Patch News – July 2014

After my holiday last month Patch News was very late. This month I’ve got loads of material, partly due to the fabulous weather no doubt, and I’m aiming to get back on track so this should be online by 1^st August.
I’ll start with what seems to be an emerging trend, possibly a follow on from the highly successful EPP Mustangs & 109s. At the beginning of the month 1066 brought along a Freewing Spirit, it’s an 815mm span EPO mini electric glider described as a ‘warmliner’. That means it’s fast and fully aerobatic, but it can also be flown in a docile manner and it glides remarkably well for its size. It comes complete with four servos, a 2621 1100kV motor & folding prop, 20A speed controller, and even a second power pod to convert it to a pusher for FPV work. It’s around £43 in the UK and all you need to add is a receiver and 3 cell lipo.  The model info says to use a 450-500mAh battery but the 1000mAh packs most of us use in the Mustangs fit perfectly. I’m sure the slightly fatter 1300mAh pack would also fit. The wings simply click together, as does the all moving tail, and mounting the wing uses two screws. That’s it! Putting on the stickers really does take the longest time.
Steve had purchased two Spirits from HobbyKing, one being intended for a future raffle prize, but great interest was shown in the Spirit as soon as it flew and Dougal Entendre promptly managed to persuade Steve to sell him the second one! So then there were two…
I tried to order one as soon as I got home but they were out of stock at both the UK & European warehouses.  However last week I spotted they were back in stock in Europe so I immediately ordered one (should have ordered two or three, the £8 postage would have stayed the same). It arrived one lunchtime and that same evening I had four flights with it! So then there were three…
You may recall that a couple of months back my SportJet had a slightly vertical arrival whilst flying with the identical SportJets of 1066 & Dougal, a classic case of mistaken identity. To avoid similar problems with the Spirit I have cunningly applied the fin stickers differently on my Spirit. Some may think I simply got it wrong but obviously it was intentional… ahem.

I’m sure a few more will be purchased before too long, they really are great fun to fly.

There have also been a couple of other electric gliders at the patch this month; the great weather must have brought them out. One belongs to Desperate Dan, the other to Dougal. Dan’s is a Phoenix 2000 from HobbyKing, and it’s actually a replacement for one that disproved the ‘virtually indestructible’ claim when the receiver packed up before I even had a chance to photograph it. Apparently it went in very hard from a great height so it’s not surprising it was totalled. The replacement seems to fly very well and I saw it up pretty high on Sunday. It’s got EPO wings and tail but unusually, the fuselage is blow moulded nylon with ply reinforcement. For just under £50 you get everything except the receiver and lipo, although I see Dan has added the optional flaps which would have required another couple of servos.

Dougal’s is a totally different machine, as you can see it’s a proper ‘built from balsa’ glider to which Mark has added a small pylon that holds the electric motor. It’s an Olympic, which was a plan from the American mag RCM back in the 70’s and its 100” span. Dougal has added some sheeting and rib capping strips to improve the torsional rigidity of the wing. He was having problems with the speed controller last week so has now fitted a new one, but the plane flew very nicely anyway.

Smiffy (remember him?) reappeared on Sunday after a long absence. He was flying a Dago Red Racer from YT International which has a fibreglass fuselage with carbon reinforcements and an obechi skinned foam wing. It comes complete with servos, motor, esc etc and is reckoned to do 120mph straight and level! It obviously scares Smiffy as there didn’t seem to be much full throttle flying as far as I could see but it certainly shifted around very rapidly. Looks like a few minutes of adrenaline filled fun.

John Wheeley went right out of character a couple of weeks ago and turned up with an EDF F-4 Phantom. It’s a Starmax one and I initially thought it used the same motor and 50mm fan as my little Grippen but after some investigation I think it must be a 64mm fan version.  It’s 540mm span and weighs around 19ozs, uses a 1300mAh 3 cell lipo.

