and then keep my hands warm when flying for only around £13. It 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 which made it more manageable. I fitted the system into my Turnigy muff with strips of Velcro so it’s easy to remove when not required. So, did it work? Yes perfectly, we haven’t had a single cold day since!

Yet more of the foamboard jets appeared in February, at the last count there were thirteen fourteen in the club.Gorgeous Gary, spurred on by the success of his Mig-29, has now built a Sukhoi SU-27. It’s one with the new colour scheme, quite bright rather than the original grey ones like mine but is otherwise an identical model. Gary has added a second carbon tube to stiffen up the tail end and he wasn’t keen on the unusual format of linked ailerons and elevators so has added a couple of extras servos and the surfaces are now all independent. When I put mine together I thought having them coupled the way HK suggest was very odd but it seems to work perfectly well. I haven’t flown Gary’s so I can’t say if it’s any better or not, it would be interesting to compare the two. As you’ll see in the video Gorgeous Gary enjoyed flying his Sukhoi in the snow, it certainly flies well and maybe the controls look more positive than mine. A little bird tells me he’s bought a second Mig to join his existing one…!

Shock horror, Captain Slow has also completed one of the new colour scheme Sukhoi SU-27s, a record two new models in two months! His is completely stock and just uses two servos to control the ailerons and elevators. All of these foamboard jets are using motors with a kV of around 2200 but Captain Slow had a 1400kV motor spare and decided to try it in his Sukhoi. The advantage of a lower kV motor is that it will swing a bigger diameter propeller and hopefully keep the noise down a bit. I think it’s fair to say that some of us doubted the lower kV motor would be any good but in fact the plane flies the same as all the others with the advantage that it’s a little quieter. At first he said he didn’t like it as much as the Mig-29 but has since got used to it and now loves it. They do fly surprisingly differently, both are good in their own way, the Mig is faster but the Sukhoi is better for high alpha stuff. I know the Mig is faster because Captain Slow decided to ram my Sukhoi from behind with his Mig! To be fair he’s probably never experienced anyone flying slower than him before. Dougal managed to capture the collision on video so you can watch it before deciding for yourself that it was Captain Slow’s fault. This is where they ended up.There was zero damage to my Sukhoi and just a small chunk out of the foamboard on Whacker Wheeley’s Mig where it hit my propeller. He’s replaced the chunk and added libellous markings!Despite his continual moaning about hating the foamboard jets 1066 has also succumbed to a new Sukhoi! He’s using the stock coupled aileron/elevator set up using just two servos. I’ve retro fitted one servo to move one rudder on mine but 1066 just had to go one better and he’s fitted two servos to operate two rudders. The rudders are quite effective, presumably two more so than one, and enable some very strange manoeuvres to be performed once you get used to them. After 1066 dripped on that his Sukhoi wasn’t nice to fly I took a look at it and decided his CG was about 6” too far back…well maybe not that much but it was certainly a long way rearward.Having checked out the locations of the radio gear and battery on all the other SU-27s he’s since repositioned everything to bring the CG forward to the correct place and now begrudgingly admits that he’s enjoying flying it!

Yet another foamboard jet, this time it’s an F-35 Lightning which was put together by Cream Egg. I was asked to do the test flight and quickly discovered that Cream Egg’s batteries were past their best, although fully charged they didn’t provide enough current to fly the F-35. We tried it with one of my packs and it flew fine after a few tweaks to the movements and trims. The only problem was that it was very noisy, the centre mounted motor makes all these foamboard jets noisy and the propeller slot needs to be enlarged to lower the noise.Cream Egg has cut the slot a little but the propeller tips are still close to the foamboard and that’s what causes the noise. No problem, a couple of minutes work cutting the foam well clear of the front of the propeller will sort it out.

There are some videos on YouTube of a chap who’s added an undercarriage made from plastic tie-wraps to his foamboard jets and Cream Egg has copied the idea. In the videos the guy is taking off from tarmac and the jets skid along on the plastic loops but I’m not sure they’ll work on grass. But nothing ventured nothing gained, we’ll see… In the photo of the underside you can also see how Cream Egg has mounted the servos. Er…the servos are supposed to go in the cut outs in the sides of the ‘fuselage’, or maybe I’m missing something? Newbie Nick also has an F-35 and it flies well so no doubt Cream Egg’s F-35 will soon be joining all the other hooligans careering around the sky.

