Patch News – May 2021

Fortunately the month of May came and went without any further Covid-19 restrictions being brought in to prevent us from flying. At the start of the month the committee decided to raise the number of pilots allowed at each session from six to ten so as we rarely get more than ten pilots anyway that means it’s virtually back to normal.Of course Covid-19 hasn’t completely gone away so we still need to be careful with social distancing and hand sanitizing as necessary. The booking system remains in place to comply with government rules, we are required to record who attended and when. It’s easy enough, just email John if you intend to fly.  Sadly much of the May weather was more like March which limited the amount of flying but I think all the regulars managed to get airborne although some also got wet! At the start of the month the bullocks were moved out and although they did return mid-month they didn’t stay long. They are well used to us now and rarely bothered us, their presence just means somebody always has to stay grounded to keep an eye open in case they wander too close to the pits or patch.The often wet and warm(ish) weather meant the grass grew a lot so members of the Friday Afternoon Rural Trimming Society (FARTS) were kept busy.  On a couple of occasions the weather caused the mowing to be delayed to the following Sunday morning so the team became SMARTS (Sunday Morning Alternative etc). That’s the first time some of them have been called smart! The last week of the month finally saw some sunnier and drier weather which lots of members took full advantage of. Sometimes they were even having to queue up to take-off.

First of the new models to feature this month is Mini-Mike’s Marlin. The Marlin is produced by Arrows Hobby and is a 910mm span EPO foam moulded ducted fan model that comes ready fitted with an 11 bladed 64mm fan.The brushless motor is a 2840 3150kv unit which is fed by a 40A esc. The model requires a 35C or greater 4 cell lipo of 2200-2700mAh capacity. A fixed undercarriage with a steerable nose-leg is supplied but is easily removed if the pilot prefers the cleaner lines. Apparently the model hand launches easily and belly landings shouldn’t be a problem. A few months ago I test flew Bob the Builder’s Marlin which went very well and Mini-Mike’s was no different. I was away at the time of the first flight but others filmed the event so you can see it in this month’s video. It appeared to need very little in the way of trim and was pretty quick with the flaps raised. Once the flaps were lowered the jet slowed up well although a little practice is required to get it down neatly on our relatively small patch. I believe its Mini Mike’s first EDF model and I’m sure he’s going to have a lot of fun with it.

Next up is 1066’s new Wasp e2k pylon racer that he’s built from a kit produced and sold by Cloud Models. The Wasp is designed for the E2K electric pylon race class which has strict limits on both the model and the powertrain in order to make the racing close and ensure the winner is the best pilot and not simply the richest. 1066 doesn’t intend to race it, it’s just for fun, but it certainly shifts around the sky and is much quicker than most models we’ve seen at the patch. The Wasp is 39” span and has aileron, elevator, and throttle controls, no rudder.1066 has fitted a 1400kv 3536 motor and an 80A speed controller. The prop is an 8×6 Master Airscrew and the battery is a 4 cell lipo with a capacity of 3300mAh and a 30C rating. I wonder if it would be even quicker with an APC prop but it’s quite quick enough as it is. Judge for yourself, you can see it performing in this month’s video.

At the beginning of May Page Boy test flew the lovely Skywriter that he’s been building over the last few months.This is what Page Boy has to say about it: The plan was free in the RCM&E magazine in 2013 so quite a while ago but I knew as soon as I saw it I had to build it one day. It’s a Lindsay Todd design. I got the CNC kit from SLEC for £69 which to be honest would have been a good price except I had to alter the parts here and there quite a bit.The most challenging parts of the build for me was to make all the aluminium parts from aluminium strip etc. and to get all wing incidences correct. I decided to give glass-clothing a go using light weight matting and Deluxe Materials resin which was then given two coats of primer and two coats of colour. The covering is the usual Hobbyking stuff that actually gave me a headache this time round. Normally I don’t have any issues but this one well @#*…! I believe silver covering is notoriously difficult to apply Page Boy although I’m not sure why. Anyway the finished result looks excellent to me. Page Boy is planning on completing the instrument panel now the model has flown. The Skywriter has a wingspan of 48″ and Page Boy’s weighs exactly 5lb. He has fitted an EMAX 2820/07 brushless motor coupled to a Hobbywing 60A esc. He’s currently using a 12×6 prop and a Turnigy Graphene 3000mAh 4 cell lipo. All the servos are from 4-Max. Page Boy was very happy after the first flight which you can see in this month’s video.

