Patch News – October 2014

I’m writing this halfway through the month as I’m off to Vietnam on 22^nd October and don’t get home until 4^th November, so by the time you are reading this I will have missed anything that happened later in October. I would be grateful for any photos and info on things I missed, I’ll include them next month. I’ll finish and upload the blog on my return.

This month I’ll start with my latest model, a little Boeing PT-17 Stearman of just 32” span. I won it in a club raffle a while back and I ignored it for quite a time as I really wasn’t sure it was my sort of model, but now I’ve completed it I’m really happy with it and it flies beautifully. As it’s mine I know all the details of motor etc so I can bore you will loads of info on it. It’s a Wattage kit, I don’t know if the company still exists but I remember Wattage being a US kit manufacturer back in the nineties. It comes with a ready painted blow moulded plastic fuselage and built up and covered wings. There is still enough work left for the builder to feel they achieved something, various undercarriage fairings, cabane struts, and a 16 piece dummy radial engine all need to be sorted. Wattage supply a Cobalt 400 brushed motor that was good in its day, and the instructions call for a 7 cell nicad pack. I did a quick search on the internet and found some comments from many years ago that said the model was overweight and a bit marginal on power. This confirmed my thoughts that it would be best to use a modern brushless outrunner and a lipo battery. Wattage quote a ready to fly weight of 26-28 ounces so 1.75lbs at worst and I decided a 175W motor should be enough. But then I found 200W motors were only half the weight of the supplied Cobalt 400 and a 3 cell lipo is much lighter than a 7 cell nicad so I would end up having to add nose weight to compensate. After a few calculations I bought a Turnigy 2836/8 1100kv motor. It’s quoted as giving 336W max and is still an ounce lighter than the original. The motor mounting was designed for the Cobalt 400 of course and the dummy radial also fixed to it so there was a bit of work involved in mounting the outrunner inside the dummy radial. The nicad battery was supposed to be slid forward horizontally into the nose after removing the bottom wing but I managed to fit a 1000mAh lipo vertically though a small hatch I cut under the nose. This means the weight is as far forward as possible and I don’t need to remove the bottom wing. The final weight came out at just 23 ounces and even if I use a 1300mAh lipo it’s still only 23.5 ounces, 2½ ounces less than the minimum quoted. As I don’t need anything like the maximum power of the motor I use an 8 x 3.8 slow fly prop (same as we use on the EPP Mustangs) and that provides plenty of power and flights of around 6 minutes on the 1000mAh packs. It takes off our patch well even when the grass is wet and flies in a manner that belies its diminutive size, I like it! John Wheeley took some flying shots for me and Gentleman Jim did some videoing. The finished product can be seen here: Andy’s Stearman

Alan Woody Wood has given in to temptation and bought a Spirit Mini Sport Glider from HobbyKing. In the July Patch News I featured Spirits owned by myself, Steve ‘1066’ Hastings, and Mark ‘Dougal Entendre’ Agate so I won’t bore you again with the details. Suffice it to say they use the 800/1000/1300 3 cell lipo packs that many of us already use in the combat Mustangs & ME109’s and are great fun to fly, they will stooge around fairly sedately but will also climb vertically and do all the aerobatics you could want. Woody is getting on very well with his and thoroughly enjoying it. George Rose is flying a Kinetic, an almost identical model that performs just the same. The motor on my Spirit failed after quite a few flights and HK don’t stock it so I bought one for the Kinetic. It’s a bit bigger and isn’t quite a direct replacement but it’s easy enough to fit and the model now flies just as well (slightly better?). If anyone else has to do the same, be sure to order the Kinetic prop as well, you’ll need it as it uses a different adaptor to the Spirit motor.

Viv ‘Big’uns’ Burgess has got another large one, a Stinson Reliant from HobbyKing. The full-size Reliant was produced in various versions between 1933 and 1941 and this one is a sport scale model of one of the later gull wing versions and is built from balsa and ply. It’s 2160mm (85”) span and is intended to be powered by a petrol engine of between 26 & 35cc. Viv has of course electrified it and used a Turnigy G160 motor. The motor is listed as equivalent to a .160 glow engine, is rated at around 2.7kW, and uses 10cells to swing a 17 x 8 prop. HK state an all up weight of around 3.6kg and I don’t imagine Viv’s electric version is very different so the theory says it should more than enough power. And indeed it has, it shot into the air like a rocket and once throttled back it flew round very nicely. Viv said it had too much elevator movement but apart from that it was great, and he had loads left in the battery after a flight of around 5 or 6 minutes. I think it will prove ideal for our patch in winter, plenty of power for when the grass is wet and a bit long, and it’s large enough to handle blustery weather without problems. See a short video of the first flight here: Viv’s Stinson