Dougal Entendre has been hankering after an FPV (First Person View) model for a while. He had a go at it with his old Olympic glider a while back but he was using the rather small screen on his Devention transmitter rather than proper goggles to view the transmitted video stream. The system worked but he found the screen difficult to see, especially in bright sunlight, so he asked Mrs Christmas (Angie) for a pair of goggles. Sure enough a pair of Crazepony VR008 Pro FPV goggles with built-in digital video recorder turned up in his Christmas stocking. (I would normally make a comment at this point about stockings and Tranny Agate but he’s getting fed up with it so I won’t). He bought a Durafly Tomahawk from HobbyKing which is designed for FPV racing and fitted it out with the camera and transmitter from the Olympic. The first flights were on the snowy Sunday and Dougal flew the model in the normal manner (not using the FPV) and quickly discovered that the Tomahawk was a bit of a handful. Well it is advertised as a Mini Racing Wing so that wasn’t totally unexpected I suppose. Kryten was monitoring the FPV via the goggles and reported that it all worked well as long as the model didn’t get too far away. Dougal decided the Tomahawk needed more fin area so back in the workshop he fitted it with a couple of cut down fins from his now defunct Wingnetic. The photo shows the mock-up before the fins were cut down.Next time out it flew much more steadily and he decided to try flying it FPV with me as the obligatory ‘competent observer’. All went well, better than I expected actually, and Dougal had a couple of flights totally unaided other than a few comments from me if I felt he was getting a bit too far away, he even landed safely back on the patch.Having watched the onboard recording of the second flight I was surprised to see that the model was actually flying much closer to us than I’d thought but as it’s only 670mm (26”) wingspan it was bound to look small to me. You can see in the video that there’s some signal break-up which Dougal said didn’t happen on the first flight when the DVR wasn’t running so maybe the DVR is a source of interference. Dougal is planning a few changes to the set-up and then more flights will follow. I fancy having a go at FPV myself and have ordered some equipment…watch this space!

Not one to hang around 1066 hasn’t just built a foamboard SU-27, he’s also built a lovely little HK Mini Edge 540T.It’s one of their ‘EPP skins over a ply and carbon framework’ type of model that has now sadly been discontinued, 1066 has had the kit in his loft for a while. The Edge is 935mm (36.8”) wingspan and 1066 has fitted a 28mm 1400kV motor, a 10×4 prop, and a 50A speed controller. He uses a 3 cell 22mAh lipo which gives decent length flights. It flies brilliantly and in the video you’ll see it knife-edging from horizon to horizon.

Stanley Knife has put together this lovely looking ASW-28 that he won in a recent club big raffle. The 2540mm wingspan electric glider comes as a plug and fly model with all the electronics pre-installed. The motor is a 4018-850kV outrunner, the ESC is a 30A with BEC, and there are 6 x 9g servos controlling ailerons, rudder, elevator, and flaps. The fuselage is blow moulded plastic and the wings and tail are moulded in EPO foam.Stanley is using an 1800mAh 3 cell lipo but as you can see there’s loads of room for a bigger battery if required. The ASW flies beautifully, it’s certainly not overpowered but performs gentle scale-like aerobatics very nicely.

Now for something a bit special, Page Boy has treated himself to a Freewing Bae Hawk T1 in the Red Arrows colours. The 1020mm (40”) wingspan plug and play EPO foam model uses a 12 bladed 70mm diameter fan that’s spun by a brushless inrunner motor connected to an 80A speed controller and a 6 cell 4000mAh battery. That set-up provides a lot of thrust but has a very quiet turbine like sound. The Hawk is a very high quality model and looks fantastic with it’s lights, flaps, and retracts as standard and Page Boy’s came with the upgraded sprung undercarriage oleo set.Page Boy asked me to do the maiden flight as he’s never flown a ducted fan model before. The Hawk took-off from the patch nicely with half flap (the grass is in great condition at the moment) and required little trim to fly straight and level. With the wheels retracted she’s quite fast flat out but she’ll also fly slowly when throttled back and I didn’t find any handling problems. Page Boy had a quick go on the first flight before handing the transmitter back to me for the landing and she came in beautifully with full flap and landed gently on the patch. He had longer on the controls on the second flight and seemed to be getting the feel of ducted fan flying. I love it…want one…!

