Patch News – July 2015

Summer, what summer? July was really mixed up weather wise, we had some lovely weather at the beginning of the month but then it turned more like late autumn with wind and rain. Fortunately the last few days slowly improved so hopefully August will be much better for us.

I was away at the start of the month so Dougal Entendre kept me up to date and sent me some photos.

It seems the main thing I missed was a pair of Nicks. DoughBoy (treasurer Nick Squire) flew his Cougar 2000.2015-07-05 10.45.41This was significant for two reasons, firstly it’s I/C powered (a rarity in the club now) and secondly he remembered where the field is!

Nick Sivertsen also made an appearance after an absence of a few months. Nick is a ‘proper’ modeller and he brought along a P39 Bell Air Cobra that he had built from a Clive Smalley plan.2015-07-21 10.13.31The plan was a feature in the June 1983 edition of RCM&E and Nick built most of it not long after but never got round to finishing it. It is 31.5” span (800mm) and in those pre-electric days it was designed for a glow or diesel engine of .10 – 15cu in.air cobraNick had made a lovely job of it and it looked great with its airbrushed spray job complete with panel lines etc. Unfortunately Dougal reported that it nosed in straight from the hand launch and removed the nose very neatly.2015-07-21 10.31.50 2015-07-21 10.14.07Undaunted, Nick returned a couple of weeks later with the repaired model and the addition of some lead in the tail. This time I got to launch it and I decided an underarm launch would be easiest…oh dear! On the first attempt the model half rolled hard left and knocked the fin clean off. This was soon replaced with the help of some cyano and we tried again. This time I launched it overarm (more height=more time to sort it). It seemed to leave my hands ok but almost immediately rolled hard left again, and this time, with the extra height and speed, the result was an awful lot of damage.2015-07-21 10.13.55Sadly Nick says he won’t bother repairing it. We don’t really know why this happened; certainly Nick had built it straight and true. I commented at the time that it felt heavy. I think the motor Nick used was well over the power of a .15cu in I/C equivalent so maybe a smaller and lighter motor/battery combination would have been better. There was loads of power but if the wing loading was too high maybe I couldn’t launch it at the flying speed required. I guess we’ll never know but it was certainly a shame to see such a nice and unusual model destroyed in seconds.

On a happier note Nick also brought along a new model that he’s putting together, a Kavan Bird of Prey EDF glider. It’s very unusual, I’ve certainly never seen a tail mounted ducted fan on a glider, but Kavan are known for producing quality things so I’m sure it will turn out well.2015-07-21 10.03.17The wings are foam with obechi covering and the fuselage is fibreglass, it’s all beautifully made. It has a conventional tailplane and the fin mounts on top of the fan housing. This is certainly one I’m looking forward to seeing fly.

Some of us have been flying at Buriton before club meetings and taking advantage of the calm evenings.2015-07-16 20.06.20The HobbyKing Hummers are ideal for this, they are extremely manoeuvrable so are good for park flying, and they fly so much better in calm conditions than they do in even a light wind. Dougal Entendre and 1066 were flying on the evening that I took the photos, both Tony Neal and I have also flown our Hummers there but weren’t that particular evening. The pair managed to get very close to each other a couple of times whilst honing their prop hanging skills.

2015-07-16 20.09.21

Steve’s is actually a Hyperion Sniper, probably what the HK Hummer was copied from but the Hummer has been improved somewhat.2015-07-16 20.10.19 2015-07-16 20.11.09At one point 1066 managed to touch the wingtip on the ground and proved the fuselage is very flexible, amazingly it didn’t break!2015-07-16 20.03.54

Chris Hard has been flying his wings again; these are two of his favourites, a Great Planes Slinger at the back and a Ripmax Wild Wing at the front.2015-07-19 10.44.17Launching can be a bit of a problem with flying wings but Chris shows how he does it with the Wild Wing.2015-07-19 12.23.49You can see the Slinger flying by clicking on THIS MONTHS VIDEO.

The video also has just a snippet of Dwayne Pipe landing his Vega electric glider. I covered it in Patch News last month but since then Dwayne has made some changes. The original design was rudder/elevator but Dwayne wanted ailerons so he guessed at the size they would need to be. It turned out that they were pretty ineffective so Dwayne has now doubled their size and they work much better.

A couple of weeks ago Bob Hill and I were flying our Spirits one midweek morning, with the whole sky all to ourselves, when he ruthlessly smashed his Spirit into mine! I saw something fluttering down from mine but I still had some control so I did an emergency landing without any further damage. Bob meanwhile was sniggering away, saying his was all ok, but suddenly his canopy detached and fluttered away (haha!). The piece he had ripped off my poor Spirit turned out to be one of the tailplane halves, hence rather reduced control. Luckily we managed to find both Bob’s canopy and my tailplane half fairly easily so Bob could fly again and I was able to complete repairs at home. I’m sure you’ll agree that as Bob’s canopy hit my tailplane it was obviously totally his fault, so from now on he’ll be known as Basher Bob. Basher Bob actually features quite a lot in THIS MONTHS VIDEO but unusually he’s behaving himself.

