Patch News – June 2024

At last, summer seems to have finally arrived…possibly. The first half of June really wasn’t summery at all with chilly winds and mostly overcast days. But things improved briefly in the second half of the month and we had some excellent flying weather for a few days.
When we arrived to fly on Friday 21^st June we were greeted by Farmer George and a lot of sheep who seemed determined to go anywhere except where they were supposed to.
George explained that they were shearing the ewes so were separating them from their lambs, something neither the ewes or the lambs were happy about. Once shorn the ewes were returned to their lambs in ‘our’ field. It all made an entertaining start to the session!

Dougal has written to make a very important point about safety with our electric models:
Can I ask that people are careful to keep their appendages out of the way of the propeller whenever a plane has its main battery connected? This is especially an issue if the Tx doesn’t have a throttle kill switch. I’ve recently seen people holding their planes by the nose while the power system is “live”, and it only takes an accidental knock of the throttle stick for the thing to become a potent finger-chopper. Electric motors are even worse than IC in this respect, because:
1. They can burst into life unexpectedly.
2. Electric flight propellers are normally sharper than IC ones, and
3. IC motors sometimes stop once they’ve sliced enough flesh. Electric ones don’t.
This photo might make you think about the kind of situation we’re putting ourselves in:
As Dougal & I (Mark & Andy) are the club BMFA Examiners we have a responsibility to try to keep members safe but ultimately it’s down to individuals to do things correctly.
There have been a few incidents in the past when members have had unexpected motor starts, sometimes causing injuries, we should do our best to prevent any future issues. I admit to relying on the throttle kill switch too much and will change my habits in future.

I started off the month badly by writing off my Multiplex FunGlider! It’s had hundreds of flights over many years and has had its share of crashes but this was one crash too many. I’d love to say that something broke in the air, or the radio failed, but I must admit that it was pilot error. I’ve always known that the model would loop tightly but needed a lot more space to bunt (outside loop) so it’s something I’ve rarely done. But I had a bit of brain fade and decided to bunt at a fairly low level. When the model was heading vertically down I thought it wasn’t going to make it so I switched from full down elevator to full up elevator.
Big mistake! It wasn’t even close and hit the ground hard. This time is was past repairing so the radio and powertrain have been removed and the remainder retired to the bin.

In June two prospective new members come to fly with us, the first being John Sheehy.
John arrived on a push bike with a trailer for the model, I’m pretty sure that’s a PAM first!
The model was a small foamie, a ZOHD Drift which is an 877mm wingspan electric glider. The Drift can be bought in various configurations and John’s is the PNP version which comes with a Kopilot gyro and even a small FPV unit in the nose. The Kopilot gyro is interesting as it has GPS so as well as having the usual stabilisation the pilot can switch into Return to Home mode if the plane gets too far away. When activated the RTH function will steer the model back to the launch point at a height of 35 metres and when it has come back you simply switch back to stabilisation mode and carry on flying. John said he’d been flying the Drift OK with the stabilisation turned on but wanted to learn to fly with it turned off. So at our field I launched the Drift and John flew it with stabilisation on and he flew a couple of circuits with no problems. But then he switched stabilisation off and the Drift promptly dived into the ground. After a few minutes with a hot glue gun we tried again. This time John launched it and I flew the Drift with stabilisation turned off. The first few seconds were ‘interesting’ as the plane wanted to dive badly but once I’d trimmed it out it flew fine. I gave the transmitter back to John who flew it for a little while but eventually crashed with minor damage. I couldn’t make the next flying session but 1066 tells me that John flew a HobbyKing Bixler and both John and the Bixler flew well.
John has now completed three visits so is eligible for membership if he wishes to join.

The second prospective new member was Patrick Beagles who brought along a Durafly Tundra to fly, I think it’s the V2 version, the same as the one that Mini-Mike flies.
Patrick has done quite a lot of RC flying in the past but hasn’t flown for around fifteen years so is a bit on the rusty side. Dougal Entendre took Patrick under his wing and did the Tundra take-off and landings but Patrick handled the rest of the flying with no problems.

Our Chairman Gordon Bennett had a birthday in June and brought along cakes for us all. They were individual carrot cakes that had been lovingly made by his step-daughter and very nice they were too. It was good that Gordon did the decent thing by bringing cakes, unlike someone who gave broken promises of cakes in May, but I won’t mention 1066…

As I reported in Patch News last month Woody has sold me his XFly T-7A Red Hawk having found it a bit of a handful and deciding he needed something a little easier to fly.
He chose a Durafly Ugly Stick V2 from HobbyKing, something we all agreed was a good all-round choice and in June he had several successful and confidence building flights.
This is what the HobbyKing website says about it: The Durafly Ugly Stick V2 not only looks as good as the original but flies just as well too, perfectly capturing those excellent flight qualities of which the Ugly Stick was renowned. Being the well-mannered RC sports model it is, the Ugly Stick is suitable for both beginner and experienced flyers alike. At the lower end of the speed range, it exhibits no bad stall tendencies and can be flown comfortably at half throttle if desired. However, when you wish to experience its true flying capabilities, open the throttle wide and the Ugly Stick will oblige, performing a full range of sport aerobatic manoeuvres with the ease that made the original so popular. Due to the low current draw of the Ugly Stick V2 power system, you can also enjoy longer than average flying times with mixed power use.
In the video you’ll see me doing the trimming flight and then Woody enjoying it himself.

