Patch News – November 2024

I’ve begun writing this blog on Sunday 24^th November when I should be out flying, but storm Bert has put a stop to that. The wind has been blowing at over 30mph all weekend with gusts of over 50mph so I doubt there has been any outdoor flying anywhere today. The rest of November has been pretty much normal although there was a little snow in the middle of the month which is unusual in November down here on the south coast. In the last few days of the month we had storm Conall blow through with strong winds and some very heavy rain. But some of the hardier members have been flying regularly throughout the month and on some of the days the conditions were surprisingly pleasant. On the last Friday of the month there was just 1066, Woody, and me at the field. It was a lovely sunny morning but the wind was stronger than forecast (OK MacFly, you were right!) and at 90 degrees to the patch. Despite just being the three of us we mowed the patch before flying.While we were mowing we spotted the contrails of four aircraft that were obviously flying together in a loose formation. A quick look at Flight Radar 24 didn’t show them and then, just a few minutes later, another four flew over on the same track, very mysterious…
Was it Russian missiles? USAF planes flying in? No, Woody later looked on the Facebook pages of EGHF Lee-on-Solent and RAF Coningsby Spotters Group and found the answer, it was two groups of Typhoons returning to Coningsby from Albacete Airport in Spain.

After all the excitement of conspiracy theories and mowing we had a few flights in the now increasingly strong wind and finished the morning by cleaning off the mowers for winter. Multiple Magnificent Mower Maintainers? Maybe!

Club members will hopefully have read the email from our chairman about the upcoming AGM. For those of you who missed the email the AGM will be held at The Hampshire Hog on Wednesday 8^th January, starting at 7.30pm. The meeting agenda will be circulated in due course but, as always, one of the things to discuss will be the annual fees.
Please put the date in your diaries and make the effort to attend. As always I will be running a raffle so make sure you come along with your pockets stuffed full of cash!

Now for some good news, not that there’s any bad news to follow. Our chairman Paul Bennett (affectionately known as Gordon) has been awarded a Certificate of Appreciation for his contributions to Petersfield Aeromodellers Club. This came about because Woody had applied to the BMFA Awards Committee to put Gordon forward, explaining that when the club lost the field late last year at extremely short notice after around 50 years of flying, Gordon had negotiated with the farmers for us to have the use of a different field.
Gordon then amended the Constitution and rewrote the Site Rules applicable to the new site. He coordinated moving equipment between the sites and the setting out and mowing the new patch. Everything went smoothly and we have now been using the new site for almost a year with no problems. Woody told the Awards Committee that Gordon did all this while holding down a day job but we all know he just plays with boats now and again!
Oh look, a pair of leaders! But seriously, many congratulations to Gordon for receiving this well-deserved award, and well done and thank you to Woody for putting him forward.

I didn’t spot any completely new unflown models at the patch in November but Terry flew his newly repaired E-flite Apprentice, a model that I had missed at the patch previously.
Apparently, one day while I was away, Terry had crashed during a take-off attempt and some repairs were required. Whilst undertaking the repairs Terry changed the nose-leg as he thought the single wire was deflecting and making the Apprentice veer off line.
He has now fitted a leg that supports the wheel on both sides and has also increased the size of the wheel. I’m not sure it’s made a big difference as the Apprentice still wants to turn hard right but in this month’s video you can see Terry’s first successful take-off.

Captain Slow brought along his Durafly Auto-G2 Gyrocopter to fly in early November. He’d had a few flights with the autogyro quite a long time ago but the flights had been a bit erratic and eventually it crashed. Back in the workshop Captain Slow discovered a problem with one of the servos so he swapped it for a new one and then completed the necessary repairs. When he brought the model along his time there was a crosswind and the grass was wet and a bit long so the model struggled to get off the patch. On the last attempt Slow tried going along the full length of the patch rather than directly into the wind but the crosswind caught him out and the autogyro tipped sideways and broke a rotor blade.
I think a hand-launch would have been better although none of us have much experience of autogyros so who knows. It’s an easy repair so we should see it flying again very soon.