This Patch News includes contributions from Dougal Entendre, Captain Slow, Iven, Kryten, Gorgeous Gary, and Catapult King, thanks chaps.

Flying photo time:

Time now for this month’s video: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

This month’s February Funny was sent in by Bob the Builder:

Yesterday my daughter emailed me, asking why I didn’t do something useful with my time. She said she was ‘only thinking of me’ and suggested I go down to the Pensioner Centre and hang out with other chaps my age.
So later I replied to her email saying that I’d been and had joined the Seniors Parachute Club.
She wrote back, ‘Are you mad? You’re much too old now, you can’t start jumping out of aeroplanes!’
Sensing that she didn’t believe me, I told her that I even had a Membership Card and emailed a copy to her.
Immediately, she rang me and yelled, “Good grief, Dad, where are your glasses? This is a membership to a Prostitute Club, not a Parachute Club!” 
“Oh dear, ” I said, “I signed up for five jumps a week!”
The line went dead…

Colin Cowplain

The club has had a busy start to the year with lots of flying at the patch and several new models being flown.Obviously January brings some challenging weather but overall it hasn’t been too bad, mostly fairly mild although some days were very cold, especially if the low temperatures were combined with strong winds. As I write this on the last Sunday morning of the month I’m not flying because the Hampshire Astronomical Group live weather station (which you can see by clicking HERE) is showing a 10 minute average wind speed of 29mph and a high of 47mph!But we’re a hardy lot (well some of us are anyway) and we’ve managed to fly regularly.

As we were returning to the cars after one flying session I noticed a very unusual weather feature, a bank of cloud with an almost dead straight edge that ran from horizon to horizon. I think 1066 said it’s called a Step cloud.The photo doesn’t really do it justice but you can get the idea, it was certainly very dramatic.

We were pleased to welcome a new member, Ian, to the club in January. Ian’s surname is Venn and for obvious reasons he was immediately given the nickname Iven, so if you’re wondering why it’s not spelt Ivan, that’s your answer. Iven visited the field, asked lots of questions about what to buy and from where, and then went to SMC and bought an E-Flite Apprentice fitted with Spektrum radio…hmm. But the Apprentice is a great trainer and it comes with SAFE Technology (Sensor Assisted Flight Envelope) which in theory makes it almost impossible to crash.The package includes a 5 channel Spektrum DXe transmitter but that’s a very basic transmitter so Iven also bought a Spektrum DX6e for a bit of future proofing and bound that to the Apprentice instead of using the DXe.There is some setting up to do on the transmitter to get the SAFE Tech working correctly but Iven thought he’d sorted it ok when he brought it along to test fly. I gave the 1.5M span Apprentice a quick check over, discussed the various SAFE modes, switched to Expert mode, and all seemed fine so I took it up. Almost immediately it was clear that the SAFE Tech was not performing as it should and was fighting against me as I tried to fly a circuit. I didn’t feel as if I was in total control so I landed. You can see that brief flight in this month’s video. We played around with the different modes and tried again a couple of times but it just wasn’t working correctly so Dougal Entendre and Captain Slow gave Iven a go on their Hummers, hardly ideal trainers! I contacted Kryten as he had learnt to fly with exactly the same model and radio gear and he confirmed that getting the DX6e to work with the SAFE Tech was a bit of a struggle but sent me some web links and YouTube videos to look at. I passed the info on to Iven who had another go at it and returned to the field the next week confident that it was now correct. I flew it again in Expert mode but with much the same results so I switched to Beginner mode and then it seemed to be working better.At last Iven was able to have a go at flying and he managed a couple of circuits before it became clear the SAFE Tech still wasn’t right so I landed the Apprentice again. By now I was being to think it was me so I got Dougal to fly it but he also quickly found the SAFE Tech wasn’t right and landed. I believe Iven is now going to remove the SAFE receiver and use the ‘normal’ one that came with the DX6e transmitter so we can just teach him in the usual manner. It’s a great shame as Kryten’s set up worked perfectly from day one and he learned to fly very quickly with very little assistance from others. In the meantime Dougal has set Iven up with a flight simulator so in a couple of weeks he won’t need any help at all anyway…possibly…

