Patch News History

Wow, this month seems to have flown by, we’ve had the meteorological spring (1 March), the astronomical spring (20 March) and the start of British Summer Time (25 March). We’ve had a few cracking spring days but also some very wintry days and the flying has been ‘interesting’ on several occasions because of bitingly cold winds. But many of the members have flown during the month, some of us quite a lot, and I’ve got loads of material for this Patch News. In the February Patch News I said ‘It could have been worse’ and included a photo taken in Feb 2012 of my Twister in the snow. I should have known better, the next few photos were taken on 18 March.Insanity prevailed and I was joined by Captain Slow and Woody. What the photos don’t show was the howling gale that was blowing the snow right across the field. The anemometer showed that the wind was gusting over 30mph.

Captain Slow quite correctly said that we were only there for the bragging rights and as it turned out, he won them. He flew his red and white Obelix for a few minutes without too much trouble and then I flew my nearly all white FunGlider. I soon discovered that a white model doesn’t stand out too well in a snowstorm! It was ok for most of the flight when I was able to keep it close in, in front of me, but when I turned downwind on the landing circuit I really struggled to see it. With it coming towards me there was a very small frontal area to spot through the snow and I got completely disorientated and of course it got blown downwind making it even harder to see. Very soon neither Woody nor I could see it at all and I had to assume it had crashed. After a short search by all three of us we found it near the far side of the lower field and unsurprisingly it was quite badly damaged.However, as is often the case, back home on the workbench it all went back together pretty well and it was flying perfectly again a couple of days later, none the worse for it’s misadventure.

But we were in for a treat one weekday morning when just Gentleman Jim and I were present.  We had heard an interesting sounding large aircraft flying around but hadn’t seen anything until suddenly this appeared!It just did one quick pass but I managed to snap one poor quality photo. Apparently is was displaying at Goodwood.

Several new models made an appearance in March, the first one being Gentleman Jim’s gorgeous Multiplex Solius.

This is how the website describes it: Airborne elegance! High performance electric glider with T-tail, cockpit and clear canopy. With its pleasant handling and excellent performance the Solius offers tremendous flying pleasure to anyone from the weekend flyer to the pro-standard pilot. Whether you’re looking for long gliding flights or lively aerobatics – the Solius always gives a good account of itself. The outstanding features of this Elapor model are its many new, innovative and sophisticated details, which set entirely new standards for this class of model.The 2160mm (85”) span Solius is available either as a kit or Ready to Run (RR) which comes with the servos, motor, prop, and speed controller already fitted. They also sell a RR+ version that comes fitted with a Multiplex 5 channel receiver and a 2200mAh lipo, so you just charge the battery, bind to your Multiplex transmitter, and fly. Jim bought the kit version which meant he had quite a lot of gluing and installing to do but the effort was worth it, the Solius is a great flier. It has the usual ailerons, elevator, rudder, and throttle, and Jim has programmed in spoilerons as well. This raises both ailerons to spoil the lift and make landing easier but I must say it does seem to float on and on even with spoilerons activated. Jim has also fitted telemetry and speech units to his Hitec radio so he gets vario bleeps to let him know if the model is rising or sinking and spoken altitude reports at regular intervals, all clever stuff. You can see some of the first flight in this month’s video.

One model that I honestly didn’t expect to see again was Chuck Berry’s E-Flight Sukhoi. (He prefers his childhood nickname Chuck to Goose). He had a bit of a mishap with the Sukhoi a few weeks ago and we all thought it was a write-off but he tells me that when he got home his wife April suggested he had a go at repairing it. Once he got started he found it went back together quite easily and as you can see it’s now looking as good as new. Only on the inside can you see some minor tell-tale signs of where the hot glue did its’ work.

There were a couple of mishaps during March that will require some serious work, maybe Bob the Builder and Modelling Clay should ask Chuck Berry for a few tips on repairing. Modelling’s mishap is in this months’ video.

My old friend Dave Durnford from the Alton club was good enough to write an article for Patch News about his recent visit to the Paul Heckles Flight Centre: Back To School – Models & Flying Tuition by Dave Durnford

There are many ways to learn to fly model aircraft, and as many and more model types used in the process. In the halcyon days of our hobby, when almost every town had a model shop, R/C trainer model kits were a plenty and balsa readily available should you chose to build from a plan.

I would suggest nowadays the newcomer has a more limited and less easy choice. At time of writing, this might be summarised as what wholesalers Ripmax / Perkins etc. are currently distributing to the few remaining shops. Otherwise it’s an online order to the likes of Hobby King for a RTF model.