It went away well from the launch and continued to fly well although elevator control seemed to be an issue, particularly when John throttled it back a bit. He flew for around four minutes and got it down with just some very minor damage to the foam. Smiffy reckons that the nozzle angle on the Starmax model is incorrect and it needs some throttle/elevator mixing. He could well be right but it’s difficult to tell from the one flight it’s had so far. One thing that surprised me was that it had around 60% left in the pack after the flight, remarkable considering it’s a 1300mAh pack, so maybe John just needed more throttle! I liked it a lot and would like to have a go with it to see if I could figure out the problem. I took some video of the launch and some of the flight but unfortunately missed the landing. You can see it here: Phantom first flight
John also kept our attention by adding a small video camera to his Multiplex TwinStar. Not sure which camera it is but it seems to be good, has quite a wide angle lens and records good quality video.  I’ve uploaded some of John’s first efforts, as well as circuits around the field it catches Desperate Dan’s Wot4 Foam-e and, very briefly, my Grippen. There is also a moment of both Dan and I being stupid, we do it so well! It’s worth a look, see it here: Onboard the TwinStar
To go with his new glider Dan has purchased an Orange transmitter. It’s the first one I’ve seen in the flesh and it looks like a nice bit of kit for the money. I don’t think you’ll find another 6 channel, 10 model memory transmitter that has all the usual dual rates, expo, mixers etc for under £40.It looks slightly odd at first with its opaque orange case but I expect you soon get used to it. It operates on DSM2 so presumably it’s compatible with Spektrum DSM2 receivers as well as the Orange ones. Bargain.
John Reynolds brought another old model along one midweek day; this one is a Middle Stick. Some of the older modellers will probably remember the Stick series of models from the 60’s/70’s. As well as the Middle Stick there was an Ugly Stick, Big Stick, Little Stick, Slow Stick and no doubt several others.  John’s is powered by a Webra I/C motor, the plane is 55” span so the motor is probably a 40 I expect. Graupner kitted the Middle Stick but I imagine plans were also available from various sources, so I’m not sure of the origins of Johns. It looks nice and flies well.
We had a rare visit from John Barnard in July. John is a PAM member but usually flies at the syndicate field. I think he’s realised it’s time to learn to fly properly (that should wind up any syndicate members who read this!) and came along to see how we do it. As John Reynolds remarked “The flying part is easy, it’s the pits protocol that’s hard to get right!”. Anyway John B had brought along an electric powered model, the name of which totally escapes me. It looks a lot like a Hots from back in the late 80’s but I don’t think it is. Perhaps John will enlighten us.He had one flight which went well, it just needed a bit of trimming, but when he went to take off for the second flight there was nothing, no radio, no motor, nothing.  After a little waggling of wires suddenly everything worked again, not a happy situation. We did some more wire waggling and it seemed to be the factory fitted connector on the battery pack that was the problem but we couldn’t be 100% certain so John wisely decided to do a thorough examination of it all at home on the bench.  He was very lucky that the fault showed up just as he went to take-off rather than 10 seconds later, happily the model lives to fly again.

The Wot4 Foam-e is an excellent model but, like many ARTFs, the undercarriage does seem to fail all too easily. To be fair they probably aren’t too bad if you have a long tarmac runway but they just don’t seem to last long on a small grass patch. Desperate Dan kindly demonstrated the problem for us the other day.Richard King has suffered the same problem but has come up with a neat solution. He has used a two wire system to replace the original alloy undercarriage but what the photo can’t show is that part of the new wooden mount goes a looong way down (up?) into the fuselage. That gives a good area to glue and means the leverage that occurs in a heavy landing won’t simply rip it out again.

You may have seen that in the comments on the last Patch News Smiffy posted a photo of me that he had modified by adding a clowns outfit.  I was going to get my own back and went through the various photos I have of him but nothing I could do to any of them could possibly make him look more ridiculous anyway. But Cyano Steve had different thoughts and produced this little gem:
Good one Steve! 
Cessna: “Jones tower, Cessna 12345, student pilot, I am out of fuel.” Tower: “Roger Cessna 12345, reduce airspeed to best glide!! Do you have the airfield in sight?!?!!” Cessna: “Uh…tower, I am on the south ramp; I just want to know where the fuel truck is.”  
Colin Cowplain