If you read Patch News last month you’ll know I was fortunate enough to receive an Avios Bush Mule for Christmas. Once Christmas and New Year were out of the way I moved my models out of my storeroom and it became a model room once more so I was able to assemble the Bush Mule. There really is very little involved in putting it together, just a case of joining and bolting on the wings and wing struts, fitting the undercarriage, and bolting on the tailplane/fin assembly. I also epoxied the tailplane/fin assembly in place, the bolts didn’t seem too firm to me. So far so good, but it took me quite a while to connect it all up and program the radio. Both speed controllers and motors come ready fitted and wired up but they each require a radio channel of their own and I wanted to mix them with rudder to give differential thrust when using the rudder. There are also flaps which I programmed using flight phases so I have Phase 1: Flaps up for normal flight Phase 2: Half flap for take-off, Phase 3: Full flap for landing.Add to this the cargo door, steerable nose wheel, and lights as well as two aileron channels and elevator and there’s quite a lot of wiring and setting up to sort out. The speed controllers are also able to switch the motors into reverse, useful if you fit the floats and fly from water, but I didn’t have any spare channels left so I can’t use reverse thrust. I am also using telemetry, so I fitted a Multiplex 150A current sensor which displays live current draw, max current draw, receiver voltage, the lipo voltage, the strength of the signal that the transmitter is getting back from the receiver, and, most importantly, the milliamp hours remaining in the lipo. All the values can be displayed on the transmitter screen and spoken as well but of course that’s far too much information to take in during the flight so I just have mine set to speak the milliamp hours left when I flick a switch. So it’s like a fuel gauge i.e. it will say “One thousand three hundred and eighty one milliamp hours”. It also speaks the throttle open time when I switch it.The first flight was fine, almost no trimming required, and the only problem I found was that the rock solid EPP foam wheels make the landings very bouncy. I’ve since changed the main wheels to softer foam rubber Tundra wheels which has helped a lot but I’ve also found it’s better to land with half flap and a little more speed rather than use full flap. I ordered some parachutes to drop but they didn’t come in time for the first flight so I made up some very small gliders and some toffees with streamers to drop. The gliders were rubbish as were the toffees but the parachutes duly arrived and they’ve proved to be excellent. I now have six parachutes and they’ve been providing lots of entertainment and exercise for everyone who isn’t flying! You can see a parachute drop in this month’s video. I did manage to provide some extra entertainment on one flight. I took off as usual, raised the flaps during the climb out and suddenly both motors cut dead. I kept heading straight into wind and landed a few hundred metres down the field. As I walked to retrieve the model I tried to work out why the motors had stopped, I knew the lipo was charged. Then, as I reached the Bush Mule I saw the flaps were down and it dawned on me, instead of raising the flaps I’d pressed the throttle cut button…doh! Needless to say the other fliers present were surprised when I carried the model straight back to the patch and immediately took off again. I was forced to explain my stupidity and of course once they’d stopped laughing they barely mentioned it for next two hours…over and over again!

Speaking of pillocks, 1066 had a couple of ‘moments’ in January and I know he’d be disappointed if I didn’t tell you about them. The first one was when he launched his little Blitz delta and it immediately rolled straight into the deck. He looked down at the transmitter and we all saw the light bulb moment when he realised he’d switched the model to Blaze not Blitz! Never mind Steve, the first two letters were right…His second moment was a couple of weeks later, I saw him drive down the track but a few minutes later he drove back up it again. About half an hour later he returned, clutching the wings that he’d left on the bench!

I photographed Captain Slow’s part built Zagi at the beginning of November last year and featured it in Patch News where I mentioned that SMC say “Buy today, fly tomorrow”. Well this is how it was looking in mid-January. Perfection takes time…apparently…

But as the foamboard jet trend continues Captain Slow has finished his Mig-29…blimey, they must be quick to build!He’s fitted his with a Turnigy D2826/6 2200Kv motor and a 6×4 prop. It seems to fly just the same as the others although nobody is sure just how fast it will go as Captain Slow has never reached full throttle! As you can see he’s opened up the slot to reduce the prop noise and it seems to prove that the most important gap is the one in front of the prop. Captain Slow is also now building a Sukhoi SU-27…don’t hold your breath…

Gorgeous Gary has also joined the jet jockeys with a Mig-29. He’s using a drone motor, an RCINPOWER G2306 2200Kv, the same motor as I use. They seem good with a 6×4 prop and have plenty of power for the foamies.Gary had a big smile on his face at the end of the first flight … He’s had more flights with the Mig and is coming round to the joys of electric flight at last. And guess what, now he’s got the bug he’s building an SU-27!

