Patch News – October 2015

In Patch News last month I explained that I would be away on holiday at the end of September and beginning of October so would be relying on others to keep me up to date with patch happenings. Everything worked out as hoped, I received updates from several members, and I was able to upload Patch News from my tablet on 1^st October while in my Singapore hotel room, isn’t technology great? So now it’s time to report on October and some of the report, photos, and video content has been provided by Dougal Entendre, Captain Slow, JP, and Barracking.

The weather hasn’t been too bad recently; in fact we’ve had some very good flying days, some with hardly a breath of wind. By the start of the month Chairman Ron had got the patch in really good condition, his hard work mowing over the summer really paid off and the grass was the best it’s ever been. But then, in mid-October, George put some bullocks in the field… Sadly now the patch has been badly churned up and is well manured. Initially the young bullocks were very inquisitive, a real pain to keep out of our way, and had a tendency to follow us from the barn up to the patch, as demonstrated by Dougal Entendre and Basher Bob in this photo.But happily, more recently they seem to have got used to us and now ignore us most of the time. The little presents (ok, big wet sloppy presents) they leave on the patch make landings interesting, it’s not easy to consistently land on the patch and much harder when you’re trying to avoid ‘obstacles’! See Wonky Wiltshire in THIS MONTH’S VIDEO.  At least most of the deltas people built for the Delta Challenge don’t have wheels so can be plonked down with virtually no running on. If the initial touchdown is on a clean bit of grass the plane should stay clean. But Basher Bob discovered the hard way that if the delta actually lands smack in the middle of a pat the result is not pleasant.Perhaps I should confess that it was actually me that landed it that time following a trimming flight…payback time Basher…payback!

While JP was on herding duties he got all artistic and snapped my Delta flying over the cows.How come his photos are so much better than mine? It must be something to do with him being a professional photographer I suppose!

Basher Bob tends to incorporate his name or initial into the models that he’s designed or heavily modified, so his delta is actually Belta, his Splot has become Splob, and his Calmato is Bobmato. The last one should be ‘was’ Bobmato, he heavily modified it rather badly recently and I don’t think it will re-emerge this time.

One thing I missed while away was a low level aerobatic display by a Yak. Woody says it’s our friendly local Tiger Moth pilot who also flies a Yak. Shame I missed it, by all accounts it was a very good display, but unfortunately nobody seems to have got any photographs of the event. Dougal managed to get a short snippet of video though and it can be seen in THIS MONTH’S VIDEO.

Following a coming together between Basher Bob’s Spirit and Dougal Entendre’s Slick last month both models have been repaired and are back flying once more. Basher managed to graft half of his broken Spirit onto half of his broken Kinetic (they’re almost identical models) and made one decent model from the two wrecks.Dougal has made a lovely job of repairing the Slick and even included a small insignia to record the ‘kill’!

A few months ago Chris P Bacon (Nigel Baker) brought one of his mates (no, I didn’t think he had any either) to the patch to find out what model flying is all about. The friend is Mike Creamer and Mike has now fully joined as a member. That first occasion wasn’t a huge success; Chris P let Mike have a fly of his Wot 4 Foam-E with me in charge of looking after him. I’m not quite sure what happened but Mike managed to crash in the valley and I managed to not save him from doing so! But things have gone much better since then, Mike has bought a Freewing Pandora, a 1.4M span ready to fly foam model that has proved to be excellent. It’s very unusual in that it can be configured in 4 different ways and it can be changed between the 4 at any time. It can have either a tricycle undercarriage set up or the more usual taildragger arrangement, and it can be either high wing or low wing. All the parts are included with the kit, and you can choose whichever configuration suits you to start with and change to another version later. It also comes fitted with flaps but they are fixed as standard, you must add two of your own servos and the linkages if you want to use them. Mike has wisely gone for the high wing taildragger set up without flaps at the moment and the Pandora is serving him well.It’s a good size so handles the wind well and is easier to see than some of the smaller trainers, and with the taildragger arrangement it has pretty large wheels that are well suited to our patch. Later, when Mike’s skills improve he can convert it to a low winger and even swap it to a trike undercart if he wants. I must say I was quite surprised to see that it looks very pretty as a low winger, it doesn’t like a lash up at all, Freewing have done a good job on the design.

Woody’s Vulcan delta is flying well, last Sunday he had recorded the ‘Vulcan howl’ on his phone, and played it as his Vulc did a low slow pass and climb out, magic! It looks surprisingly realistic when flying at high level which is where Captain Altitude does most of his flying.

