Patch News – January 2017

I must begin this month with the very sad news that Frank Buckland’s wife Pam passed away on 8^th January. I’m including the news here because I know many ex-members read Patch News and they may not have heard of Pam’s passing. Many of you will know Frank, he was one of the club’s earliest members and served on the committee for many years in various positions including Chairman. Pam was always on hand to support him and attended many of the club social events including the dinners, barbecues, and quizzes that we used to hold annually. Pam’s funeral took place at Chichester Crematorium on 30^th January and was attended (among others) by myself and Doreen, Don and Lizzie Eades, Peter Turley, and another ex-member Ken Boucher and his wife Jill. After the service many of us went back to The Five Bells at Buriton for refreshments and a chinwag. Frank asked me to thank the club for the card and all it’s good wishes.

Moving on to happier matters now, many club members managed to fly in January although, as expected at this time of year, the weather made some Sundays un-flyable. One weekend the forecast was bad for Sunday so Dougal Entendre sneaked up to the field on the Saturday. He sent me this photo of his models in the chilly conditions:There were a few lovely (but cold) midweek days and on one of them the Midweekers present took the opportunity to mow the patch.  Captain Slow pushed the mower while I had the much more important job of giving directions!Several new models appeared in January, I’m not sure if they were Christmas presents or simply the result of the lousy weather forcing people to spend more time in the shed. Probably a bit of both I reckon.

Musical maestros (or should that be Guitar Gits?) Chris P Bacon and Mike Creamer saved up their pennies and ordered a pair of wood Wot 4 Mk2’s. This version of the Wot 4 is constructed from lightweight balsa and ply and comes ready built and covered. Unlike the 47.4” span Wot 4 Foam-E the wood version is 52.6” span, the same size as the original Wot 4 that was designed by Chris Foss back in 1977 and available as a plan. It was first kitted in 1981 and has since been produced in a variety of versions and sizes. There are optional I/C or electric ‘power packs’ available for this latest wood version, simply choose the route you wish to take.Mike sensibly chose the electric route and fitted his model out with a Turnigy 1000kv motor, an Aerodrive 3542 I believe. This is coupled to a 60A speed controller and is powered by a Zippy 3300mAh 4 cell lipo battery. Using an 11 x 8 prop Mike gets plenty of power and the battery has around 35% remaining after a 6 minute flight.The plane’s first take-off and landing can be seen in this month’s video at the end of the blog. The model has now had several flights and Mike is getting on well with it, it’s an ideal follow-on plane to his Freewing Pandora.

On the other hand Chris P Bacon had a major brain fade and fitted one of those dirty noisy smelly things to his new Wot 4! Apparently it’s an old fashioned internal combustion engine, an SC52 4-stroke.He said something about a bucket list and wanting to get it out of his system. He’s already bought the sporty convertible and plays a guitar, let’s just be thankful he’s too old to ride a motorbike or chase women these days!Don’t you just love the blue rubber Marigolds? Wait until Ursula finds out you’re using them for something other than the washing up Chris P! So, how does it fly? At the time of writing we’re still waiting to find out. It’s passed the noise test ok and Chris P got it running and handed me the transmitter to do the test flight but I found only one aileron was working. Once we got the obligatory “Bloody Spektrum” etc. comments out of the way we found the problem was actually a broken aileron link, so there could be no test flight that day. The linkage has now been fixed and no doubt it will fly well as soon as the weather produces a decent day.

I think Chris P is having trouble justifying the money he’s spent on an electric starter, a lead acid battery to power it, a glow clip powered by a NiCad battery, and a trolley to carry it all on. It obviously wasn’t worth all the expense and hassle for just one I/C plane, so he’s also fitted an I/C engine to an Acro Wot, this time a Laser 70 4-stroke. The first I knew of this was when I received and email from Chris P with the subject line ‘A really dirty picture’. Obviously I clicked to open the email as quickly as possible, only to be met with this:Never mind, it looks nice apart from that big lump of iron sticking out the front, the bits of fuel tubing, the needle valve, the exhaust, and the hacked about cowl. But I’m sure it will fly well and I look forward to having a go with it.

Not strictly new, but certainly heavily modified, is this flying wing being beautifully modelled by Basher Bob.It started life as a Multiplex Xeno, a moulded foam pure flying wing with a centrally mounted motor that drives a pusher prop via an extension shaft like this one (not Bob’s).It’s intended to be used for thermal or slope soaring and is unusual in that it folds in half so it can be carried up the hills in a rucksack. But Basher didn’t really like the flying characteristics, he felt it always seemed a little unstable, and he found it was all too easy to bend the extension motor shaft. So he built a detachable fuselage with an NTM Prop Drive 28-36 1400kv motor mounted at the front and a large central fin behind the wing. He uses a 40A esc and a 3 cell 2200mAh battery. The extra fin area has improved the stability and with a 10 x 6 folding prop there’s little possibility of bending the motor shaft. The all up weight is now around 40 ounces and, although the glide probably isn’t as good as before, it’s still good and Basher wants the model to be a sports flier rather than a soarer.The fuselage can be easily removed if Basher wants to take it slope soaring and the wing still folds if necessary. So all in all the conversion has been a great success. Bob always likes to get a B into his model names so he now calls it a Beno. Personally I felt the B should have gone at the other end but I was banned from calling it that…