Having enjoyed flying his Mig-29 for a few weeks Woody has now put together a Sukhoi SU-27. Being Woody he’s kitted it out with lights and I have to admit it does look impressive in flight, they show up well. The Sukhoi is a bit bigger than the Mig and has ailerons as well as elevons which means it’s better for high alpha stuff but not quite as quick flat out. I’ve also retro fitted a rudder to mine which helps with high alpha flying.

Page Boy was given an E-flite Texan for his birthday and very nice it is too. The E-flite models all seem to be good.It’s a 1500mm EPO foam model that comes pretty much complete, just a few screws are required to hold it together, the electronics, servos, linkages etc. are all pre-installed. The Texan comes with electric retracts which have strut covers, hinged doors, and scale wheels, and it has split flaps just like the full-size Texan. Page Boy asked me to do the maiden flight and being aware of the Texan/Harvard reputation for tip stalling I was slightly nervous. But the E-flite model is totally viceless, a real pussycat to fly, it took off beautifully, flew around very smoothly, and with the flaps down it just floated in for a gentle landing. You can see it in this month’s video.

Page Boy also sent me some photos of the latest ‘proper’ balsa/ply build that he has underway. It’s a Lindsay Todd design called a Woodpecker that has a 70″ wingspan. I thought it was an English Electric Wren, I’m sure that must have been Lindsay’s inspiration. Knowing Page Boy it will soon be finished and flying.

Most of you will know by now that on 10^th January we had a Chinook fly directly over the patch at very low level. Fortunately we had just packed up flying and put the fence up when it appeared over the trees by the track we drive down, it flew right over the patch and out over the valley. It was very low, between 50 and 100 feet we reckoned and was going at speed. I quickly snapped a couple of photos but they don’t really show just how low it was. Had any models been in the air it’s doubtful the pilots would have had time to take any avoiding action. We are always careful about other airspace users, keep our ears and eyes open, and shout warnings as required but this served as a reminder that we must be extra vigilant. Contact has been made with the relevant authorities to ensure they know when and where we fly but ultimately it’s our responsibility to avoid full-size aircraft at all costs.

A few months ago Norwegian Nick won a Wingnetic in the big raffle and he brought it along to test fly in January.In the usual Norwegian Nick manner he has tarted up the original colour scheme a bit and made it look much smarter than standard. It’s certainly a lot better than my own very old and tatty Wingnetic! Sadly it didn’t quite get away from the launch and incurred some minor damage, but no doubt it will reappear and fly successfully soon. The Wingnetics are great little fliers and several members have enjoyed owning them.

Last month I pictured two models that were being put together by Newbie Nick and Matt. (Incidentally Matt needs a nickname, do you have any ideas?) They are both Pilot-RC Extra 330SCs with 67” wingspan, but Nick’s is a Gen 1 and Matt’s is a Gen 2. The Gen 2 has slightly different reinforcements and some other minor improvements. They were both hoping to fly them last week but Matt discovered some hinge problems with his so only Nick’s flew. It has a 400Kv Pilot motor swinging an 18×10 wooden prop, and a 6 cell 5000mAh lipo pack. Nick has fitted Savox 0252MG servos, and a Futaba R7008SB FASSTest receiver which is powered by a 6.6v life battery. Matt did the test flight which you can see in this month’s video. It flew really nicely and had plenty of power but the centre of gravity was slightly rearward and Matt wanted to make some slight adjustments to the throws and expo so he landed with plenty of battery capacity for another flight. Nick moved the lipo forward and made the adjustments on the transmitter and then Matt went to take-off again. But there was no power, the prop didn’t turn at all!After much fiddling, investigation, and helpful(?) comments from everyone present Nick gave up and flew his F-35 to cheer himself up! Back on the workbench he discovered the HobbyWing Platinum 100A Pro V3 speed controller was dead. Nick has sent it back and has just received a Castle Creations Edge Lite 100A to replace it.

Our patch is in a beautiful spot with lovely scenery all round, particularly to the south where views over the Solent and on to the Isle of Wight can be enjoyed.  Late one Friday afternoon I noticed a glorious sunset starting to form and thought what a lovely photo it would make for Patch News. There’s always someone to pee on your parade…

Time now for this month’s video, most of which was filmed by Captain ‘Heavy Breather’ 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

This month’s Finishing Funny comes from Dougal Entendre:

The flight attendant sees a suspicious looking couple on board, so she reports it to the Captain immediately.