As a club instructor, I get to see all types of ‘perfect’ trainer as supplied by the various outlets. Some are better than others, both in terms of quality and suitability. No doubt there are one or two, (somewhere?), that learnt on a scale ‘Spitfire’ or ‘F3A’ pattern ship but most of us cut our flying teeth on a high wing trainer of some description. Looking around at the models presently available that fit the bill, I was a little disappointed. I then remembered the professional model flying tuition, what model(s) do they use? Surely they must have seen it all and know what works and is durable to withstand the newbie’s bumps ‘n knocks.

So my enquiries lead me to Paul Heckles Flight Centre located at Draycott Aerodrome, near Swindon. Their website (CLICK HERE) describes the operation and includes photos of the superb flying site used.

I made a visit to Paul to see for myself the models he uses for training.

For fixed wing training, (the school also teaches rotary), the Flair / A.T.S. ‘Kite’ is the stalwart aircraft in their fleet.Despite all the knocks and ‘heavy arrivals’, very few airframes have been totalled in all their years of operation. Unfortunately, this model kit is no longer in production and after speaking to Justin at the current Flair Models in Warwick, unlikely to be in the near future. All is not lost though as foam wings are available from ‘Bill Kits’ and fibre glass cowling & carbon u/c from ‘Carbon Copy’. As for a plan, there never was one, so I’m doing my best to draw something up from existing airframes.

Tuition – Paul gave me a tip into his proven successful approach.

This might be summed up as always seeing and maintaining a fixed horizon. Just think of trying to fly a model whist straining up and peering at a blank sky. What attitude is the model at? Is it climbing? Descending? Banked? Not easy to say without a reference i.e. a horizon be that the ground or a line of trees, always kept in the peripheral of your vision. Thinking about it, it works for me, how about you?

So what model would you recommend for a newcomer to our great hobby?

Thanks Dave, that’s all good stuff.

Stanley Knife recently dug deep into his pockets and splashed out a fiver on a new receiver. Yes, that’s right, just £5. I think he said it’s a Redcon CM703 2.4G 7CH DSM2 DSMX Compatible Receiver from Bang Good but I’m not certain. Not wishing to risk an expensive model to check out such a cheap new receiver Stanley then splashed the cash again, this time on a Flite Test Bloody Baron from Sussex Model Centre.The 29” (737mm) span Bloody Baron is a sort of Fokker/Ugly Stick lookalike that’s made from water resistant foam board. As you can see it’s a very basic quick to build four channel chuck it in the back of the car type of model and Stanley chose to fit a Turnigy 26-36 1100Kv motor coupled to a 40A esc. The model spec says to use a minimum 3 cell lipo so Stanley is using 4 cell 1000 lipo and an 8×6 prop which gives plenty of power. The first flight went perfectly and looked like a lot of fun so Stanley let me have the second flight. It flies really well, much better than you have a right to expect for a few pieces of foam board, and the only problem I found was that it didn’t seem to have enough up elevator movement. As I landed I was holding in full up elevator and even that was barely enough. We checked out the movement and found the problem, the elevator servo had come loose! Oh, and that £5 receiver? It worked perfectly so I reckon that was a bargain.

I know I barely mention it so you’ve probably not noticed but I’m a Multiplex fan, as is Captain Slow. But the other day I began to wonder if we were getting a little too similar in our ways as it’s not just the transmitters we have in common. I snapped this photo to illustrate my point:If fellow Multiplex users Woody and Percy Vears also turn up with FunGliders and twin finned flying wings I’ll really begin to worry. And Chuck Berry has now got an MPX Cockpit SX9 on order…

Other transmitters are available of course and Dougal Entendre (AKA Tranny Agate) has many many different ones. Fancying a bit of retro rc he decided to convert one of his collection to 2.4 GHz and eventually chose one of his several Devo sets as the donor and an American 72 MHz Royal transmitter as the recipient. With my blissfully small knowledge of electronics I thought it would be a very straightforward task to swap the innards from one transmitter into another case but it seems it’s not that simple. At a recent club meeting Dougal gave us a presentation of the conversion and the various problems he encountered along the way. One of the things that happened when transmitters were computerised was the change from mechanical to electronic trims and Dougal wanted to keep the original stick units along with their mechanical trims in the Royal tx. This involved quite a lot of head scratching and mechanical engineering but eventually he cracked it and thought he’d overcome the worst of the problems.But when he switched on for the first test he discovered that the electronic output from Royal stick units was much less than from the modern Devo ones which resulted in much reduced movement of the servos. More head scratching soon had the problem solved and all worked well so then it was down to mounting the new electronics and a modern lipo battery in the old case. Modern transmitters all have a screen to display the various available menus for setting the model up and in the retro transmitter this needs to be hidden but easily accessible so Dougal mounted it inside, rear facing, and then made the rear cover quickly removable.One thing considered vital these days, especially for electric flight, is a throttle lock switch and that had to be mounted on the outside of the case but other than that the only external differences are the stubby 2.4GHx aerial and the addition of a neck strap attachment ring. Having satisfied himself that everything was working as it should Dougal chose his Hummer for the test flights and, as expected, it performed perfectly.Well done Dougal, an interesting and well executed project.

