Patch News – July 2017

July was a typically British July, some glorious weather and some downright awful. Doreen and I were away camping for the first week of July when the weather was pretty much perfect. Coincidently at exactly the same time the bullocks were put in the field, just  for that week. I heard mutterings about me having influence over farmer George but it’s not true…honest guv! Fortunately, because the weather was perfect, the bullocks didn’t churn up the newly repositioned patch and, apart from a few deposits, it remained relatively unscathed.

The newly formed Friday Afternoon Gardening Club mowed the patch regularly and it’s now in excellent condition (considering its just part of a farmer’s field). I wonder if the name should be Friday Afternoon Gardening Society, the acronym is so much better…

The club meeting on 27th July was moved from Buriton to the field so the members could clear the parking areas of the undergrowth. Tony Neil used his brush cutter to great effect and others cleared while 1066 leant on a rake!Modelling Clay made short work of some dangerous branches overhanging one area and everybody mucked in with the clearing up. We even managed to do some flying and mow the patch. Thanks to all the members that turned up.

Although lots of flying took place during the month there seemed to be a dearth of new models. The only one I spotted was Kryten’s new electric glider, a Phoenix 2000 from HobbyKing.This is what the HobbyKing website says about it: This two metre wingspan glider takes 15 minutes to assemble and lasts a lifetime! The wings and tail are made from tough EPO foam. However, the fuselage is made from a really strong blow moulded nylon skin with plywood formers, making it almost indestructible, this is usually reserved for baby toys. The virtually indestructible fuselage is smooth and rigid, yet still light enough for the glider to perform. Both the main wing and tail are screwed into place and the two wing halves have a carbon fibre rod for added strength. The main wing includes one servo per aileron for strong control surface movement plus there is a pre-moulded slot so you can add your own flaps later. All four 9g servos, speed controller and brushless outrunner are included. Just add your own receiver and battery to be flight ready!

The pre-fitted motor is a 28mm 1050kv outrunner and the speed controller is 30A. All the purchaser has to supply is a suitable 3 cell lipo and a receiver. Kryten is using a Zippy Flight Max 1500 20C lipo with the transmitter timer initially set for a 6 minute motor run, and an Orange 620 receiver. The battery is pushed as far back as possible which results in a C of G slightly forward of the recommended position. He has also added a pair of 9gm HXT900 servos to operate the optional flaps which makes accurate landing easier.

Kryten asked me to do the initial trimming and I thoroughly enjoyed flying the Phoenix, it’s a good glider but is also capable of some nice aerobatics, a good all round performer.When I reluctantly handed the transmitter over to Kryten he handled the glider with no problems at all. You can see both of us flying the Phoenix in this month’s video at the end of Patch News.

Sticking with gliders, I recently brought one of mine out of retirement. It’s a Swing Plus produced by Kostka Model Centrum in the Czech Republic. I bought mine many years ago from Gordon Tarling, one of the early promoters of electric flight. I don’t remember exactly when it was but on the wing there is a BEFA (British Electric Flight Association) sticker with the year 2000 so I probably bought it in the late nineties. The Swing Plus was designed to be flown in one of the lesser classes of F5B competitions, a contest that consists of doing as many laps as possible between 2 poles 150 meters apart in 200 seconds followed by 10 minutes of thermalling, and then landing on a 30 meter landing circle. The laps must be made while gliding only, no motor allowed, so the motor is used to rapidly climb and power into the course. So, although being lightly built it’s also very strong and the wing spar has carbon sandwiched in it. Full blown F5B planes nowadays are mostly fully moulded machines that scream vertically at unbelievable speeds but mine doesn’t do that!It was built before the days of outrunner motors and lipo batteries so mine was fitted with a very expensive Keller brushed motor and it used 8 NiCad cells. Eventually the motor brushes wore out and I was unable to find any replacements so I fitted a tow hook and for several years used to bungee launch it (remember those strong wings) in club glider comps.But I’ve now fitted a Propdrive 3536 910kv outrunner and 50A speed controller at a cost of just over £22 for the pair and I can fly using either my 2200mAh or 4000mAh 3 cell lipos. I chose the 910kv motor as that enabled me to use the original Rasa 12 x 8.5 carbon folding prop. I had to fit a large lump of lead in the nose as the new set-up is considerably lighter than the original one but the overall performance is pretty similar to before.It will climb almost vertically (but not at the ridiculous speeds of proper F5B models) and it glides around pretty well. The Swing Plus doesn’t have ailerons, instead it relies on ruddervators on the V-tail. They work well enough and it rolls as if it has ailerons, and it also flies inverted pretty well. The wing has a relatively small central spoiler which doesn’t really appear to do much. Oddly the spoiler seems to make the controls more sensitive, must be something to do with being in line with that V-tail.