John Wheeley has built a Hyperion Yak 55 which is so far having an exciting life! The first flight was ‘interesting’. I should explain that John doesn’t normally fly this type of aircraft and he set it up without any exponential on the surfaces which made it very sensitive on aileron and elevator. After a short very twitchy flight John ‘landed’ causing a bit of damage but nothing too serious. Having decided he didn’t like the model he passed it on to Tony Neal to complete the repairs. Tony duly completed the repairs and then had a flight and Mark Agate provided me with a report: “It took off and went straight into an unintended knife-edge! Tony started to fight it around a circuit, but it was clearly not very controllable, then the canopy came off just the other side of Harper’s Oak. Despite the sudden change of aerodynamics, Tony did an awesome bit of flying and got it down safely just the other side of the patch. He’s now taken it away to move the CG forward and play with the servo throws to try and make it a bit more airworthy.” So John should feel better in the knowledge that the model has problems that Tony also struggled with. The excitement continues, watch this space!

Behind Tony you can see Woody with his ex- Mick Harper Kalmato. In keeping with Mick’s tradition the Kalmato apparently decided to visit the bottom of the ‘Valley of Death’ last week. I understand that it’s repairable so it should be flying again soon, hopefully avoiding the other of Mick’s favourite spots, Harper’s Oak.

Another new model that Mark photographed for me is Steve H’s Invictus pylon racer. I missed it flying but apparently it wouldn’t take off with the spats fitted but once removed it got off ok. Steve tells me he’s fitting a higher current speed controller as the original was getting very hot and the motor was cutting in and out. The Invictus is yet another HobbyKing offering and is an out and out pylon racer of the EF-1 class. It has a built up lite ply fuselage and balsa skinned foam cored wings so it’s both light and strong. The cowl, spats, and canopy are made from carbon fibre reinforced fibreglass. Steve didn’t seem too happy with the way it flies when I discussed it with him but I’m sure he’ll sort it to his liking before too long. Personally I think it looks great and can’t wait to see it in the air.

I hear that Steve had a slight mishap with his MXS while I was away, one of the aileron servos failed in flight. I think it must have packed up somewhere near centred as Steve got the model down with what appeared to be minimal damage, although on proper examination later he found almost every joint in the fuselage needed re-gluing!

Nigel Baker obviously likes Chris Foss designs and following on from a Wot4 Foam-E and an Acro Wot Foam-E he’s now built a Wots Wot. This is quite large for a biplane at 50” span and it weighs around 7lbs. It’s all built up construction from balsa and ply, and it’s designed for a .70-.81 4 stroke glow engine or a 5 cell electric set up with a 5055 700Kv motor. When he bought it I don’t think Nigel had appreciated how much more power a 50” biplane needs compared to a typical 50” low winger, so it cost him rather more than he had planned by the time he had bought all the necessary running gear and some 5 cell packs! He’s made a lovely job of putting it all together and I’m happy to report that the test flight went beautifully. This is a typical Foss design, all very well thought out and with perfect flying manners, Nigel should be very pleased with this one.

Once upon a time BA and Virgin decided to have a boat race on the Thames. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach peak performance. On the big day they were as ready as could be and Virgin won by a length. BA were discouraged and senior management set up a project to investigate the problem. Its conclusion was that the Virgin team had 8 people rowing and one person steering. The BA team had one person rowing and eight people steering. Senior management immediately hired consultants to study team performance. Millions of pounds were spent and several months later they concluded that there were too many people steering and not enough rowing. The following year the team structure was changed to 4 steering managers, 3 senior steering managers and one executive steering manager. A performance/appraisal system was set up to give the rower more incentive to work harder and become a key performer. They concluded he must be given empowerment and enrichment. The next year the big day arrived and Virgin duly won. BA laid off the rower for poor performance, sold off the paddles, cancelled capital investment and halted development of the new boat. Then they gave high performance awards to the consultants and distributed the money saved among senior management.

Colin Cowplain