The winner of the latest Patch News caption competition was chosen by a poll of the members at the last meeting in March and the chosen one was…insert drum roll here…Page Boy! The winning caption was ‘Apparently 1066 thinks he has to go through a gate (Agate) to get to Hastings.’ Congratulations to Page Boy who received a 3 cell 2200mAh 40C lipo for his efforts. Told you it was worth entering!

As well as entering caption comps Page Boy has been busy building more models. He’s already completed two Mini Blitz club models and now has a Dawn Flyer almost completed. The four channel 48” span Dawn Flyer was a free plan in RCM&E, and was designed by Lindsay Todd for a motor that puts out around 300W of power. Page Boy is hoping the finished weight will be around 2-1/2 to 3 lb so a Turnigy 3536 1200kv motor, coupled to a Plush 60A esc and a 3s 2200mAh lipo should be ample. To make life a little easier he ordered a £23 CNC cut wood pack from SLEC which contained the ribs, formers, and ply parts. The fuselage will be mostly stained whilst the wing and tail feathers will be covered in antique Solartex so the final look will be something like this one:

A link I spotted whilst browsing the HobbyKing website recently provides some useful information on lipo safety. It’s well worth a read, personally I was unaware that the salt water treatment is a myth. You can read it HERE

The last new model to fly this month was a Prime Jet Pro that Kryten won in a recent club raffle.It’s a flying wing with fixed canards from the HobbyKing Glue-N-Go series and is made from laser cut foam board with some carbon fibre reinforcing rods. It looks very smart, Kryten certainly made a good job of building it and fitting a Turnigy 2826 2200Kv motor powered by an 1800mAh 3 cell lipo. He said the instructions were a bit rubbish.There was no indication of any reflex required and he was unsure about the C of G position. The instructions say it’s marked on the canopy but it isn’t so he so he used a position suggested on a forum. Having been asked to do the first flight I can safely say it was wrong! It was most peculiar to fly, the first thing being that it had far too much reflex so I had to use all available down trim. But even while I was adjusting the trim the model would suddenly tuck under with no warning, almost doing a half outside loop with no stick input at all! I quickly switched from mid rates to low rates in an effort to calm things down and more by luck than judgement I got it back on the ground safely.We decided the cause was a rearward CG so we added a lump of lead in the nose, guessing the amount required. The result was a transformation, the next flight was a pleasure, and I soon switched up to full rates. There was a large trim change when the throttle was opened but that can easily be sorted with some throttle/elevator mixing, and apart from that it flew very well.  I look forward to flying it again as, once the throttle/elevator mixing is sorted, I’m sure it will be a great little flier. Kryten managed to take a very short piece of video during the second flight, you can see it in this month’s video.

Kryten also snapped some quality stills with his decent camera this month including a great shot of a kite that followed my FunGlider around for quite a while… even kites like Multiplex!

Time now for the 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

A customer was really hassling the girl running the airline check-in desk, yelling and using foul language.

However, the girl was polite, pleasant and smiled while the customer continued to abuse her.

When the man finally left, the next person checking in said to the girl, “Does that happen often? I can’t believe how nice you were to him.”

The girl smiled and said, “No problem, I took care of it. He’s going to New York. His bags are going to Bangkok.”

Colin Cowplain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colin Cowplain

January has been and gone already and we’re rushing towards spring, it will soon be time for all those winter projects to emerge. This spring that will include the new club model that you’re all busy building. You are building one aren’t you? It’s the Mini Blitz, a free plan from the December 2017 edition of RCM&E, and it’s a very simple 3 channel delta built from balsa that can be knocked up in just a short space of time.I know there are some that are already finished and several more, like Page Boy’s pictured above, are under construction. If, like me, you haven’t started yet there’s still plenty of time to get one built. They need to be ready for judging at the ‘show & tell’ club meeting on 3 May and, weather permitting, the first flights will take place the following Sunday, 6 May. The magazine article says they can be built in a day so you’ve got time to build more than sixty of them before the deadline! Oh, and by the way 1066, it’s got 2 fins, TWO, got that?!

As expected January saw some pretty awful weather, very little snow but certainly plenty of wind and rain. The patch, in fact the whole field, is pretty boggy and the parking area is a quagmire. But we still managed several flying sessions and the Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society (Farts) rolled the patch a few times to try to flatten it out prior to the growing/mowing season starting. The club is going to buy an electric fence to put around the patch when animals are in the field, hopefully that will stop the hard work of the Farts being ruined by the bullocks. We’ll still have the problem of them being ‘over friendly’ of course but at least we will be able to console ourselves by admiring the lovely patch while they trample our models in the pits. STOP PRESS: 29 Jan, the field if full of sheep!