As well as assembling the Ugly Stick Woody has been busy re-painting his E-Flite F-15. He’s kept the original colour scheme but it was getting a bit tatty and faded so he’s given it a facelift and brightened it up. We all commented that it looked much better in the air, really standing out well. Note that I said ‘looked’ rather than ‘looks’.  Unfortunately, a couple of weeks after making the F-15 look all pretty again it had a mid-air with MacFly’s Max Thrust Ruckus and neither model survived the head on collision, a great shame.
About the only good thing to come out of the collision was that the very expensive and posh new larger wheels with inflatable tyres that MacFly had only recently fitted to the Ruckus were undamaged. They worked very well on our grass patch but sadly proved to be utterly useless when arriving at the ground with one wing and half the nose missing!

To replace the wrecked Ruckus MacFly has bought a Volantex Saber, a 920mm span 3D aerobatic model. The Saber comes ready fitted with a 2212 1250KV motor, a 30A speed controller and four 9g servos. MacFly said the only problem he had putting it together was adding the decals which are very thin and proved to be extremely difficult to apply well.
It all looks good to me, I think he’s done an excellent job of them. The Saber comes with wheels and spats but MacFly chose not to fit the undercarriage and instead toughened up the underside of the fuselage with helicopter tape. Personally I think I would have fitted the undercarriage and wheels but left off the spats which are often a problem on grass.
MacFly asked me to do the initial trimming during which time I found the Saber to be an excellent flier before handing the transmitter over for MacFly to get to grips with it.

Young Leo has built himself a new model, a K&C Fleur-De-Lys. Never heard of it? Neither has anyone I have asked and I can’t find anything on the internet with that name.
Leo got the kit from Dwayne Pipe ,who got it from Fred Robinson, whose late father-in-law had owned it. Obviously it’s a very old kit and it was originally designed to be IC powered.
But Leo has made it electric by fitting it with the motor from his old Wot 4 along with an 80A speed controller. He’s using a four cell 5500mAh battery so the flights should be long. The model is 54” wingspan and has a fibreglass fuselage and veneered foam wings. Leo asked Dougal to do the first flight and, as you can see in this month’s video, all went well.

Father’s Day was in June, a day when we’re all spoilt rotten by our kids…possibly. To be fair my kids looked after me well and, amongst other things bought me a suitable beer! Have a Kite at this, the Eagle eyed amongst you will like it, I won’t Crow but I went into Raptors. Did that make you ‘Owl with laughter? Oh OK, make up your own jokes then…

We’ve had a few people asking about the masts that are close to our field, wondering if they cause any radio issues. The vast majority of us use 2.4GHz nowadays and none of us or the nearby MVSA (Meon Valley Soaring Association) have experienced any problems. Both myself and Dougal sometimes fly FPV (First Person View) which uses 5.8GHz to transmit video back to the goggles and we haven’t noticed any problems when being close to the masts but Dougal decided to do the ultimate test in and fly between them.
He had zero problems, no loss of signal at all so I think we’re safe to assume they’re never going to be a problem to us. I have to admit to being jealous, I wanted to do that first!

Captain Slow bought himself a new plane this month, a Maule M-7 which he bought from Banggood. He paid just £62 but was slightly miffed when he saw that they’d reduced the price by £10 a week or so later. Calm down Slow, it was cheap, you got a bargain anyway!
The Maule is another of the small foam RTF models that comes complete with transmitter. The plane is fitted with a 6-axis gyro which can be switched through three different modes from the transmitter. Like the similar models it also has a push button which with just a single press with make the Maule either loop or roll. It uses a single cell 500mAh lipo battery and about the only negative thing Captain Slow had to say about the Maule was that the stickers are extremely thin and delicate. The Maule flew well right from the start with gyro turned on and Slow has had several flights already and it experimenting with the various settings. I don’t think he’s pressed the aerobatic button yet…it might go quickly!

Some of you will know that I had a flight in a two Spitfire back in October 2020 although I rarely mention it…! Well in June my wife and I visited the Spitfire & Hurricane Memorial Museum at Manston Airport in Kent and I had a go on their Spitfire simulator.
I was well briefed before taking-off from Manston and I flew across London, overflew London City Airport, almost took out the London Eye and landed safely at Heathrow. Doreen filmed most of the ‘flight,’ here are some stills taken from the video:

The museum is small but worth a visit and entry is free, although donations are gratefully accepted. The simulator is great and costs £10 for a 10 minutes or £30 for 30 minutes. What I hadn’t realised is that on the other side of the car park is the RAF Manston History Museum. There is a small entry charge and the museum looked small from the car park. However once inside we found it was much bigger than we thought and is crammed full of loads of interesting aircraft and equipment and there were even more planes outside. Sadly we didn’t have time to do it justice, it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re over that way.

Quiz time now, what is this aircraft that I spotted at the RAF Manston History Museum?

Now for some of Kryten’s excellent action shots from June. The first two are Woody’s F-15 and MacFly’s Ruckus that were sadly both lost in a mid-air collision later in the month:

This month’s video has footage filmed by me, MacFly, and Dougal Entendre, thanks guys.
Please watch the video full-screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around:
If the video won’t play for you please click HERE

The invention of the air friar:

Colin Cowplain