Patch News – July 2016

Hooray, summer seems to have arrived at last! After a pretty lousy June July has been mostly good for us with plenty of sunshine and reasonably light winds for much of the month. Farmer George had been letting the field grow for hay and it had become very long, but it’s now been cut, dried, baled, and removed.We had to have the pits on the edge of the patch while the farmer was working on the hay, a small price to pay.

The new mower is working well and the patch is in excellent condition once again. Of course the only downside of the field being cut is that before too long we’ll be joined by the friendly bullocks again. Captain Slow snapped this photo of Dougal Entendre and 1066, the happy mowers, a couple of Sundays ago. You’ll find it cuts much better if you put it down chaps…Of course there is always a downside to sunny days, look at the state of those legs…they should be banned!

I’ll start this month with a couple of slight disasters, the first being one of my own. With the patch cut short and in good condition I decided to dig out my Ugly Stik and practice some touch & goes, with the hope of getting a decent score for the ongoing competition. The Stik is the foam HobbyKing one that has a plastic dummy I/C engine (aren’t all I/C’s dummies?) with a proper electric motor behind it that drives the prop via an extension shaft.Having previously had the undercarriage fall off on a feather-like landing I had already strengthened the undercarriage mount. This had then shifted the stresses to the next weak point and on my next ‘feather-like’ landing the whole nose broke off at the front of the wing.So then I’d set a couple of spruce reinforcement strips into the fuselage sides and all was well again, the whole set-up was now good and strong, what could possibly go wrong? This could:The first few touch and goes were fine and with my confidence growing I was getting the time between touches shorter and shorter, until eventually I touched a little too hard and upon opening the throttle there was an almighty din and bits flew off! It seems that my slightly less than feather-like landing had broken the prop and the then unbalanced remains had proved too much of a strain for the extension shaft which ripped the dummy motor apart. See, I always knew I/C motors were nothing but trouble!

The second disaster of the month came from Norwegian Nick. He had built a lovely little Bede BD-5 from Depron, some of you will have seen it when he brought it along to one of our club nights.The BD-5 is one of many aircraft designed by American pilot Jim Bede; you probably recognize it from its appearance in the James Bond film License to Kill, when a jet version flew through an aircraft hangar. The same stunt pilot, Corkey Fornof, had previously flown the same aircraft in Octopussy when he landed on a highway and rolled into a gas station. Amazingly this stunt was recreating an event that had actually happened to Corkey when he had an engine failure and was forced to land on Interstate 95 and rolled into a Sunoco gas station.This is from Wikipedia: The BD-5 Micro is a series of small, single-seat homebuilt aircraft created in the late 1960s by US aircraft designer Jim Bede and introduced to the market primarily in kit form by the now-defunct Bede Aircraft Corporation in the early 1970s.

The BD-5 has a small, streamlined fuselage holding its semi-reclined pilot under a large canopy, with the engine installed in a compartment in the middle of the fuselage, and a propeller-driving engine (or jet engine in the BD-5J variant) mounted immediately to the rear of the cockpit. The combination of fighter-like looks and relatively low cost led to the BD-5 selling over 5,000 kits or plans, with approximately 12,000 orders being taken for a proposed factory-built, FAA-certified version.

However, few of the kit versions were actually completed due to the company’s bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, and none of the factory built “D” models were produced, as a result of the failure to find a reliable engine for the design.

In total, only a few hundred BD-5 kits were completed, although many of these are still being flown today. The BD-5J version holds the record for the world’s lightest single-engine jet aircraft, weighing only 358.8lb (162.7 kg).I found a flight test in Pilot magazine by Bob Grimstead which included this: “Its one significant failing is that it pitches up after engine failure. If you don’t catch the pitch-up within two seconds (the FAA’s assumed fit, professional pilot’s reaction time) you can’t prevent it stalling. Depending on span and aerofoil, stall recovery takes around 500 feet. After that it’s fine, if you’re still above ground.” That last sentence made me laugh!