After one spell of bad weather a few of us got quite desperate to fly and did so despite a gale force wind. In the photo below the models are inverted in an attempt to prevent them being blown away and Dougal’s kneeling mat is being inflated by the wind despite his rucksack being on the open end.By the way Dougal, Angie says can she have her rotary airer cover back please, she’s spent weeks searching for it.

Despite the wind gusting 30mph we all flew and got back down again without breaking the models but only Dougal was foolhardy enough to have more than one flight. His Ghost Rider 50 handles the conditions admirably. At one stage 1066 was leaning on Dougal to prevent him being blown backwards. Well that’s what he said he was doing, but I’m not so sure. What do you think? CAPTION COMP: Entries in the comments section please. A valuable prize will be awarded for the best caption submitted so get those comments pouring in!

On one of the better weather days Dwayne Pipe brought along his first ever EDF for its first outing.It’s the Durafly D.H.100 Vampire Mk6 that comes complete with a 70mm fan, motor, esc, servos, and retracts.Our patch is not really suitable for retracts even when it’s in the best condition so Dwayne decided to remove them and rely on hand launching and belly landings. As well as saving the worry of damaging the retracts the model now weighs less and so has more performance. Dwayne had read a review of the model that suggested using double-sided tape to hold the various foam parts together rather than gluing them permanently in place, the idea being that in the event of a mishap the whole lot would simply pull apart without breaking the foam.The first attempt didn’t quite go according to plan as the Vamp failed to get away from the launch, it seemed to lack power and it ‘arrived’ before building up flying speed. The double-sided tape did its job and the model appeared to have re-kitted itself with virtually no damage! Dwayne took it back to the workshop and fitted it all back together again and also swapped out the speed controller which was thought to be causing the lack of power. Next time out there were no problems, it went a treat, after a little initial trimming it flew perfectly and Dwayne is now getting to grips with the slightly different technique of flying an EDF model.

On the subject of EDFs we almost had another member flying his first one in January but things went very badly awry. A couple of months ago, when I featured my F-16, I mentioned that Bob the Builder had also purchased an identical F-16. Bob had bought the kit version as he already had a fan/motor combination that would provide loads of power for the lightweight model. While I was flying my own F-16 recently I asked Bob how his was coming along and he confessed to having had a disaster. He had fitted the fuselage out with all the electronics and decided to power up the motor before attaching the wings and tail but he must have connected something incorrectly as the whole lot burst into flames. Unfortunately the motor and fan were destroyed and the foam fuselage was badly damaged (melted?). As the fuselage is not available as a spare, the project has had to be binned before it got completed. As you know I’m always a sympathetic, polite sort of chap and would never want to mock someone elses misfortune so I wouldn’t dream of renaming him Bob the Burner!

One of the Cowplain shops, G D White (Independent Financial Adviser), always has a window display of photos taken by the Horndean Camera Club. Just before Christmas my wife Doreen spotted an interesting one and took a photo of it for me. I thought it was a great photo and worth including in Patch News.I have no idea who took it despite trying to find more information about it. But on the RAF Mini Club Facebook page there is a similar photo that was obviously taken at the same event and the caption says Today we commemorate Battle of Britain Day remembering the brave RAF servicemen and women for all that they did 76 years ago on the ground and in the air. It’s dated 15 September 2016. Great Mini, great Hurricane, and a great photo.

Whilst idly browsing on the HobbyKing website one day I spotted the Ezio 800 electric glider in the Bargain Bin.For a glider, it’s tiny at 800mm wingspan and the quoted flying weight is 220g (less than half a pound) but it comes virtually complete and requires just a receiver and battery to get it flying. It’s constructed from balsa/ply and is film covered, all the purchaser has to do is bolt on the wings and tail and add the stickers. It’s fitted with an outrunner 1811-3900kV motor and two 4.8g digital servos, one for elevator and one for both ailerons. And the price? It was in the $9.99 section of the Bargain Bin which, after the card conversion to GDP, worked out at around £7.75 so I bought three, one for me and two for 1066 for raffle prizes. Those two have already been won by Woody and Modelling Clay. The website says it has a 6A esc but mine says 8A/10A burst on the label. The only downside is that it uses 2 cell lipos instead of the usual 3 cell so I had to buy some but they were only £3.30 each.Mine needed some lead in the nose to achieve the stated centre of gravity which seems rearward to me anyway. It would be nice to fit a 3 cell lipo and not require the nose weight but I’m not sure it would fit and it might be too much for the motor. It flies brilliantly, glides remarkably well for such a small model and loops and rolls well when you get bored with gliding. Some of the first flight can be seen in the video. I had way too much elevator movement so it’s very jerky but you’ll get the idea. Subsequent flights, with less elevator movement, have been much better.