While I was away at the start of July Dougal Entendre decided to strap his GPS equipped watch to one of his planes just for a bit of fun, to see what it would record. He flew four circuits at roughly constant height and later he was able to upload the information to his pc and overlay the track onto Google Earth. This is what was recorded: Average speed 50mph, max speed 78.3mph, height about 132ft. I think it was an interesting experiment and hope Dougal decides to repeat it one day. Of course with modern radio sets equipped telemetry it’s possible to record the same information and more without having to strap a watch to your model but Dougal did it without forking out a penny, simply using equipment he already owned. While you are looking at the Google Earth photo take a look at the extreme right of the picture, just above the road. You can see a white splodge (chalk?) with trees on three sides. That’s the field where phase three of the new houses will eventually be built and you can see just how close to our field they will be, hence our concerns about the noise we make.

Now for a bit of nostalgia, a couple more photos from PAM days gone by, I’m guessing they’re from around 1990.The first is one of Doreen flying and me supervising. The radio she’s using is my Simprop SAM 35FM transmitter and the photo below is of the basic set with rubber blanks in the switch positions.The purchaser could choose which functions they required and fit the relevant switches and modules themselves.The second photo is from the same era and features (I think) from left to right: Viv Stanley Knife Burgess, Phil Wonky Wiltshire, designer of the Splot Graham Head, Peter Ford, and me. I’m appear to be test flying one of Peter’s vintage models. I still have another of Peter’s vintage models in my loft; I bought it in an auction many years ago but have never got around to doing anything with it. One day…

Last month I said that Dougal had fitted a helicopter gyro on his Hummer ailerons to reduce the workload when prop-hanging. Well this month Captain Slow has been playing with a Multiplex MultiGyro G3 on his Hummer.The Multiplex gyro works on ailerons, elevator, and rudder and is really intended to smooth out bumps in windy weather. But it also has ‘heading hold’ which basically means at the flick of a switch the model will stay in whatever attitude it’s in at the time i.e. prop-hanging. It works well in normal flight but when prop-hanging it maintains the attitude until the pilot touches the controls, at which point it then tries to hold the new attitude. So if the pilot pushes left rudder to keep the model vertical the gyro thinks the pilot wants to go to the left and off it goes! However, Captain Slow flew his Hummer in very strong and gusty winds the other day, conditions that would normally make the Hummer unflyable, and it handled the conditions very well. Woody has also fitted the same model of gyro to his new Edge 540T but only wants to use it for normal flying and it’s very good for that. That particular gyro has actually been superseded by the Multiplex Wingstabi gyro which, as you can see in THIS VIDEO, will handle prop-hanging correctly. Try not to enjoy the start of the video too much, you’ll go blind! The prop-hanging part is 40 seconds in. The only downside to the Wingstabi is that it’s very expensive.

I also decided to join the fun as I had an unused Orange Stabilizer kicking around.I fitted it to my Hummer and, like the Multiplex gyro, it smooths bumps well enough but it doesn’t have ‘heading hold’ so it’s no help at all for prop-hanging.

Last month I pictured the nose of my Wingnetic which was ripped apart when the motor threw a prop blade.I noticed that HobbyKing stock spare fuselage front sections so I ordered one along with a new prop and motor mount, and it’s now all repaired and flying well again.

Cream Egg had a bit of a moment while practising aerobatics the other day resulting in the damage seen below. Apparently the problem wasn’t Cream Egg’s fault, it was caused by the Friday Afternoon Gardening Club.When they fixed the new position of the patch they failed to lower it by about a metre! You need to practice your aerobatics a little higher Cream Egg. Fortunately it’s all straightened out now and flying again.

About a month ago 1066, Dougal, and I were discussing the possibility of flying electric powered control-line models. This is nothing new, it’s been done lots of times before, but it’s new to us. 1066 wanted to try it but without spending any money at all (sounds about right!). The only real problem was how to control the throttle, devices are available but oddly none of them are free. Eventually he decided to simply use a normal speed controller and RC set-up. So he knocked up a simple combat wing style model from foam, fitted a receiver, motor, esc, and battery.He chose to test it at Buriton at the same time that Dwayne Pipe was running the Chuck glider Competition; I reckon it was just because he couldn’t build a decent chuck glider. Anyway, ably assisted by Dougal Entendre in between chuck glider flights, he gave it a go. Several goes actually, gradually changing things such as centre of gravity etc. until finally it flew quite well. 1066 looked very odd with a control-line handle in one hand and an RC transmitter in the other hand but it did the job. Unfortunately I neglected to take any photos before it got broken.You can see the flights in this month’s video.

On several occasions during July we spotted large flocks of gulls over the field.  They didn’t seem to be thermalling, maybe they were catching flying insects. Sadly I missed the shot of Woody flying his model right through middle of one of the large groups but I did capture this photo of one of the smaller groups.I know you get a murmuration of starlings, is there a collective noun for seagulls? A sh**face of seagulls perhaps?!

Kryten took some more excellent photos this month, including all of the flying ones in this Patch News. No, not the one of the seagulls, all the other ones you idiot! After the first three we have a bit of a glider theme this month:

OK, time for this month’s video:

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

Heard as part of an airline passenger safety announcement: “In the case of sudden loss of cabin pressure oxygen masks will deploy from overhead. Please use these to muffle your screams”

Colin Cowplain