Patch News – January 2015

Well it’s 1^st of February, a Sunday morning, and I’m sat at home writing Patch News instead of flying. Don’t upset yourselves, it’s not because I’m a slave to the ‘job’, it’s blowing a gale outside and very cold so I decided to give it a miss today, although I expect some hardy souls have ventured up to the patch. Overall January wasn’t too bad, we managed a fair bit of flying between us as you’ll see below.

I was away for a few days over New Year so I missed some flying but Dougal Entendre (Mark) was kind enough to send me some photos. His email was titled Flying in the Murk and you can see why! It seems there was some standing around waiting for the fog to clear but 1066 (Steve H) was able to fly a couple of his 3D machines, keeping them very close in.

Dougal also included some photos and info of his new X-Tech Laius, including a helpful note on the instructions. Good to know that Chinglish is alive and well!I asked for some more info on the Laius and this was Dougal’s reply: “I have virtually no info on the Laius I’m afraid! I got the kit on Ebay for just under £30, all surfaces built and covered, but it still took me most of the holidays to do the installation and set-up. The instructions say it’s made by X-Tech, but Google doesn’t give any other clues, so it’s probably obsolete now. It’s 38″ wingspan and seems to go nicely on a 3S 1800mAh, though as Steve H pointed out, probably needs a little more oomph for prop-hanging. I’m going to experiment with bigger props and speed controllers, but even with the current set-up it’ll be great for calm summer evenings.”I took some photos later in the month, the model was flying well and for £30 was a good buy I reckon.

Dougal has also been playing with the firmware on his transmitter. He bought a Walkera Devention Devo 12 around a year ago and has been very happy with it, but now he has changed the firmware to Deviation.Deviation is a 3^rd party software company and their programs are written specifically for Devention transmitters but can also be used on various others, including the Turnigy 9X. One of the things it does it enable the use of Spektrum receivers. Not being a Spektrum lover myself that wouldn’t appeal to me but of course Spektrum receivers are far more readily available, and presumably cheaper, than Devention ones. It allows the user much more flexibility in programming and even enables them to change colours, fonts, and bitmaps on the Tx screen.One thing that Mark has used it for is to make the numbers on the built in timer much larger so he is able to read the timer with just a very quick glance down, much safer. One drawback is that he has lost all the set-ups on his existing models so he has been working his way through all of them, treating each one as if it were a brand new model.It’s made for some exciting ‘first’ flights for the rest of us to watch! In the photos you can see the transmitter has spots of water on it, and here is my transmitter safely in its muff.I was trying to photograph the snow on it but it was still warm enough inside to melt the snowflakes almost instantly, that was one cold day at the field! Of course some people don’t seem to notice the cold at all; this is Desperate Dan on a slightly warmer day in full laidback mode!At the time he had his Phoenix 2000 electric glider well up at a safe height.

Another model that had its first outing in January was John Wheeley’s Durafly Das UglyStik from HobbyKing.The original plan for Das Ugly Stick first appeared in 1966 and it was designed by Phil Kraft. It was hugely popular and was soon kitted by a company called Jensen, followed by several others later on. There have been many other Stik offshoots over the years, bigger, smaller etc. Not sure why but Durafly say UglyStik as one word, maybe it’s a patent issue or something. It’s in their Retro Series and in keeping with that the model comes with a dummy I/C engine and a wooden prop. It’s actually powered by an electric motor fitted behind the plastic dummy I/C one, with an extension shaft running through to the prop.I’ve read reports of the shaft seizing so John is going to keep an eye open for any signs of problems. The 1100mm span model is all EPO moulded and comes ready fitted with the 3536 1000kv motor, a 30A esc, and 4 x 9gm servos. All you need is your usual transmitter and receiver and a bog standard 3 cell lipo of around 2200mAh. It has various hatches to access the necessary parts, the battery being fitted from the underside, below the wing. The HK blurb says there are just 8 simple steps needed to complete the model, it all goes together with screws/bolts, so it only took John about 4 months! It flies very well, I’ve had a go with it and I liked it a lot, I might be tempted in the future. The only thing I’m a bit surprised by is the price, right now the HobbyKing UK warehouse is showing £103.12, yet the Sea Vixen which comes with a ducted fan as well as a motor, a 45A esc, and 3 electric retracts is only £98.99, doesn’t make any sense. I thought the Stik was much cheaper than that when it was first announced about a year ago? Maybe they’ve bumped the price up because it’s very popular.