“Sir, I think we have a case of human trafficking! There is a very pretty, hot and sexy female passenger on board who looks quite frightened, and the man she is with is a fat old slob who looks like a lecher, very sullen, mean and dangerous!”

The Captain responds, “Patricia, I’ve told you this before. This is Air Force One…”

Colin Cowplain

Happy New Year everybody! Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and saw the New Year in sensibly(ish). I know some of you had office Christmas parties in December, I trust none of you got yourselves slightly inebriated…December saw the expected mixture of weather and we lost some days because of strong winds and heavy rain but many of us managed to fly on some of the better days. In particular, over the Christmas/New Year break the weather was very kind to us, light winds, dry, and not too cold. We’ve had the shortest day and already it stays light a little later each evening, it will soon be spring. One Sunday morning early in December it was very windy, much too windy for sensible flying, but four of the committee turned up ‘just in case’. The fence battery needed changing so we sorted that, and then 1066 decided it was a good mowing day, too windy for flying but nice and dry.

So the fab four spent a happy morning mowing and moaning, moaning about the lack of Dougal Entendre who was apparently nursing a hangover following his office party. Very little sympathy was shown!Someone even cleared a bit of a path at one side of the gate through the really muddy area to make access a little easier for us, I’ll let you work out who to thank for Woody’s Way!

Did you get any modelling presents from Santa? Some of you must have found some exciting parcels under the tree…they can’t all have been socks and underpants. Me? Well I did have a visit from a couple of Christmas Elves.Because I behaved myself Mrs Santa gave me permission to treat myself to an Avios Bush Mule from the HobbyKing pre-Christmas sale. Although I had a sneaky peek before Christmas I wasn’t allowed to start putting it together.I couldn’t have done anything to it even if I wanted to because with the usual Christmas paraphernalia everywhere and visitors stopping overnight all my planes and equipment had to be crammed back into my modelling room.No chance of even opening the box in there let alone putting it together, but now Christmas is over it will be built.

I also received a voucher for two flights with iFly Indoor Skydiving at Basingstoke. For those that don’t know, indoor skydiving is done in a sort of vertical glass wind tunnel that blows air upwards at up to 180mph and the ‘skydiver’ can (hopefully) float around freely. I’ll let you know how it goes, I’m sure I’ll look just as good as this when I do it!Santa also brought me a tricky seaplane kit which I spent a few happy hours putting together on Christmas Day.

The foamboard fun-jet following continues to grow with myself, Woody, and now Bob the Builder flying the Mig-29s.Newbie Nick has built a Lockheed Martin F-35 that comes in fictitious Royal Canadian Air Force Tiger Meet colours. Unfortunately the first motor in Nick’s F-35 burnt out but he ordered a replacement and a few days later it was flying again. Nick let me have a flight with it and I can confirm that it has very similar flying characteristics to the Mig and the Sukhoi. Also like the others it was noisy at first but Nick opened up the propeller slot and now it’s much quieter.Woody absolutely loves his Mig and is doing all sorts of manoeuvres with it at low levels, things he’d never do with his other models. In fact, he loves it so much he’s ordered himself an F-35. Captain Slow has now received his Mig from Mrs Claus so we’ll be seeing it soon(ish), and Gorgeous Gary was so impressed seeing them fly on Boxing Day that he has just ordered a Mig for himself! Even Cream Egg wants to get in on the act, he emailed while in Madeira for Christmas asking for details, motor suggestions etc. Because they can land so slowly they are ideal for the Spot Landing competition and Woody was very pleased with this attempt but it wasn’t close enough to win.I was delighted with this attempt at the spot and was convinced I’d won, but 1066 promptly beat me…the swine!Despite them only weighing a few grams they will fly in ridiculously strong winds and one Sunday in early December both Woody and I flew the Migs in near gale conditions. Just the two of us plus Dougal Entendre bothered turning out that morning and it was definitely vital to weigh down the models to prevent them blowing away.Dougal was flying a much more sensible heavy model but Woody managed the lightweight Mig well. Not sure he looks too happy in the first photo but in the next one you can see his Mig looking good while Dougal was struggling way down wind. What I need is a camera that shows how windy it was that morning! The only problem with this range of models has been the noise created by the prop running in a slot cut through the centre of the fuselage. We have been experimenting with different propellers, bigger, smaller, 3 bladed etc. with some success but the biggest noise reduction has come from opening up the size of the slot through the fuselage. I’m not sure why but the Migs seem noisier than the Sukhoi and with three now flying, and a fourth on the way, it was important to make them quieter. Cutting the slots wider is simple, reduces the noise dramatically, and seems to make no difference to the flying at all. I’ve now also cut the slot wider in the Sukhoi with similarly quieter results.