1066 has been tidying up his array of chargers and sent me some photos of his new charging station.He has 3 chargers powered from a single power supply and the wiring was a bit of a rats nest so now he has mounted the power supply inside a plastic box and the 3 chargers on the front of the box.Instead of using parallel charging boards he had mounted 6 connectors on each of 3 pieces of ‘chocolate block’ and has used wire links across the terminals. The balance leads are wired up with 6 connectors be for each position. It looks as if 1066 uses different connectors for 3 cell and 4 cell packs and the balance leads are done accordingly. The connectors and balance leads sit on a brick base on which the lipo packs can be safely charged. Nice one, both neater and safer than before.

Gorgeous Gary had an unusual problem one Sunday morning, the undercarriage leg on his Jive snapped.We are used to undercarriages being bent or ripped out but I’ve never seen the actual wire legs break like that before. The break occurred at the position a wire cross piece had been brazed/welded across the two legs and I can only imagine the heat used had made the wires brittle.

During January Catapult King asked me to check out his Wingnetic, saying it always seemed very twitchy on elevator. I flew it around for a while and found it was indeed very twitchy. I reckoned it had a rearward centre of gravity, so I landed and suggested he add quite a lot of nose weight. A bit later he said he’d added some weight and asked me to try it again. I asked how much he’d added and nearly had a fit when he said “Four pounds”!When I’d calmed down a bit he showed me, explaining that he didn’t have any lead with him and the four pounds consisted of one £2 coin and two £1 coins! It flew perfectly…

Wonky Wiltshire emailed me a link to a video he’d seen recently and said his next project might be to copy the nutter featuring in it. I think I’d stick to RC models Phil! The video is only 3 ½ minutes long, have a look: 

If the video won’t play for you click HERE

Another video link that I stumbled across is from the website of the AMA (Academy of Model Aeronautics), the American equivalent of the BMFA. It features twins Walter & William Good and charts their part in the development of radio control systems beginning with their first radio flights in 1937 and continues through to the eighties. I’d heard of Walt Good but not his brother, and I didn’t know of their involvement in radio development. This video is quite long at 25 minutes but is full of fascinating stuff and is well worth watching. To view it click HERE

Yet another new model has emerged from the building board of Dwayne Pipe. He’s called the model Wilf and this is what he sent me about it: 30″ Splot style own design named after my grandson, weight 1lb 15 oz. I was rather concerned by the weight of his grandson but then I realised he was talking about the model! The motor is a HobbyKing 1100kV 2836/8 outrunner that swings a 10×6 propeller, coupled to a 30A HobbyKing Plush speed controller and a 1300mAh 3 cell lipo battery.  Dwayne uses Spektrum radio gear and the receiver is an Orange one with a built in 3 axis gyro stabiliser. The flight time on a 1300mAh battery is about 5 minutes. I reckon a 1500mAh lipo would fit in there easily enough if Dwayne wants longer flights. I filmed the maiden flight and it went very well, just some very minor trim adjustments needed and Dwayne felt there was a bit too much aileron movement for comfort. It looks great, both on the ground and in the air, very much like a slightly small Splot with some dihedral added. See for yourself in this month’s video.

While I’m talking about Dwayne, I snapped this rather amusing shot of his jettisonable Spitfire wheels the other day.Dwayne takes-off and then drops the wheels on the first circuit. Unfortunately on this occasion he just missed the ‘new’ patch and the wheels landed smack in the middle of the bullocks’ mud bath that was the reason for moving the patch over by a few metres!

Norwegian Nick was good enough to send me a couple of photos of what he calls his ‘boneyard’.He thinks there are ten models there. You’re not trying Nick, plenty of room for more I reckon!

Dougal Entendre snapped this photo of Norwegian Nick and myself at the club AGM on 25 January.Dougal’s accompanying comment was ‘fashion faux pas’ but I just see a couple of good looking chaps with the same impeccable dress sense. The only problem I’ve noticed is that Nick appears to have got his head on upside down!