In Patch News in December 2013 I featured John’s Twinstar and included a photo of another Twinstar with ‘underslung totty’ that proved very popular. Well for your enjoyment this month I’m including a photo John that sent through of Dougal’s HK Sportjet with another fine example of ‘underslung totty’, I hope you enjoy it just as much.

Bob Hill has been flying his little HK Mustang again during January and it now has a slab-sided look.The profile fuselage model has had a great many flights and has suffered a bit over time so Bob decided to add sheet balsa around the front half of the fuselage to strengthen and tidy it up a bit. Seems to have worked well and it smartens up the whole thing.

I featured the Citabria Pro that Keith Evans was building in the November Patch News but at the time it wasn’t quite ready for its maiden flight.Well, I test flew it in January and am happy to report that all went well, with just a slight trim problem. Keith will be giving us a video presentation and talk about the build and first flight at the next club meeting (12^th Feb) so I won’t go into any of the model details for now.

1066 flew his relatively new HobbyKing Invictus a couple of times in January. I mentioned the model in Patch News last October and said that Steve wasn’t really happy with it at the time. He’s now made some changes, fitted a higher current esc, changed the prop, and a few other things, and is now much more pleased with it. It’s designed as a pylon racer and conforms to NMPRA (National Miniature Pylon Racing Assoc) specs for EF-1 so it’s never going to be a slow aircraft but neither is it scarily quick, just a good all round sports model.The changes seem to have made it much more manageable for our site and, as Steve bought it to be a rough weather model, I think he’s probably succeeded now.

Chairman Ron has built an ME109 from a David Boddington plan which was part of a Dogfight Duo, the other one being a Spitfire.The plan was first published in the July 2001 RC Model Flyer magazine and it’s fairly unusual in having a Jedelsky wing construction. If you don’t know what that is I recommend Google! The original was intended to be powered by a .15cu I/C engine but Ron has converted it to electric power and fitted a 2418/8 motor with a 40A esc. The all up weight is around 800g (28ozs) including the 3 cell 2200mAh lipo that he used for the first couple of flights. The pack still had about 65% remaining after a 5 minute flight so I wonder if it might be worth trying a lighter pack to reduce the wing loading a bit. It does have a tendency to tip stall if slowed down too much but I don’t think it will be a major problem. Maybe lateral balance needs to be looked.It has a very small (presumably scale) tail plane, not sure if that is a contributory factor. The model has a good turn of speed and as it’s only around 30″ span it disappears pretty quickly so Ron will have to keep his eyes peeled. Ron has made a really good job of both the build and the finish.He recently brought the model to club for us to admire and said he intended to build the Spitfire if the 109 flew well. Time to get building then Ron, it flew well!

In last months’ edition I ran a caption competition in an attempt to find out if anyone actually reads Patch News. There were quite a few entries but mostly from the same old contributors. Comments are always welcome, good or bad, please add your thoughts. Anyway, the competition winner was Scare D. Cat with a particularly cutting caption and I presented the prize, a Vulcan mug, at the AGM last week. If you don’t know who Scare D. Cat is… you should have been there!

A supposedly true story about Muhammad Ali:

Ali was once on a plane, awaiting take-off when the flight attendant asked him to fasten his seatbelt. He replied “Superman don’t need no seatbelt”. She responded “Superman don’t need no plane”.

Colin Cowplain