Woody says he can’t hit anything up there, time he was introduced to Basher Bob methinks! See it flying in THIS MONTH’S VIDEO. He managed to break the prop landing on the patch the other day and duly searched for the broken blade, we don’t want them being eaten by the cattle. He couldn’t find the missing blade so several others joined the search before someone finally spotted it.What are the chances…?

Several new models had their first outings in October. First up is Chairman Ron’s Splot, a beautifully made example that Ron built exactly to the original Graham Head design other than converting it to electric power.Ron didn’t feel the need to lengthen the nose or add extra bays to the wings; he simply fitted an E-Max 2815/09 motor with an 11 x 7 prop, a 40A esc, and a 2200mAH 3 cell battery pack. He even used the original design of fitting one centrally mounted aileron servo, something of a rarity these days but of course it was the norm back in 1986 when Graham designed the Splot.Ron asked me to do the test flight and I’m happy to report that it flies like all the Splots do, brilliantly. There was hardly a click of trim needed and the centre of gravity proved to be spot on. Ron has now had several flights with it and it’s already become a firm favourite.

Modelling Clay won the Big Raffle again recently (I knew he was trouble right from the start) and chose the Wingnetic. This is a flying wing version of the Kinetic/Spirit and it shares the same fuselage front end, motor and motor mount.

I flew 1066’s Wingnetic when he bought one a few months back and was very impressed. I think Tim’s is the same version as Steve’s, so it comes with the motor and speed controller but you have to provide you own servos, 3 x 5 or 6 gram ones are recommended.At around £45 it’s a great little model.

Now for a new model that a little different. It’s Gary Houghton’s new Black Horse Models Edge 540. So what’s different? It’s got one of those strange, old fashioned I/C engines!It’s an ARTF built from balsa and ply, and is covered in Oracover. The wingspan is 62” and the model weighs around 7-1/4lbs. The engine is an OS65AX, which is 10.63cc. The model flies well and is capable of just about any manoeuvre in the book.Gary’s is fitted with the standard silencer and passed the noise test ok. It didn’t seem noisy to me, it’s certainly quieter than his Wot 4. But I see from the OS website that there is an optional silencer available that is both quieter and lighter than the one they supply as standard. Why on earth don’t they supply the quieter, lighter one as standard in these days of noise problems and lost flying fields? Anyway, Gary has taken the hint from the rest of the club and he has an electric powered model under construction.

We haven’t seen any new EDF models for a while but Wonky Wiltshire has just bought a Mini Katana EDF from HobbyKing. The name seems a bit odd, Katana is actually the name of a long sword, but in full-size aircraft it’s a 2 seat composite light aircraft, and model Katanas are mostly 3D aerobatic types on the lines of an Extra or Edge.This Katana is 600mm span and is pushed along by a 5 bladed 50mm fan unit coupled to a 30A esc and the usual 1000mAH batteries that most of us have for our Spirits etc. It’s all moulded from EPO foam so it’s strong and can be glued with normal cyano, not foam safe.It seemed to fly well once Wonky had recovered from my dodgy launch and it certainly moved round the sky pretty quickly, not one you’d want to let get too far away! I look forward to trying it Phil…

I had a surprise this month when a prospective new member arrived at the field and introduced himself as Graham Swan, one of my old friends from school! We built and flew single channel radio control models together back in the 60’s, and Graham actually still has one of his, a Wizard of Oz slope soarer, as featured on the cover of Aero Modeller in April 1966.

I can also remember that he built (for obvious reasons) a Swannee, also from an Aero Modeller plan, and a Mini Concord from a Veron kit.Like me, Graham has recently retired and he decided to return to modelling following a trip to Old Warden on what turned out to be a model flying day. He has already bought an E-flite Apprentice, the new version with a built in gyro called SAFE – Sensor Assisted Flight Envelope.It works well; Graham has had three flights so far without crashing despite me looking after him! From what I saw on those flights I don’t think it will take him long to learn, although it will probably take longer to get used to the club ‘characters’.

Finally, it’s time for another Caption Competition. There will be a prize so place your entries in the Comments sections at the end.‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ is too obvious, think up your own insults!

A supposedly true story of a Scottish flight: 

After being airborne for approximately thirty minutes on an outbound evening flight from Glasgow, the lead flight attendant for the cabin crew nervously made the following painful announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m so very sorry but it appears that there has been a terrible mix up by our airport catering service… I don’t know how this has happened but we have 103 passengers on board and, unfortunately, only 40 dinner meals… I truly apologise for this mistake and inconvenience.” 

When passengers’ muttering had died down, she continued: “Anyone who is kind enough to give up their meal so that someone else can eat will receive free, unlimited drinks for the duration of our 5 hour flight.” 

Her next announcement came 90 minutes later: “If anyone would like to change their minds, we still have 40 dinners available.” 

Colin Cowplain