The last new model to appear in January was club secretary Woody’s Ripmax Easy Street Mk2.I was rather wary when he first said he had bought one as I had an Easy Street Mk1 when they were first available many years ago and frankly it was rubbish. It was in the early days of ARTFs and I suppose the quality control was rather lacking as mine had all kinds of problems. However, the Mk2 is very different, in fact I wouldn’t have recognised it as being the same model at all, it’s bigger, sleeker, put together properly, and it looks fantastic.This is what Ripmax say about it: The original Easy Street was first introduced as a balsa kit and converted by Ripmax into an ARTF back in the early days of EP powered aircraft. In the many years that have passed since the original model, the performance expected of electric models has moved on in leaps and bounds. This new Easy Street is a completely new design, taking the proven format and concept behind the classic model, while taking advantage of modern design and building techniques. Firstly it is bigger, about 110% of the size of the original airframe to reduce wing loading. The outline is completely new, most noticeably a deeper and more stylish fuselage shape. The wing shape is new also and the tailplane and fin have more area for increased low speed control/response. This new design takes the best from the old concept and delivers a new model that out performs the old design in every way. Woody has fitted his out with a Quantum 25 1200kV motor, a 60A Hobbywing speed controller, and 17.5g New Power metal gear servos. At the moment Woody is using 3 cell 2200mAh lipos and a 10×7 prop but it can also be flown with 4 cell lipos using a 9×7 prop. He asked me to do the maiden flight and I’m pleased to report it flew beautifully, nicely aerobatic without being twitchy and seems to have no vices. The only problem that showed up on both the second and third flights was that the canopy retaining catch didn’t do its job and the canopy came off. But that’s a minor problem and no doubt Woody will soon have it sorted, all in all it’s a great model.

Video time now and this month it starts with 1066’s Mirus that I featured last month:

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 Bob the Burner sent in the following amusing tale:

Conversation overheard on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai:

Iranian Air Defence Site: ‘Unknown aircraft, you are in Iranian airspace. Identify yourself.’

Aircraft: ‘This is a United States aircraft. I am in Iraqi airspace.’
Air Defence Site: ‘You are in Iranian airspace. If you do not depart our airspace, we will launch interceptor aircraft!’
Aircraft: ‘This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 Fighter. Send ’em up, I’ll wait!’

Air Defence Site: (… Total silence)

 Colin Cowplain

Happy New Year to you all, hope you’ve had a great time over the holiday. That’s it for another year, all over now, nothing to see here…  Did Father Christmas bring you some modelling/interesting/amusing presents for Christmas? If so, remember to bring them along to the next club meeting on 11^th Jan and share the joy.

December was a fairly typical winter month for flying, some of us managed to fly quite a bit but many others, probably sensibly, stayed home in the warm, and during the whole month there were only three new models flown. Gorgeous Gary managed to escape the festivities and went flying on 28^th December. It was a perfect flying day apart from the temperature and he was obviously surprised to find himself alone. He sent me this photo, and said  the track wasn’t too bad to drive down. You should have emailed Gary, you might have had some company.The saga of the bullocks continues, they moved on just a few days after I moaned about them in the last Patch News and, apparently (fingers crossed) they won’t be back until the spring. That seems a long way off right now but it’s already noticeable that the days are getting longer, better push on with those winter projects if they’re going to be ready in time for the decent weather.

Much of this edition of Patch News will actually be about stuff away from the patch but that tends to happen every winter. I’ll begin with a couple of rather worrying talks by our Chairman Mark Agate, or as he’s now known, Tranny Agate.  No no no, not because he dresses in Angie’s clothes at the weekend (although, let’s be honest, we’ve all had our suspicions…) but because he confessed to being a transmitter addict. Yes, at the first talk he gave us at the beginning of December he stood up and admitted that whilst he couldn’t talk to his wife about it, he felt able to share with club members the fact that he can’t stop himself buying transmitters. He then proceeded to produce more and more of the things from an array of innocent looking boxes, dating from his very early days of RC flying right up to his latest purchase of Devention transmitter number four.I think it was a total of twenty three on the night and as you can see in the photo they ranged from the early days Fleet Control Systems and Skyleader up to the aforementioned Walkera Devention sets. Please note: I’m writing this two days before Christmas and he’s probably bought more since then, not to mention any he received as Christmas presents. He gave us a brief rundown on each transmitter, why and how he came to own it, it’s good and bad points, and why he felt the need to buy the next one. I think he hoped that by sharing his problem it might help alleviate it in some small way but only a few days later he showed me a list of transmitters he was watching on eBay…

The other talk Mark/Dougal/Tranny gave us was at the last meeting before Christmas and its title was ‘Christmas Night With The Stars’. It turned out to be all about celebrities who have links to model flying and as you can see on his title slide below it included nudity and gender fluidity…back to Tranny Agate then!The PowerPoint presentation also had videos of Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You, Goldfrapp – Drew, Enrique Iglesias getting his fingers chopped up by a drone, and clips from The Fast Show, and A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Now I know what you lot are like, it was the nudity part that interested you most, so here you are, a snapshot from the Goldfrapp video which shows the modelling connection with a WOT-4 and a naked…er…bloke. Sorry.I’m sure all those present would agree that the talk was excellent, if you weren’t there you missed a great evening.