Several months ago Tony Neal arrived at the patch with a very nicely built De Havilland Chipmunk.2015-07-19 11.20.46He had built it from a Chiltern Models kit that dated from around 1985. It was designed by John Camlen as a Semi-Scale sports model for 25 to 40 size glow engines. Wing span is 53 inches, which makes it approx. 1/7th scale. Tony had converted it to electric using a 500 watt motor running on 3 cells. It looked good, he’d made a very nice job of the build, and it looked as if it should just fly with no problems. Wrong, Tony just couldn’t get it off the ground! It wouldn’t lift off cleanly, kept dropping a wing and acting peculiarly in general. Tony took it home, made a few changes, brought it back and tried again, but it was still much the same. This happened several times, always with similar results, it simply wouldn’t fly but there didn’t appear to be any good reason.2015-07-19 11.21.14But finally, earlier this month, success at last! Once Tony had got it into the air he learnt more about the trim, the correct control movements etc. and he was able to improve it greatly for the second flight which was much better. I’m not sure how it felt to Tony but it looked good in the air and I think he’s pretty much tamed it now. Some of the second successful flight, including take-off and landing, can be seen in THIS MONTHS VIDEO.

Also in the video is Modelling Clay flying his Wot 4 Foam-E. When watching him fly, completing rolls, loops, bunts, and low inverted passes, it’s difficult to imagine that he’s only been flying for around 3 months. He’s already passed his ‘A’ certificate and I’m sure he’s destined to be a very good pilot in the future. But, to stop him getting too big headed, he had a bit of a problem last week. Tim was flying his first model, an ST Models Discovery trainer, practising low inverted passes (no mean feat itself with a trainer) when he had, in his own words, ‘brain fade’ and discovered that a bunt from inverted requires down elevator not up!IMG_4043 IMG_4044The result wasn’t pretty, a bit beyond a call for help from dad!

If you were at the last club meeting in July you will have seen my latest purchase. The HobbyKing website had a 4th July sale but I didn’t see anything that really appealed so I didn’t buy anything. However, a couple of weeks later I had an email from them saying ‘HK Sale Reloaded’ and one of the offers was a little foam Cri-Cri reduced by 75% to just under £24.2015-08-01 15.11.46This scale plane is a twin engined EPO foam model of 1050mm span that is classed as PNF (Plug N Fly) so comes almost complete, and is fitted with 2 x 2825 1850KV outrunner motors, 2 x 20A speed controllers, and 4 x 9g servos, and a pair of counter rotating props. Even with the postage and the $/£ conversion the total price was only £30.40 so I couldn’t refuse!

The full-size Colomban Cri-Cri is the smallest twin-engined manned aircraft in the world, designed in the early 1970s by French aeronautical engineer Michel Colomban. The aircraft is made from aluminium sheet glued to Klegecell foam and is capable of mild aerobatics. It’s just 4.9m span (16ft 1in) and 3.9m long (12ft 10in), and the empty weight is 78kg, considerably less than me!Colomban Cri Cri MC-15There have been various versions built including several with 2 x 15 horsepower (11kW) electric motors.all-electric-cri-cri-airplane-crystaline

Another electric one with 25 horsepower motors set the world speed record for electric powered aircraft at 162.33mph. The electric ones use lipos, just like us!EADS-Electric-Cri-CriEADS (who build Airbus airliners) produced one with 4 electric motors.cricri-jet

There are even turbine ones, I wonder if they are using model turbines?

It only takes a few hours to put the model together and I’m hoping to fly mine on 2nd August. It definitely needs a very large but very light pilot, perhaps I’ll attempt some foam carving…2015-08-01 15.14.51Like the full-size, the models appear to fly fast and as they only have tiny wheels and are fitted with spats take-off from our small grass patch may be a challenge. Hopefully it will slow up for landing, time will tell.

Q: What separates three whores from two alcoholics?

A: The cockpit door!

Colin Cowplain

 

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8 Responses to Patch News – July 2015

  1. Nick Squire says:

    Nice one Colin, phew nothing too insulting.. 🙂

  2. Bob Hill says:

    Got the cockey bugger. Don’t mess with old men, we have still got some fight in us. Right, who is the next youngster who is too clever for his own good.
    Basher bob

  3. 1066 says:

    Great work as always Patsie, That Cri-Cri looks horrible, and now you know it fly’s horrible, does it make you want to Cry-Cry,or,Try-Try to make it Fly-Fly better. Time I said Bye-Bye.

  4. Colin Cowplain says:

    Haha Try-Try! I’ve made a few changes, I’ve moved CG forward a bit, have increased the motor incidence and mixed in some throttle/elevator coupling because it every time I throttled back the nose when up and it stalled! Very difficult to land like that. Will try it tomorrow morning, hopefully it will be much better.

  5. Colin Cowplain says:

    I’ve got you in my sights now Basher!
    Young Andy 😉

  6. Colin Cowplain says:

    Flew the Cri-Cri again this morning, 3 flights, no damage. Much better but still not what I’d call a pleasurable experience. It flies fast and doesn’t like going too slowly or it tip stalls without warning. I think basically it’s too heavy, not sure why they didn’t use smaller motors.

  7. Colin Cowplain says:

    Thanks Smiffy, if only it was in stock in the UK warehouse…

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