I think Nick built his model from the free plan on the RC-Plans.com website. It’s 35” span, weighs around 570g, and uses a 3 cell lipo of around 2200mAh (it needs the weight to get the CG in the correct place). The full-size had retracts but the model has no undercarriage at all, it simply slides along on its underside to take-off from grass.I wasn’t sure how well it would slide but in fact, after a ground loop on the first attempt, the second try went perfectly and it took off beautifully. Unfortunately the disaster happened almost immediately, the right hand wing folded and of course the model spun in with fatal damage. I really liked the model and it was a great shame it only lasted such a short time, although apparently it was true to scale, the full-size ones have a terrible safety record!

The only good thing about the incident was that I was videoing at the time so you can see the whole thing in this month’s video at the end of this edition.

The first new model to feature this month is Dan Handley’s Edge 540T 3D. It’s a HobbyKing model with EPP skin over a lite-ply frame method of construction, but with a wingspan of 1430mm the Edge is larger than most. It’s the same at the one Dougal Entendre has been flying with great success for the last few months and is a superb flier.The model comes without any electronics so Dan has fitted an Emax 2820/07 850KV motor (case size is a 3542), a Plush 60A speed controller, and uses 4 cell Nanotech 2650 lipos. With a Dynam 12 x 6 prop the watt meter shows 630W at 41A and that seems to be ample power for the lightly constructed model. A 3D machine like this needs to have decent servos and Dan has fitted four metal geared Hitech HS65MGs that cost £20 each, ouch.Dan is a relative newcomer to RC flying and struggled to get the landings correct with the model at first, so he’ll be really pleased to hear that I managed to record a couple of them for this month’s video!

Captain Slow was good enough to send me some news of what happened to Dan one Sunday when I wasn’t at the patch. Apparently Dan’s Wot-4 spiralled in from a great height, resulting in lots of damage. The problem turned out to be a duff aileron pot on the transmitter. John thinks the receiver may have been damaged in the crash as it wouldn’t bind to John’s transmitter after the crash. Guess what make of radio it is…I’m not saying but appropriately it rhymes with rectum! The transmitter problem prevented Dan from test flying his latest acquisition, another Edge 540, this time from FMS. More details, and hopefully a flying report, in next month’s Patch News.So far Dan hasn’t got a nickname, but Handley-Page was a great name in the world of aviation so maybe he should simply be Page. Or Page Boy? Yes, I like Page Boy. Any thoughts?

Stanley Knife surprised us all one day when he turned up with a small model. Stanley has always liked his models big, usually scale, and mostly of the gentle aerobatic kind, so it was quite a shock to see him with this:You can see his dislike for it in the photo, as he tried to pretend it had nothing to do with him! It’s a HobbyKing Shining, a 3D model made from solid EPP and according to HK it’s suitable for both indoor and outdoor flying.It’s quite similar to the Hummers that several of us are flying but is slightly smaller at 900mm span than the Hummers 1000mm span. Oddly the webpage recommends a larger motor than for the Hummer but with a smaller prop even though the KV is almost identical. I’m not sure what motor etc. Stanley has fitted but it seemed to fly pretty well. I think Stanley feels the same about it as I do my Hummer, it’s ok but not really my kind of thing.

Norwegian Nick was pretty active during July and on one of his patch visits he brought along an Alfa Models FW190. Nick was given the model by his son Shaun who had never got round to finishing it but Nick soon had it ready to go.It’s 33 ½” span (850mm) and, being quite an old design, is moulded from expanded polystyrene with a hard skin. Originally it was designed to take a brushed motor fitted with a gearbox and a 7 cell nicad battery but Nick’s is fitted out with an up-to-date brushless outrunner and a 3 cell lipo, much better technology these days. As most of you will know Nick is really a balsa basher and has a general dislike for foamies but recently he’s been flying a foam Tiger Moth that he won in a club raffle and is beginning to see the light. He was muttering a lot about disliking the foam FW190 before flying it but when it climbed away from its first launch and flew beautifully I think it grew on him a lot! It really does fly well and doesn’t seem to have any vices at all; I reckon this one will be flown a lot. It can be seen flying in this month’s video, although it’s a bit too small and nippy for me to capture much decent footage so blink and you’ll miss it.