On 2^nd December several PAM members travelled to Medstead, near Alton, for the opening of the newly relocated model shop Modellbau UK. There was a nice display of models outside the shop, including several turbines, and the inside was crammed with loads of goodies. The owner Ian Budgen stocks planes, helicopters, drones, and buggies, along with all the bits and pieces that go with them. Tranny Agate was beside himself with excitement when he spotted a cabinet full of transmitters; fortunately it was safely locked, but just around the corner he found a loose one and snatched it up. We managed to prise it out of his hands eventually. As with all model shops Ian struggles to compete with some of the online prices for larger items but he hopes to have regular ‘specials’ at great prices. When we visited his Wot-4’s were as cheap as any I’d seen online. He also had several of the mini Wot-4’s on display, which demonstrated one of the advantages of a proper model shop, the ability to see them in the flesh, I hadn’t appreciated just how small they are having previously only seen photos online. For us in Petersfield, one of the best things about Modellbau UK is the availability of a good range of the small items we require. The online shops have their place but if you’re scrolling through page after page of dross trying to find the most suitable quick-links only to then discover that the 30p packet either costs £5 to post or takes up to 28 days to arrive, you’ll find a trip to Medstead is a much better experience. We wish Ian well with his endeavours.

Onto the first of the new models now, my Multiplex FunGlider. Following the demise of my Swing Plus I felt the need for a fairly small all-rounder, something that would be a reasonable soarer but also be aerobatic when I get bored of stooging around looking for lift. My Multiplex mate Captain Slow had let me have a fly with his new FunGlider last month and I really liked it, so it was in my mind when I looked at what was available. Austrian model shop Lindinger have them on offer at the moment and when I mentioned that I was considering buying one Captain Slow said he wanted a Multiplex receiver and some other bits and pieces so a combined order would make the total cost high enough to get free postage. Like all the Multiplex models the FunGlider isn’t cheap but the Lindinger price of €129.99 (around £115.50) for the RR version isn’t too bad. The RR (Ready to Run) FunGlider comes with 4 MPX Nano S servos and a BL-20SD 20A speed controller which is coupled to a BL-0 2816-900 Permax brushless motor. All that is required is to fit your own receiver and battery and then add some of the supplied ball bearings into the moulded hole in the fin to obtain the correct centre of gravity. In theory, if you are using a Multiplex transmitter, you can download all the correct model settings to your transmitter using Multiplex Quick Start. This automatically gives you the correct rates, expo, servo direction, throttle/elevator compensation, and 3 position spoilers. I say in theory because I couldn’t find it on the website or work out how to do it! Never mind, it didn’t take very long to set everything up manually. The first flight was on 12^th December, a day that the field had the remains of some snow from the previous day and only myself, Captain Slow, and Woody turned up, all three hardy Multiplex fliers!I knew from Captain Slow’s FunGlider that it would fly well and I’ve not been disappointed so far. It will soar remarkably well for a 1300mm span foamie but it also does all the aerobatics you could reasonably expect. It’s much like a larger version of a Spirit or Kinetic, it glides better but isn’t as crazily aerobatic. Captain Slow filmed me doing a couple of low passes on the first flight and you can see them in this month’s video.

Also in the video is some of the first flight of Catapult King’s new Sunbird electric glider. ”Stop, wait” I hear you shout “his Sunbird was featured in the September Patch News!” Well yes it was, but this one is Sunbird number two. When he purchased the laser cut kit from HobbyKing he used the kit parts as templates to cut an identical set of parts so he could build another one later, and now he’s done exactly that. Catapult was confused by the polyhedral wing when he built the first one and decided he’d got it wrong, although most of us weren’t sure either way. So he’s done it differently on the new one and thinks it’s now correct, I’m still not sure which is correct but they both seem to fly well. You can see the difference between them here: I must admit that the new one did seem to fly better, extremely well in fact. I believe it has exactly the same power set-up as the first one i.e. a Turnigy 2830/1000kv connected to an HK 30A ESC and a 3 cell 1300maH Zippy Compact lipo. As you’ll see in the video Catapult was soon very confident with the model and was able to fly it close enough for me to get some excellent quality footage.

In one of the recent HobbyKing sales I spotted an HD Wing Camera for just £11 odd and decided it had to be worth trying. Well it sort of was… It works well enough but the colours all have a purple tinge to them. On the HK site others mention this but some people say theirs is perfect so maybe there was a duff batch or something.I thought my Swing Plus glider would make a suitable platform for a test flight but unfortunately the flight suffered from a dodgy battery connection and was short lived. I got a beautifully filmed on-board crash though! The camera fared rather better than the glider and escaped unscathed, so then I taped it to the nose of my F-16, hardly a stable platform for aerial photography but it worked reasonably well. I’ve played around with some software in an effort to sort out the purple tinge and have now improved it to a green tinge! The third flight included some shots of Dougal’s Kung Fu getting in the way of… I mean flying in formation with… the F-16 so I’ve included it in this month’s video. I’ll probably put the camera on my FunGlider next and hopefully will get some smoother footage. Not sure how I can correct the purple tinge though, anybody got any ideas?

