Patch News – March 2024

It’s April already and we’re rushing towards those lovely balmy summer days that are ideal for model flying…well hopefully anyway. March wasn’t too bad at all, as expected for this time of year there was a mixture of good and bad weather but some of the days were just about perfect for us and we had some good turnouts at the field. A few of us flew on 3^rd March which was a glorious calm day but there was mist laying in the valleys and we needed to be careful as it sometimes blew up across the field. These two photos were taken about fifteen minutes apart, the first one with my Riot ready to take-off, I’m glad I waited! It would probably have been a great morning for FPV flying with some excellent opportunities for a bit of cloud hopping but sadly I hadn’t taken my FPV plane with me.
Never mind there were some lovely views from our field especially towards Butser hill.

I mentioned last month that the parking area was extremely muddy and was causing a few problems with people getting stuck as well as being very mucky underfoot. Chairman Gordon Bennett said he’d have a word with the farmer to see if anything could be done and right on cue Olly (or was it Will?) visited us at the patch to see how we were getting on. When we mentioned the parking area he said they had lots of wood chippings that they could put down for us. Sure enough a few days later one of the farm hands brought three large trailer loads of chippings up and spread them over the worst areas for us.
It’s not perfect, some hard-core would have been even better, but the wood chips have improved it no end and things should get much better as the weather improves.

One midweek morning early in the month Gordon, Woody, and I turned up hoping to fly but there was a strong easterly wind blowing and some of the MVSA (Meon Valley Soaring Association) members were flying. The farmer had asked them to park in ‘our’ newly wood chipped area as their usual place further along the track was waterlogged. Rather than fly from their usual slope they were using the one much closer to us, pretty much straight in front of the masts but well forward. We didn’t fly as the wind was so strong but had we chosen to they wouldn’t have been a problem, they were still well out of our way. We spent some time chatting to the MVSA guys and then made use of our time by mowing the patch. It was good to chat to some fellow aviation enthusiasts, the ones we spoke to were all very friendly and weren’t at all bothered that our new field is much closer to them than before.

I managed to have few FPV flights later in the month and had the on-board video camera running as usual. There wasn’t anything special to include in this month’s video but here are some stills taken from the videos. We flew on Saturday 30th March rather than the Sunday as the weather looked better and found that the metal detectorists of the Hayling Detect club were out in force. There were so many cars present that some of them had to park in the top of our field, as did we, but that was fine and didn’t cause any problems.

The gap between the trees that we sometimes fly through when landing looks pretty big on FPV, much wider than it seems when landing normally. That’s not to say I won’t hit them!

Basher Bob (Bob the Builder) shot past me rather too close for comfort during one flight!

And Dougal Entendre had a similar ‘moment’ with Page Boy’s Wasp pylon racer!

1066 flew a new (to him) model at the end of the month, a Visionaire that he’d bought from Rod Ashton. I’m not sure if Rod had bought it new or had even ever flown it, maybe he also bought it second-hand and sold it on. According to 1066 is was a bit tatty when he got it so he tried touching up the paint in places but it all went a bit wrong. I think he must mean the black on the canopy and in front of the cockpit but it doesn’t look too bad to me. I asked for info on the Visionaire and 1066 said it’s all stock apart from coming without a receiver. From new the plane comes with an AR636A six channel Spektrum receiver that has a built stabiliser, this is how Spektrum describe it: SAFE (Sensor Assisted Flight Envelope) technology is a revolutionary electronic flight envelope protection system that delivers a virtual safety net. Anytime you need to instantly recover back to level flight, just press the Panic Recovery Mode button or switch on your transmitter. Several club members have models with the SAFE system and it generally seems to work well but as this one came without a receiver 1066 will have to rely on flying it properly himself.
The Visionaire has a wingspan of 1143mm (43”) and is made of foam with carbon reinforcements in the structural areas. The brushless motor is a BL 10 1250KV which is linked to a 40-Amp Lite Pro Switch-Mode BEC Brushless ESC and spins a 12×4 propeller. The model comes ready fitted with four 13g servos which are high speed digitals and the recommended battery is a three cell 2200mAh lipo. The Visionaire was discontinued a few years as was the Night Visionaire that came with a High-intensity internal LED lighting system already installed. I’ve been searching the net for information on the Visionaire and it appears that it was originally a Parkzone model and E-flite only sold the Night Visionaire. I think Parkzone and E-flite are both names that are owned by Horizon Hobby and they’ve now stopped using the Parkzone name, just using E-flite for all their models.

