Patch News – February 2014
In the January Patch News I mentioned that John Warren had damaged his Albatross during a take-off attempt. A slow flying WW1 biplane is never going to be the easiest model to get off the ground, it’s vital to be quick on the rudder to keep it heading straight into wind as once the wind gets under one side of those draggy wings there will only be one outcome. The good news is that John soon completed the repairs and the Albatross has flown successfully several times in February. He’s also added a spinner and a few other details; the pilot’s new white scarf can be seen streaming in the wind on low passes.
This photo is a bit odd, there seems to be a low wing monoplane flying over, and there’s a contrail… that can’t be right, Biggles would turn in his grave!
Gentleman Jim brought his high quality camera along one day and snapped my rather beaten up Sportjet on a low pass. There were several better photos than this one but I wanted to show that Harpers Oak is still alive and well.
While we are looking at Sportjets here is Mark’s that he’s now fitted with the undercarriage. They all come supplied with clip on legs and wheels but most pilots don’t bother with them as a jet looks odd flying around with the wheels hanging down. But Mark fancied some take-offs and landings so he clipped them in and had a morning enjoying circuits and bumps.
Jim also took this photo of Burly Turley posing with his ex-Cyano Steve 42” AJ Slick. 
At the time Peter was telling Jim where to set his F stop… I’m sure I heard Jim say he knew exactly where he wanted to put his F stop! Peter resurrected the Slick from a bag of wreckage after Steve ‘modified’ it. It now looks as good as new and flies just like it did before the mishap.
Jim was kind enough to send me some pics of his new Grumman Wildcat. I posted a photo of Jim holding the then unflown model in the November blog and it remained unflown until February. It’s only had a couple of flights so far and they went very well, the Wildcat flew beautifully. It’s powered by a Hacker motor and has considerably more power than the standard Parkzone one (Jim bought an ‘airframe only’ kit). The motor must be pulling the maximum current the speed controller can handle as the motor cut briefly a couple of times at full throttle. A quick closing and reopening of the throttle got it started again and it wasn’t really a problem as the plane flew happily on half throttle anyway. Next time out Jim will try some smaller props to reduce the current draw a little.
Well, it has finally happened; Norwegian Nick has got a foamie! It’s one of the little EPP Mustangs that many of us are enjoying but being a ‘real modeller’ Nick had to do a bit more than just glue it together, so amongst other things his features concealed control links and a snazzy paint job.
How does it fly? Just like all the rest really, they can be tame or wild and they’ll do pretty much anything the pilot can.
Another ‘real modeller’ is Keith Evans and following on from his success with his home grown Spitfire he has produced an ME109.
It’s an all built up balsa and ply model built from Keith’s own plans. He made it 37” span so it’ll fit in the car in one piece, seems as good a starting point as any! At about 3-1/2lbs it’s not light but it has plenty of power and flies extremely well on its 3 cell lipo. Well done Keith.
The last big raffle prize was a Multiplex Xeno, a flying wing that can be flown either as a glider or with electric power. The lucky winner was Bob Hill, although at the time he looked rather dubious about it! However, he put it all together and test flew it on one of the few sunny days in February.
I think Bob was pleasantly surprised when it actually flew, and in fact it flew very well indeed. It’s slightly odd in that (in Bob’s words) it ‘wobbles’ in flight, I imagine that’s something to do with having two fairly small fins and that is probably also the reason it tends to stay in turns rather than level out . But that’s no bad thing if you are trying to keep turning in a thermal and from what we’ve seen so far the Xeno really performs well on the glide. It’s also aerobatic and I did a few loops and rolls etc including one outside loop. When it was safely back on the ground Bob demonstrated how the whole thing folds in half, it’s hinged on the centerline and folds in half downwards to pack neatly away for easy transport. The only thing that holds the wing flat for flight is the clip on canopy and I felt rather relieved that I only did one outside loop before being told about its folding capabilities! The other fairly unusual feature is that the motor is mounted centrally in the wing, rather than at the trailing edge, and there is an extension shaft to drive the rear mounted prop. I didn’t get any photos of Bob’s in the folded position but this Multiplex one shows the motor position and hingeing well.
Mark Agate tested his new MX2 one Sunday morning. Both Steve 1066 Hastings and Phil Wonky Wiltshire own one of these but neither of them are very impressed by its handling so we were interested to see how Mark’s performed. All seemed to be going well and Mark was certainly gave it a good testing over a number of flights, but he emailed this comment and photo later in the day:
“As several people commented, the MX2 seems to have a vicious tendency to tip-stall when you least expect it. A full-size Tiger Moth started pulling aerobatics right over our heads (and quite low!) while I was having the 5th flight, which distracted me quite a bit. Then the buzzer sounded for me to land, and I thought I had plenty of airspeed, but she flicked and spun into the valley, about 20ft the other side of the road. Damage seems to be confined to broken prop and spinner, cracked cowl and bent motor shaft. Hobby King have spares, so I’m placing an order. I think heavy wings and lack of lateral balance (forgot to check it…) may have been contributory factors.”