On the subject of airborne cameras, when Team PAM took part in Balsa Brain recently I won a camera equipped drone in the raffle. I tried flying it from my back garden but found it quite tricky to control in what seemed quite a light breeze so I gave up before the inevitable “please can I have my drone back” conversation with the neighbours.Then I took it to the field and, with a lot more space to play with, managed to learn to fly it reasonably well, although the video footage was pretty rubbish, the content not the quality. Eventually I took it to the indoor flying at Havant one Saturday evening, and had a lot more success there. The combination of no wind, lots of space, and the ability to review the footage on my laptop while charging the single battery it came with, made the process a lot easier. The camera seems to be better than the HobbyKing Wing Camera and I was able to get some reasonable still photos as well as decent video footage, including some of the various other PAM members that were present.You can see some of it in this month’s video.

Back to the patch now and onto the third new model that flew in December. 1066 started building a Mirus six years ago and he’s been going on about it for about…six years. The Mirus is a Ken Stokes designed delta from around 30 years ago, that was known for going ridiculously fast, usually being grossly over-powered by an I/C engine fitted with a tuned pipe. It’s a throwback to 1066’s youth when he flew with the Ken Stokes Mirus team and proved, once and for all, that he’s a hooligan. The one 1066 has just completed took so long because when he started building it he was still flying I/C, but then, having switched to electric power, he had to do lots of redesigning. The original design had a balsa fuselage and tail, with a balsa skinned foam wing, and this one is similar but it’s finished up with a Kline-Fogleman stepped Depron wing that’s reinforced with carbon spars and balsa leading and trailing edges. It finally appeared on Christmas Eve when a few hardy souls went to the patch despite the heavy murk and occasional drizzle. When the murk thinned enough and he got fed up with the rest of us goading him 1066 took the plunge and flew it. The flight was a bit of an anti-climax as it flew perfectly but wasn’t especially fast. He’s using 35mm NTM 1250KV motor, 70 Amp ESC, and a 4 cell lipo. With a 10 x 5 prop it’s pulling 51A and giving around 500W but, as he wants more speed, back on the bench he tried a 9 x 9 but the current went up to 69A for around 600 watts so he’s going to stick with the 10 x 5 for now. Might be worth trying a 9 x 6? I managed to video the first flight but am saving the footage for the January blog so you’ll just have to wait.

Remember ex-PAM member Smiffy? He of ‘the instructions said minimum 3 cells so I’m using 8’ fame. He contacted me recently, just for a general catch up and said he’s been flying with the Guildford club and is also a member at Dunsfold where the club uses the tarmac runway. His latest toy is a Bf-109 which he says is a real handful. It looks fantastic but I’m afraid I don’t have any detail, just this photo that he sent:He also mentioned that he’s bought a YT Ventrix and a KingTech G100 turbine. I found this photo of a Ventrix on the KingTech website. Jealous? Me? Never…drool!

When my Kung Fu first appeared several people asked about the colourful tape I’d used and were surprised to hear that it’s Duck Tape. Most people think it’s only available in grey but it’s actually produced in lots of colours and patterns and I snapped this photo of the display stand at The Range recently.For those who don’t know it The Range is a chain retailer selling home, arts & crafts, garden and leisure products, including furniture and kitchen equipment. The nearest for us is on the old Portsmouth airport site: Portfield Industrial Estate, Portfield Road, Portsmouth PO3 5RR. While I was there I picked up a leaflet about Duck Tape and it had a website link: CLICK HERE.  It’s worth a look and shows the full range of tapes available but it also has a Your Duck section for people to upload their own projects. Well it had to be done and if you check it out you’ll find my Kung Fu amongst other exciting projects such as Pimp My Walker (Zimmer frame), Duck Tape Designer Crutches, and Zebra coloured walking sticks!

Ok, it’s video time now:Please watch the video full screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around. If the video above won’t play for you CLICK HERE.

Rather a lack of quality flying shots this month but here’s a couple that Captain Slow took of my FunGlider:

Now for the winner of the ‘How far did you get before you broke it?’ competition. This year the unfortunate winner is John Warren who snapped the tail of his CAP 20 whilst carrying the model between his car and the gate to the field!Don’t feel too bad John, we’ve all broken models while they’re still in the workshop!

One day at Gatwick airport a young lady was conducting a survey into human sexual behaviour. After about three hours of questioning passengers, she sees a pilot walking through.

Knowing the reputation of pilots she stops him “Excuse me, Captain, I am doing a survey on human sexual behaviour and I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.”

He agrees, and after three or four questions, she asks him “When was the last time you had sex?”

Straight away the Captain replies “1959”.

The girl was shocked… she looks at the captain and says “That was a long time ago!”

The pilot replies “I guess so… but it’s only 2015 now…”

Colin Cowplain.