I stumbled across a short video (just 38secs) of someone flying a very similar looking foamboard model somewhere in the Far East by the look of it. It’s both amazing and amazingly wrong for so many reasons, have a look and see what you think. It’s incredibly noisy, incredibly powerful, has lights around the edges, and there are two other similar models on the ground presumably marking out the designated flying area, utter madness!

Over the Christmas break I set up a WhatsApp group called PAM Flying Group. Matt suggested using WhatsApp a couple of months ago but as some members aren’t on it I can’t replace the ‘flying tomorrow’ emails, but maybe that will happen eventually. In the meantime if you want to join the group as an easy way to chat and exchange documents, photos and videos just download the free app (Android or IOS) and I’ll add you to the group. This is what Wikipedia says about it: WhatsApp Messenger is a freeware and cross-platform messaging and Voice over IP service owned by Facebook. The application allows the sending of text messages and voice calls, as well as video calls, images and other media, documents, and user location. At the moment it’s free of adverts but I understand that will change in 2019. It’s totally free to use, even for worldwide video calls so I imagine over 1 billion users are a pretty good group to target with adverts. Just let me know if you’d like to join the group.

At one of the December club meetings Percy Vears brought along his Lancaster and talked through the second part of his build blog. Ron is building the Lanc from the Tony Nijhuis plan and he purchased the plan, CNC cut parts, vacuum formed canopy, turrets and cowls etc. to make the project a little easier but there’s still a lot of work to do. The building side is now pretty much complete but there’s a long way to go before it’s ready to fly. Ron will be glass clothing the whole model, no mean feat in itself, and will then paint and assemble the various parts. It’s looking good so far, I can’t wait to see it completed and up in the air where I’m sure it will look amazing.

Last month I featured Matt Takhar’s new Velox which at 81” span is one of the biggest models in the club. After the first four flights Matt stripped the model down to check everything over and make sure there were no signs of any emerging problems. He sent me a few photos to use, the first of which gives a good idea of the size of the motor. The Velox is now back together and has had several more flights, Matt is getting more confident with it every flight. You can see snippets of flights three and four in this month’s video.

Ok, I’ll stop writing about the Velox now, Matt had an unfortunate ‘development’ on 28^th December…I believe a new fuselage is on order from ProBuild. Fortunately all the gear, motor, speed controller, batteries and so on are undamaged, as are the wings and tail. I won’t go into what happened but it’s rumoured that Matt will be giving a talk at a future club meeting entitled ‘The do’s and don’ts of spin recovery’. Too soon? Sorry Matt!

One of the websites that I often check out is Flite Test and this month, as I’m still of a juvenile disposition, I was immediately attracted to the heading Check Your Crap. It was part of an article on Pre-Flight Checks and I thought it might be useful reading for PAM members. There’s a downloadable .pdf of a basic single sheet checklist that you can print off and keep in your flight bag, and also a short video of things to check before the first flight of a new model. To see it just CLICK HERE. The whole site is entertaining and packed with useful info, take a look for yourself.

Both Matt and Newbie Nick have treated themselves to Pilot Extra 330SCs. These ARTFs are 1714mm span, 1600mm long, and they are designed for either 20cc IC engines or equivalent power electric motors.

The electric versions need 400KV motors, 6 cell lipos and 18”x10” propellers. Matt says the supplier was out of stock of the recommended motor so they sold him an ‘upgrade’ one. It’s perfect other than the fact that it won’t fit!I should have some more photos and power train details when the models have been flown, probably in January.

Time now for this month’s Video: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

Why men prefer aeroplanes to women:

1. Planes come with instructions.
2. Planes don’t have mother-in-laws.
3. Planes don’t take forever to get ready.
4. Planes don’t mind how many planes you’ve flown before.
5. Planes are cheaper to maintain.
6. Planes don’t mind when you Touch and Go.
7. A plane will kill you quickly, a woman takes her time.

Colin Cowplain