The good news is that the spares have now arrived so we should see the MX2 back in the air soon.
Andy ‘Anything you can buy I can buy better’ Smith showed up with a new toy the other day. No not a new plane, or radio, or trolley, or even an uprated heater for his tx muff… it’s a prop cover! It’s a Xoar genuine leather cover that comes in two pieces that are held together with Velcro. Now I can understand that if you’ve got some big scale plane with an expensive scale type wooden prop you might want some protection for it, but why would you need a condom for a spare prop for an electric powered WOT4?
They come in various sizes; obviously Smiffy only needed a small one…
Gary Houghton has recently repaired his Yak 54 after an engine cut caused a rather abrupt arrival. During the repair process he switched the type of silencer to one that is a little less obtrusive. Unfortunately although it looks less obtrusive it doesn’t sound it and Gary has to think again to meet the noise regulations.
Gary’s Yak is looking a little sad after its repairs so I thought you might like to see one with a gorgeous finish.
Look closely and you may be able to spot a couple of outstanding points. The debate following the December blog proved that The ‘Pipe & Camouflaged Trousers model’ wasn’t nearly as popular as the ‘Underslung Totty model’ so hopefully you’ll approve.
A blonde is going on her first plane trip and she’s very excited. As soon as she boards the 747 she starts running up and down the aisles shouting ‘Boeing, Boeing, Boeing’. The crew and other passengers get more and more agitated and eventually the pilot emerges from the cockpit and at the top of his voice shouts ‘BE SILENT!’ You could have heard a pin drop, the passengers are stunned, the blonde stops in her tracks for a moment, thinking. Then she runs up and down again shouting ‘Oeing, Oeing, Oeing’…
Colin Cowplain
Patch News – January 2014
It’s the start of February and there is still no improvement in the weather, wet and windy most days, but we’ve still managed to fly occasionally, and several new models have emerged. I snapped this picture of Tony Neal in mid-January, testing out one of his Christmas presents. It was gusting up to 29mph…. but we flew!
I mentioned back in the November Patch News that John Warren has been building a new model; well it’s now finished and has had several flights. It’s an Albatross Dv built from plans and was designed to have a 60 I/C motor. But John has built it for electric power and it flies using a 3 cell pack instead of about 10ozs of glow fuel.
When I took the photos John hadn’t managed to find a suitable spinner but he’s since located and ordered one. Now it’s proved successful I’m sure John will be adding black crosses and other markings. Being a WW1 biplane with a radial engine means it has a very short nose and inevitably the correct CG wasn’t achievable without adding some weight in the nose. This wasn’t helped by using a relatively small electric motor instead of a weighty 60 I/C and John had to add about a pound of lead around the inside of the cowl which has pushed the model weight up to around 6lbs.
I forget what motor it uses but John obviously made the right choice as it has just the right amount of power for a WW1 biplane. I was a bit bothered that a high drag biplane might be a bit underpowered on 3 cells but I was wrong and it stooges around very realistically on around two thirds throttle and is good for flight times of between six and seven minutes. It flew well right from the first take-off but we’ve gradually been fine tuning the handling by adjusting the exponential and rates, and have coupled some rudder in with the ailerons to make it turn better. Unfortunately on about the sixth take-off John didn’t quite manage to keep it straight and the bottom wing was damaged in the ensuing cartwheel. But repairs are underway and we’ll soon see it back flying again. Well done John, an unusual and tricky choice but you done a great job.
Tony Neal brought two new models to the patch recently, a P51 Mustang and a DH98 Mosquito, but unfortunately the Mossie had developed a fault in one of the speed controllers so Tony was unable to fly it. He built it from the Cloud Models kit and it has a built up central fuselage crutch with moulded plastic upper & lower shells to simplify the curved areas. The wings are veneered foam and the tail & fin are from sheet balsa.
It was originally designed for 2 x 480 brushed motors and a 7 cell nicad pack but Tony has updated it with a couple of brushless outrunners and 2 lipo packs. He has also added retracts and a rudder so it should take off and land properly and still look good in the air.