Last month I pictured Dougal Entendre’s latest transmitter that features just about everything including a screen capable of being used for FPV flying (First Person View). He assured me he wasn’t interested in trying FPV, the transmitter just happened to have it…so here is his first attempt at an FPV model!Actually the model is an old Olympic 100” span glider that he had previously fitted with a power pod, so all he had to do was add a camera and 5.8GHz transmitter. The transmitter screen has a shroud around it to shield it from the sun but Dougal still found it difficult to see the screen, particularly in the bright sunlight (it shouldn’t be a problem for most of the year then Dougal!).The true answer to the problem is FPV goggles of course but they don’t come cheap and introduce other difficulties anyway. The other problem he found was that the range of the FPV signal really wasn’t enough when flying a sizeable thermal soarer, he kept getting video break-up, although he thinks it would be fine for a drone that would be easier to keep close to the pilot.The FPV transmitter is 25mW, the maximum legal output in the UK for 5.8GHz, although there are better aerials available that may improve the range somewhat. But Dougal says that although it was an interesting diversion he intends to stick to ‘normal’ flying for now.

Chris P Bacon has splashed out on an electric glider, a Max Thrust Lightning. He assures me he didn’t really want a new model but he just happened to be driving near Worthing and an inexplicable force sucked him into Sussex Model Centre. What’s a chap to do, it would be rude not to buy something wouldn’t it?The Lightning is 59” span (1500mm) and is available in kit form or Plug’n’Fly which has the motor, esc, and servos already fitted. Chris P opted for the Plug’n’Fly version so just had to add a receiver and a 2200mAh 3 cell lipo pack.The model is of moulded EPO foam construction with carbon wing spars and carbon reinforcing as required, and is basically a ‘warm-liner’, capable of fairly fast flight performing precision aerobatics or simply stooging around looking for thermals. It flies very nicely and should be a good model for our often windy field.

Finally this month, we had a surprise visit by Burly Turley. These days he usually flies at Thorney with the Chichester club and I thought he’d forgotten where our field was but he managed to track us down. Luckily his visit was just after the field had been cut, otherwise he could have been lost for months. He brought along his SebArt Shark to fly and I must say I was very impressed by it.The Shark was designed by the Italian champion Sebastiano Silvestri and is sold as a trainer but given the right pilot and power set-up it’s capable of knife edge flight, prop hanging, harriers, and so on. The model comes as airframe only so Burly had fit his own motor, esc, and servos.He ordered a Turnigy motor from HobbyKing’s international warehouse and was complaining bitterly that they’d ripped him when he got clobbered for import duty and its collection charges. Not quite sure how import duty was HobbyKing’s fault… Mind you he was also complaining that some of his lipo packs aren’t performing as well as they used to, but then he explained that they are nine years old… NINE YEARS! Anyway, Burly flew the Shark around in a very slow and gentle manner and then did an absolutely perfect landing (no really!) before letting me have a flight with it. It’s very nice to fly, a very good all-rounder in the air and, to me, a pretty model as well. You can see Burly flying his Shark in this month’s video.

 Most of you will be aware that the photos and video I use in Patch News are just taken with my mobile phone but various people have been good enough to send me some high quality photos that they’ve taken with proper cameras. I forgot to include some from June in last month’s Patch News so here is a selection from June and July, which have been taken by The Squire and newbie Graham Swan. Apparently Graham’s nickname at the golf club is Rusty, because he hates the rain, so that’s good enough for PAM as well, thanks for the photos Rusty Swan. Dwayne Pipe’s Citabria Pro

Gentleman Jim’s Splot

Dougal Entendre’s Edge 540T

1066’s Grasshopper

Captain Slow’s Extreme 3D

Woody, apparently happy with his landing!

Chris P Bacon’s Lightning

Dwayne Pipe’s Vega being shadowed by a Kite

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

On a flight with EasyJet back in 1997 the pilot made what can only be described as an extremely heavy landing at Luton. It was very early in the morning and a number of passengers looked quite alarmed as, apart from the noise, a number of overhead lockers dropped open and several items of carry-on luggage were launched down the aisle.

After slowing up, the aircraft turned off the runway towards the stand and over the PA came “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Smith, welcome to Luton. If any of you were asleep…I bet you’re not now!”

Colin Cowplain