To confuse things even more I have founds loads of photos of both Visionaires and Night Visionaires and not one of them has the same colour scheme as 1066’s model. Enough of that, all you really want to know is how does it fly? Well at the time of writing 1066 has only given it one outing but it looked very good to me. It appeared to do everything the usual 3D planes do but it seemed to be especially good at doing things slowly. Maybe that will mean it’s not so good on the windier days, we’ll have to wait and see. But in the meantime take a look at this month’s video where you can see it in action.

On the 1st of the month we were amazed to see an Avro Lancaster approaching the field, very low. We weren’t sure what it was doing, possibly using the radar mast on Butser to line up for a Goodwood approach. We all waved like mad but saw no response from the pilot although I think he must have seen us, maybe he was simply too aloof to bother with us. It circled round several times and on the fourth pass I snapped this rather blurry shot.

With a lack of new models being flown in March I’ll have to resort to writing about some that I’ve featured before. We’ve seen very little of Page Boy recently, he was lured away to another club for a while but he soon realised they weren’t nearly as insulting fun as us at PAM so he re-joined us last year. He’s been busy with life in general and hardly managed to fly at all last year, just once in August I believe, and he took the winter off, couldn’t cope with the cold apparently, wimp! But in March he re-emerged from hibernation and gently eased himself back into flying with a pylon racer, his Wasp E2K. Despite choosing Gordon Bennett to chuck the Wasp the flight went well and he soon remembered how to fly.
1066 thought there was a serious problem as the motor only seemed to run at full power for a couple of seconds or so before cutting back to around half power. But there was nothing wrong 1066, it’s called ‘throttling back’, it’s controlled by the left hand stick!
By the end of the morning Page Boy had had several flights with the Wasp, the only problem being that despite our new field having a patch over twice the size of the previous one he couldn’t hit it! Never mind, it’s good to have you back Page Boy.

In the February Patch News I wrote about Mini-Mike’s marvellous Mirus, a design that was first kitted back in the early eighties for IC engines (how quaint, remember those?) but of course Mini-Mike has built his to be powered by a lovely brushless electric motor.
He is using the same power set-up as Page Boy’s Wasp E2K, a Thumper 3536 1500Kv powered by a three cell 2200mAh lipo but rather strangely whereas Page Boy’s Wasp pulls 855w the Mirus is only pulling 615w. I’m not sure why there would be such a big difference and can only think it’s down to the batteries, maybe Mini Mike’s lipos have a lower C rating or are simply older and have degraded. I notice that the Mirus has a 50A speed controller against the Wasp’s 80A but I would have thought 50A would be more than enough. The only other thing could be the propeller, both models are using the same size but possibly not the same make, that can make quite a difference to the current draw.
Even though it has less power than the Wasp the Mirus flew very nicely, plenty fast enough for the first few flights when Mini-Mike was getting used it and trimming it to fly as he likes. It’s slower than the Wasp but it’s a delta not a pylon racer so it’s bound to be slower, they are designed for different things. I thought it looked great in the air and 1066 was right back in reminiscing mode as he watched it. It’s in this month’s video so take a look.

Another model to re-emerge in March after a winter break was Woody’s Splot.
When the Splot first appeared last year it had a few problems and it took a while to work out that there was a wire chaffing inside the transmitter that was causing the rudder to move when the throttle was opened; that made for interesting take-offs! Having sorted that out things were much improved but flying it in early March Woody found the Splot still had a tendency to pull to the left if the throttle was opened too quickly.
This was diagnosed as a lack of side-thrust so Woody added some washers behind the motor mounts to introduce some right thrust and bingo, the problem was solved.

Having several good days of weather meant it was possible for Kryten to take some decent shots of our planes in the air so here’s a selection of some of his excellent action photos:

Video time now this month with footage taken by me, MacFly, and Dougal Entendre. 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

A few years ago at our Air Traffic Centre we received an early warning that an undisclosed number of US Air Force B2 Bombers would be crossing our FIR [Flight Information Region] at a particular time on a particular day.
They would check in with us as they entered our airspace and check out again as they left. We were told the call sign to expect, and, as the route was known, it was logical to assume that they would contact us at a certain time and at a certain place.
Being the then famous new ‘Stealth’ bombers we would know little about it but they would pay us the courtesy of letting us know when they were there.
Eric, a very capable controller with a keen sense of humour was on position, and heard, “UAE Area, this is USAFB2. This is a courtesy call advising that we are about to enter your airspace.”
Eric replied, “USAFB2, welcome to UAE Airspace, we have you on radar 200 miles out over LOTUS, hope you enjoy your visit.”
Without thinking the Stealth Bomber replied, “Thank you UAE, it a pleasure to be… Wait…what?  You’ve got us on radar? 200 miles out? You must be kiddin’ me?”
“That’s affirmative USAFB2,” said Eric, “I’m kiddin’ you. Enjoy your visit.”

Colin Cowplain