Tony has finished it in the colours of 627 squadron and it’s a MkIV night bomber. It looks great just sat on the ground waiting to go and I’m looking forward to seeing it in the air. He tells me he’s now replaced the faulty esc so it’s just a question of waiting for a day with decent weather…
The P51 Mustang is the one Tony won in the November big raffle. It’s a 59” span Phoenix Models ARTF that comes with all the parts to make it either I/C or electric powered. Tony chose the I/C route and installed an ASP46 2-stroke…at least that meant there were no speed controller problems!
The model comes complete with retracts and is covered in Oracover in the scheme of 375th Fighter Squadron, 361st Fighter Group, 8th US Army Air Force based at Bottisham in Cambridgeshire.
The first flight went like clockwork apart from being very twitchy on high rate ailerons. A quick switch to low rate sorted that and the rest of the flight was without incident. The retracts worked perfectly and the model looked very realistic in the air with the wheels tucked neatly away. I must admit I could be tempted by one of these…going with the electric option of course though.
Now for a bit of news from a different patch, an indoor one. At the last club meeting Burly Turley talked about the Havant indoor meetings and the inevitable mid-airs that occur. Jeremy Stuttard sent me a photo of Mark Agate (AKA Dougal Entendre) flying his latest indoor machine before any mishaps.
It’s a Galaxy 3D from HobbyKing, all foam of course but has a fair bit of carbon fibre stiffening to stop it all flapping about. It’s 845mm span and comes complete with motor & prop so all it needs is 3 x 5gm servos, a 12A esc, a 2S lipo, and a receiver. Cost is around £25 which seems pretty good to me. Probably lucky it’s not expensive as those mid-airs soon took their toll on Mark’s machine. He sent me a photo showing some pretty drastic wing damage but said it didn’t seem to make much difference to the way it flies!
Look closely and you can spot other damage as well, with tell-tale tape repairs. Note the drag brakes on the ailerons and rudder, all part of making it fly slowly.
While on the subject of indoor flying, BMFA have just run the Electric Indoor Masters at the Barnsley Metrodome. Click on this link: Indoor pattern flying to see the highest place Brit Connor Stephenson in the F3P (aerobatics) class, it’s brilliant. Enjoy the video and think about the fact that he came third… I can’t wait to see the winner, Derk van de Vecht from Holland!
Back to Mark Agate for a moment, he’s recently been flying a Parkzone Spitfire. I neglected to get any static photos of it, but there are already others in the club anyway, but I did get some reasonable flying shots.
The second shot isn’t brilliant but it does show that Harper’s Oak is alive and well!
As you can see Mark has fitted the optional retracts which make such a difference in the air. At the moment the grass is a bit too wet & long for it to take-off so Mark is having to hand launch it but I’m sure it will be fine once a glorious summer arrives…
Another video that you might find interesting is one that Andy Smith sent me: How to hand launch It’s a tutorial on hand launching, covering a variety of models, and its well worth a look. I was interested to see that he launches an EDF inverted, something I’ve found works well with my Sportjet, but he does it underarm rather than overarm. I’ll have to give that a try.
Finally, my piece about John Wheeley’s Twinstar in the last Patch News provoked lots of comments, (I love comments, it shows that somebody actually reads my drivel) mostly saying they preferred the “Underslung Totty Twinstar” to the “Pipe & Camouflaged Trousers Twinstar”. I thought long and hard about it; to keep the comments coming should I go for a picture of more totty, or less pipe & trousers. Try this one; hopefully it’s a small improvement!
My friend met a girl in the pub last night, and they ended up going home together. Tonight the girl walks into a supermarket and on her way round she sees him… He was stacking washing powder boxes onto the shelves. “You lying bastard” she yells “last night you told me you were a stunt pilot!” “No” he says “I told you I was a member of the Ariel display team.”
Colin Cowplain
Patch News – December 2013
It’s January so Happy New Year to you all, and it must be time for another Patch News.
What awful weather we’ve had recently! Gales and torrential rain aren’t really compatible with model flying and like most of you I’ve hardly managed any flying at all so this edition will be fairly short. However, the Sunday morning after Christmas was actually quite nice and it seemed many members just wanted to escape for a while. Some had received modelling presents, others had just taken the opportunity of the time off work to get new models ready to fly.
First up is Cyano Steve with his first new plane for a while. Well it’s actually only about two months but in Steve’s case that’s quite a while. This one is a Katana MX from Precision Aerobatics and it’s designed to have an extremely wide flight envelope, being capable of everything from precision aerobatics through high energy to graceful slow and low 3D manoeuvres.