Next up is Catapult King’s new model, the Pulse’ish. Catapult was impressed by a magazine article on the E-Flite Pulse and decided to build his own version of it. He studied the photos, took measurements, and scaled them up.This is what Catapult says about it: Starting from a ply box to support the battery, ESC, receiver and support the wing etc. the plane is made mainly from Depron and took around six months to complete due to lack of technique and know-how. It has been covered with PVA and parcel brown paper followed by HobbyKing shrink wrap. It currently flies on an NTM 35-30/1100kv motor (following the accident with the NTM 35-42 drive shaft) and a 10×6 prop on a Turnigy 4s 2650 battery.It looks pretty smart even just in its brown paper covering and even better once the shrink film had been applied. Catapult opted for a tricycle undercarriage rather than the more common taildragger.Gentleman Jim flew an E-Flite Pulse for a long time and found it to be an excellent model. Here’s a photo of Jim’s genuine E-Flite Pulse to compare with Catapult’s Pulse’ish.I’ve flown the Pulse’ish a few times now and can vouch for its good flying characteristics. Kryten snapped this excellent action shot which shows off the very flat bottomed wing well:

January didn’t turn out to be a good month for me; I had a couple of minor disasters. The first one involved my new Raptor. Last month I included some photos of the untouched kit and here it is again with the all-flying tail feathers assembled and positioned, and all the wiring tidied up and glued in place.The wiring needs to be glued in place to keep the duct clear and get the smoothest possible airflow. After thorough checks that the servos and speed controller worked correctly and the fan ran in the right direction the other half of the fuselage was epoxied in place, effectively sealing all the electronics away forever. Then I added the wings and fins and connected up the linkages. This was when I realised one of the ailerons servos wasn’t returning to centre correctly! I’d checked the servos moved and didn’t judder but without the output arms fitted I hadn’t noticed that the servo stopped in a different position every time. After an awful lot of head scratching I eventually managed to remove the servo, fit a new one, and re-glue the wiring in place. I’ve never done keyhole surgery before! The finished Raptor looked good and I was confident it would fly well…wrong! I’m not sure what happened but basically it failed to get away from what seemed to be a perfectly good launch.The polystyrene fuselage didn’t like the rapid arrival and the nose was quite badly damaged. Never mind, it’s repairable, although it will never be as pretty as before. Once it’s sorted I’ll try again, watch this space…

My second disaster occurred on Saturday 28^th January when I was flying my venerable Spirit mini-glider. This photo of it was taken way back in the summer of 2014:I often fly it up to a great height and then spin it back down again but on this occasion it vanished into the clouds. No problem I thought, it’s happened before, just put it in a spin and watch for it to re-appear. Only this time it didn’t! Both Basher and were watching the model intently when it entered the cloud but neither of us saw it come out again. I suppose it’s possible it got sucked up by a thermal and didn’t come out, but that seems very unlikely. It’s much more likely that we both simply failed to spot it, the Spirit is only 32” span and it was very high at the time. I tried various manoeuvres while scanning the sky but neither of us saw it again. The wind would have carried it north towards East Meon but I really have no idea where it’s likely to be, and despite both Doreen and I traipsing around the hills for several hours we didn’t find it. I’ve had hundreds of flights with the Spirit and it had been repaired a few times but I still enjoyed flying it and I don’t like losing it. On a slightly more cheerful note I’ve just checked the HobbyKing website and both the Spirit and similar Kinetic are in stock in the UK warehouse…tempted!

Returning to happier things now, Dwayne Pipe has built another Spitfire. His earlier Spit flew reasonably well but was rather overweight which did nothing for its flying characteristics.Some of you may have seen the new one when Dwayne brought it along to a recent club meeting but for the rest of you here are some details. Dwayne drew the plans himself and based it on one of the last operational Mk19 reconnaissance Spitfires based in Malaysia in 1954. It’s 43 inches wingspan and weighs just over 3lbs, so it’s a little smaller but much lighter than his previous Spit.He’s fitted a 1000kv motor, a 60A speed controller, an 11 x 8 folding prop, and a 3 cell lipo to provide the power. Dwayne confesses to have lengthened the nose a little so he can get the CG in the right position without the need to add weight. I wasn’t at the patch on the day of the first couple of flights but all went well and apparently the Spit is very well behaved. At the moment the Spit is hand launched but Dwayne has built in undercarriage mounts so he can add an undercarriage later if he wants.Hopefully I’ll get some flying shots and video for the next Patch News, in the meantime you’ll just have to enjoy the static shots. I’m sure you’ll agree Dwayne has made a lovely job of it.

January 2nd was a cracking flying day and Kryten took these superb shots of Woody’s E-Bandit, 1066’s Grasshopper, Modelling Clay’s Acro Wot, and Mike C’s Pandora:

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

A blonde lady is a passenger in a light aircraft when her pilot collapses.

She grabs the mike and calls out: “Mayday! Mayday! My pilot is dead, help me!”

Air traffic control responds “Don’t worry, I’ll talk you through this. What’s your height and position?”

“I’m 5 foot 4 inches and I’m in the plane,” she says… 

Colin Cowplain