Away from the patch now, many of you will know that Mini-Mike recently went mad and splurged several year’s worth of his modelling cash…on a trip to Australia! So what has that got to do with Patch News I hear you ask? Well nothing really but it does have an aviation link as while he was there he had a flight in a float plane with Sydney Seaplanes.
I don’t know about you lot but personally I’m very jealous, it’s something that’s been on my bucket list for ages! Mike’s flight was supposed to be in a de Havilland Beaver but the Beaver went unserviceable at the last minute so he was switched to a Cessna Caravan Amphibian instead. Although a Beaver flight would have been great, a real classic aircraft powered by a huge 450hp Pratt & Whitney radial engine, I imagine the Cessna would be much more comfortable and a great deal quieter as it’s powered by a turbo prop engine.
The Caravan is larger than the Beaver with a wingspan of 15.9M against the Beaver’s 14.6M and it has much better visibility with more/ larger windows. The Caravan can carry twelve passengers against the Beaver’s seven although if I remember correctly Mike said there were only two passengers anyway so they would have had plenty of room each!
Mike said he was surprised at how smooth the take-off and landings were, not as bumpy as he’d expected and he thought the flight was well worth the money. I thought it sounded fairly expensive until he told me the cost of the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb that he also did. Not only was the ticket expensive he then discovered that no cameras or mobile phones are allowed on the climb (in case they get dropped onto the road below) so if you want photos you have to buy the ones the organisers take during the climb. Oh well, it’s another thing that just has to be done I guess. It looked like you had a great time Mike.

I’m sorry to say that Bob the Builder must revert to his old title of Basher Bob for a month!
He was flying his XFly Tasman at the same time Captain Slow was flying his Nigel.
The poor Nigel was flying along, nice and slowly (obviously) when the Tasman tore right into it. Perhaps I should explain that Nigel is actually a Junior 60 that was built by the late Nigel Baker (AKA Chris P Bacon) so when Slow bought it he named it Nigel in his memory.
Fortunately Nigel appeared to escape unscathed but the Tasman lost most of its rudder. Basher Bob landed safely with no further problems. Now you might be wondering how it could be Bob’s fault when the only damage was to his rudder, did he reverse into Nigel?!
It’s simple, whenever there’s a mid-air collision it is always Basher Bob’s fault, it’s the rule!

Early in the month my wife and I visited the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, using some tickets I’d received as a present. We’d visited once before, on the first weekend the museum opened over thirty years ago, needless to say there have been a lot of changes! The museum is excellent and covers all the activities that have happened at the old race circuit in the past including motorbikes, cars, and of course, aeroplanes. I won’t bore you with too much information, but if you want to know more visit their website HERE
Amongst all the aircraft here were a couple of items that immediately caught my attention. Firstly, there was a notice on the museum Harrier about the test pilot John Farley.
The longer serving PAM members will remember that John came to our club meetings a couple of times and gave us some extremely interesting talks about his career as a test pilot, in particular the development of the Harrier, right from the early days of the ‘Flying Bedstead’ (Rolls Royce Thrust Measuring Rig) through to the P1127, Kestrel, and Harrier. John, who sadly passed away in 2018, had been a keen aeromodeller and was a member of Chichester & District MAC, and he came and flew at one of the early electric flight fly-ins that I ran for Southern Area BMFA at the Winchester MAC site many years ago.
The second thing that caught my attention was this stand about Sir Sydney Camm.
As an aeronautical engineer Sir Sydney Camm contributed to many Hawker designs from biplanes of the 1920’s to the Hawker Hurricane and even the Harrier mentioned above.
I found this online: Such was Camm’s fondness for model aircraft that he played a principal role in establishing the Windsor Model Aeroplane Club in 1912. The WMAC was chiefly concerned with designing and making model aircraft, but it also began designs for a man-carrying glider. This black and white photograph was taken at a time close to the WMAC’s inception and depicts its members. So, from left to right: Frederick Camm, Barton, Sydney Camm, Mainwood, Saunders, Stevenson, Stanbrook and Clayton.
If you haven’t been to the museum I can thoroughly recommend it, it’s well worth a visit.

For this month’s action shots I’ve delved into the archives for some of Kryten’s older pics:

Video time now, this month with footage shot by myself, 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

I know you’ll all be disappointed but this month I don’t have a joke for you, just this:

Merry Christmas!
Colin Cowplain