The first thing that struck me about it was the large wing area compared to similar models, that should certainly help with the slow and low stuff. It’s obviously a high quality model, all laser or CNC cut, lots of carbon reinforcement in the important places, and all beautifully put together. I think Steve must have also bought the Bling Package (no, seriously, that’s what it’s called!) as his has a carbon fibre spinner, wheel spats, and some neat little vortex generators on the wings. I assume Steve is using the recommended PA Thrust 50 outrunner motor and matching 70A esc, and they are powered by 2 x 2200maH 3 cell packs which should give flights of around 6 minutes. Early days yet for him to get used to the model but first impressions are very good, it looks to me as if it will be his best flier so far. I think it should be capable of matching the field long knife edge passes that 1066 is now doing about 4 feet off the ground! 
I hear that Steve has just completed on a new house which has several outbuildings…I reckon one of them must be destined to be a model room very soon. Good luck with Montague Mansions.
Desperate Dan arrived with two new models, the first being an FW-190. I’m not sure but I think I heard Dan say he bought it on eBay, but don’t know anything about it other than that. It looks like the Ultrafly one from a few years back to me, although it might be smaller than theirs. It felt pretty light, always a good thing for a warbird and, despite what all the ‘experts’ predicted, Dan took off, had a long flight, and landed back safely again with no problems at all.
Dan’s second model wasn’t such a success. It’s a Turnigy Tek Sumo or Teksumo (depends if you read it off the wing or off the HobbyKing website) and it’s a 900mm span EPP foam wing.
I was interested to know what Teksumo meant so I put the word into translation software on the internet, apparently it’s Estonian and it means… Teksumo…hmmm. Anyway, EPP is a really strong foam but it’s not possible to get such a nice finish on it as you can with EPO or EPS. EPS is the best for moulding in scale details etc but it’s also the weakest, so manufacturers have to choose what they think is best for each particular aircraft. Although the Tek Sumo has a relatively rough surface texture it has a very loud paint finish applied, so it looks pretty good overall. On the website it says it has a huge flight envelope and will fly full aerobatics or slow down to walking pace and the accompanying video shows it performing well. Sadly Dan’s didn’t…well not yet anyway. I’m sure it will be ok once he’s got it sorted out but on both the attempts I saw it failed to get far past the launch. Dan has fitted his with FPV gear and it’s probably a good plane for FPV but it might be better to get it flying properly first and worry about FPV later.
I think it would help a lot to ask a more experienced pilot get it up and trimmed for you Dan (that means I want a go with it Dan!).
The third pilot that had spent Christmas building instead of being a good family chap was John Wheeley. He brought along his new Multiplex Twinstar Mk 2. John had flown a Mk 1 very successfully a few years ago and decided to try the newer version.
Apparently the construction is very different to the earlier one, the fuselage comes in two halves that have to be joined, and the wings are now two separate items rather than the one piece wing of the earlier version. They use a GRP joiner but are not permanently glued together so can be separated for ease of transport. John wasn’t keen and said he preferred the simplicity of the Mk 1! I thought the Mk2 had come about because of the advances in electric power to outrunner motors and lipos but the basic model still comes with a pair of brushed Speed 400 6v motors which are intended to be used with a single brushed ESC and an 8 cell nicad or nimh pack. There is a conversion pack available from Multiplex which consists of 2 outrunner motors, 2 brushless speed controllers, the various necessary Y leads, props etc but it’s very expensive and a much cheaper option would be to buy the recommended motors and controllers from BRC or similar.
Anyway John has stuck with the Speed 400’s and uses an 8 cell nimh pack which I would say provides ‘adequate’ power but personally I would like a bit more oomph to enjoy looning the thing around a bit. But it flies fine will do loops and rolls and so on and it’s a very nice handling sport model. John hasn’t bothered fitting an undercarriage, in fact it’s not intended to have one although a float kit is available if you fancy a bit of fun from flying from a lake. If you Google the Twinstar you’ll find literally hundreds of versions of the model, some just fancy paint schemes but some quite heavily modified, even 4 engined ones!
OK so the last one isn’t anything special…there was just something about the picture that appealed…
Andy Smith…remember him? He moved house a few months ago and his decorating chores mean he hasn’t been to the patch for a while but he’s threatening to return soon. But recently I stumbled across this video shot from a camera fitted alongside the cockpit of one of his F4 Phantoms. It was taken last July (not at 4am in August 2012 as the video clock shows!) and I hate to say it but it’s actually quite good. Watch carefully and you can spot Mike Smith’s Twinjet a few fleeting times. Click here If nothing else it will remind you of what our lovely patch is like in the summer.
As migration approached, two elderly vultures doubted they could make the trip south, so they decided to go by airplane.
When they checked their baggage, the attendant noticed that they were carrying two dead raccoons. “Do you wish to check the raccoons through as luggage?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” replied the vultures. “They’re carrion.”
Colin Cowplain
A message to PAM from Santa
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