Captain Slow brought along a new model to show us but, never one to be rushed, he hasn’t actually flown it yet.It’s a Multiplex Mini Solius, a 600mm span foam chuck glider that weighs just 45g. But Captain Slow has fitted his out with a micro RC system retrieved from a retired (broken) E-Flite indoor model. The receiver is a ‘brick’ type that includes two linear servos one of which Captain Slow is using for the elevator but it was simply too tricky to make a rudder linkage so the second servo is unused. Two further linear servos control the ailerons so what was originally a free-flight Mini Solius chuck glider is now a three channel RC glider that Captain Slow is intending to aerotow!There is no servo operated towline release and the plan is to use a small piece of Velcro to hold the line onto the glider and release it by pulling hard using either up or down elevator, depending on the final choice of Velcro location. It sounds a bit odd but Captain Slow has read about the apparently tried and tested system somewhere and it’s supposed to work well. I look forward to trying it, possibly towing it with my Max Thrust Riot.

A few months ago Patch News included a photo of a small P51 Mustang that Catapult King had received as a Christmas present but at the time it hadn’t flown. But in May not only did it fly, it flew surprisingly well!The Mustang is made by Eachine although an online search shows an identical model marketed under the Volantex name. The package includes a completed model with a 6 axis gyro, a 400mAh single cell lipo, and a transmitter.The transmitter has a 3 position switch for the gyro modes, the modes being beginner, intermediate, and expert. There is also an Aerobatics push button which enables the pilot to do a roll or a loop even when the gyro is in beginner mode. It’s rather like a flip button that lots of drones have, press the button once and the Mustang will roll once or loop once depending on which way the pilot moves the stick. The wingspan is 400mm, length is 317mm and it has a flying weight of just 60g. The lipo gives flight times of around 10 minutes and is charged from a USB socket just like your mobile phone. The only thing not in the box are 4 AA batteries for the transmitter. Catapult flew his with the undercarriage fitted but it’s easily removable if you’d rather fly without it.The first flight can be seen in this month’s video and I think you’ll agree that it’s pretty impressive for such a tiny model. The P-51 Mustang is sold by Banggood (and others) and if you like it you may also like the F4U Corsair or T-28 Trojan in the same range. At the time of writing the Corsair has to be ordered from China but the Trojan is available from the Banggood UK warehouse for just £67.77 with 3 batteries and free shipping…I’m tempted!

Dougal Entendre started using his FPV gear again during May, I must get my FPV model out again. He was flying his Sonic Modell Binary twin motored model that he’s flown a few times before but never using FPV.Note the balance lead sticking out out the back of Dougal’s head. It stops him falling over… As well as the FPV gear Dougal has added a 4K action camera alongside the Foxeer FPV camera to record better quality in-flight video. Dougal says: The FPV camera is right next to the action camera, and they both seem to get a similar field of view. Although the action camera is 4K, I only run it in 1080p mode (at 60Hz frame rate). This is because 4K video files are huge and unwieldy, and the camera drops the frame rate right down to get 4K, which is no good at all, whereas the 1080p quality seems pretty good. I got comments about how long it took me to prep the plane for each flight. This is because I have to power up about 6 systems. In order, I go: Transmitter, plane (including lights), video Tx (from separate 1000mAh 3s battery), goggles, action cam, then set goggles and action cam recording.When I power up the action cam it’s very difficult to see the video screen, even if I do remember to take my sunglasses off! I have to listen to the chimes as it powers up, and then different chimes when I press the button to start it recording. The latter nearly always seems to coincide with someone loudly saying “that’s a right faff to set up”, or “why has it got two cameras”, so it’s a miracle we have any video material at all. Well we do have video material and very good quality it is too. On one flight Dougal homed in on a red kite that didn’t seem bothered by the model at all. You can see it all in the video but here are a couple of stills from it:

I caused lots of hilarity at one midweek flying session when I discovered that my beloved Multiplex transmitter was as dead as a dodo. As you can imagine there was great delight and lots of “bl**dy Multiplex” type comments, especially from the Spektrum pilots! I must admit I was rather concerned until I remembered that the previous flying session had been ended by a heavy rain shower and I had packed up very quickly and had obviously left my tx switched on…operator error! Fortunately fellow Multiplex flier Captain Slow allowed me to set up my Sukhoi on his transmitter and with a quick bind I was up and flying. When I returned home and charged my transmitter the screen showed the last model flight time as 99 mins & 59 seconds, thus proving I had forgotten to switch it off.Nowadays all cars have USB charge points so if I’d had a charging lead in the car I would have been alright. I’ve put a lead in there now, that will ensure I’m never stupid enough to leave the transmitter on again!

Dwayne Pipe was recently given a voucher to go indoor skydiving at iFly in Basingstoke, something I did myself a couple of years ago. Basically the set-up is a transparent vertical 14ft diameter wind tunnel with a mesh ‘floor’ to stop you falling to the bottom if the fans stop. The average height that you ‘fly’ at is about 6ft above the mesh but you can go up to a max 39ft. An instructor is in the tunnel the whole flight to keep the student in the right place and stable. The air speed is controlled by an operator who is watching what’s happening the whole time and they adjust the speed from between 90mph and 180mph. The experience begins with a pre-flight briefing where you’re taught what to expect, what to do, and basic hand signals. Then it’s time to get kitted up, all the necessary gear is included in the price of the flights. The controller raises the air speed when signalled by the instructor and up you go, weird!Dwayne said that it was over too quickly but as you can see he really enjoyed the flights. To see a short video of Dwayne Pipe flying in a drainpipe click HERE He gets better when he swaps his blue flying suit for a red one…

Chas has various building projects underway at the moment including a Westland Lysander but one that he has just finished was converting an eleven year old Wot 4 Classic to electric power. What’s a Wot 4 Classic I hear you ask?From the net: The Classic uses a 52’’ span parallel chord wing similar to the Wot 4 Mk2 but with the Mk3 fuselage, especially suited to slow fun type flying. The rakish swept vertical tail surfaces, underfin and increased lower rudder area greatly enhance flick manoeuvres and knife edge looping capability. Structurally the fuselage has undergone a major redesign, incorporating die-cut ply doublers, formers and integral servo tray, all slotted for ease of assembly. The front bulkhead can be installed in a choice of positions to accommodate any engine within the specified range. Chas’s plane started life with an OS46FX fitted but only had a couple flights in that guise and fortunately he hadn’t got round to cutting holes in the cowl to fit the I/C engine. So the old engine has now been replaced by a 595kv brushless motor spinning a 13 x 8 propeller. Power will be provided by a 4 cell 3300mAh lipo connected to a 60A speed controller and Chas has also fitted a 5A UBEC to power the JR receiver and four standard size digital servos.He has made the top of the old tank bay removable so he can swap batteries without having to remove the wings.It all looks very smart and should go well with that power set-up. I can’t wait to see Chas doing knife edge loops.

A Wot 4 that’s also seen a transformation but for a different reason belongs to Bob the Builder. I’ve no idea what version his is (there are so many nowadays) but it’s now got a new fuselage. Bob’s alter ego Basher Bob ‘modified’ the original one rather badly so he’s built his own version replacement fuselage.It looks fine and seems to fly just as well as the others although I doubt we’ll be seeing it doing knife edge loops!

Kryten took som excellent flying shots in May including an absolutely superb one of Dougal’s inverted Sport Jet:

This month’s video was shot by myself, Dougal Entendre, Captain Slow, and Bob the Builder. 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

My skydiving instructor would always take the time to answer any of our stupid first-timer questions.
One chap asked, “If my chute doesn’t open, and my reserve doesn’t open, how long before I hit the ground?”
The instructor looked at him and, in perfect deadpan, answered…
“The rest of your life.”

 Colin Cowplain