Patch News – October 2018

As I was away towards the end of October this Patch News will be a little shorter than usual and it won’t include any events that occurred in the last ten days or so of the month. No doubt other members will keep me informed of anything I missed and I’ll be able to add them to the next edition. Thanks to Dougal Entendre, Captain Slow, Catapult King, Dwayne Pipe, and Kryten for their photo and video contributions this month.

October saw the expected changeable weather and we missed flying one Sunday morning and a couple of Friday afternoons due to some pretty heavy rain and strong winds. But there were also some absolutely glorious days so we still managed to fly a fair bit, especially the Midweekers. The friendly bullocks that had returned towards the end of September were moved out to the lower field in mid-October which made life much easier for us. But the fence has done its job and the patch is in great condition, just needing an occasional mow now.I don’t imagine the existing bullocks will be back in the field again as they’ll be off to a supermarket soon, but we’ll no doubt be joined by some much younger ones in a few months time. I expect they’ll prove to be really inquisitive at first and will probably be a pain until they get used to us.

I’ll begin with an event that actually happened on 30^th September, too late for me to include in the last Patch News. Dougal Entendre was flying his HobbyKing Edge 540T and Cream Egg was flying his nearly new HobbyKing Voltigeur when there was a sudden bang, they’d had an unfortunate coming together. As is almost always the case when a mid-air occurs nobody was really to blame, it was just one of those things. Although…Bob the Builder (previously known as Basher Bob due to his fondness for mid-airs) was also in the air at the time of the collision. Just saying…! Cream Egg was definitely the winner of this skirmish, the collision pulled out the Voltigeur’s right hand aileron but, despite the aileron fluttering around still attached to the servo, he managed to land safely back on the patch.On closer examination we couldn’t find any sign of the impact, not a mark on the model other than the detached aileron. Presumably just the Voltigeur’s propeller made contact with the Edge, and even the trailing aileron was unmarked. Dougal however was not so fortunate, the impact tore the right hand wing clean off the Edge and despite Dougal’s best efforts at knife-edge flight the damage was too severe and the inevitable ‘hard landing’ occurred. It was quite impressive, the wreckage was a long way from the ripped off wing, he managed several hundred yards of ‘flight’ before it reached its final resting place! Cream Egg had the Voltigeur back flying again a few days later but sadly the Edge has made its way to the big hangar in the sky… Never mind, it was a lovely day and there were plenty of members present to witness and enjoy the event!

Staying with Dougal, he sent me this photo of his Laius last month and it just happens to include his ill-fated Edge.The point of the photo was to show off the huge new rudder he’s fitted to the Laius in the hope that he’ll be able to prop hang the model. I’m not sure if it’s done the trick or not, but I do know he managed to snap the undercarriage and it’s now been replaced with an aluminium one, maybe that was the result of some failed prop hanging?

Stanley Knife has always had a penchant for larger models and during October he flew his 68″ span Black Horse PZL Wilga on a couple of the nicer midweek mornings. I really like this photo of it.I’ve covered the Wilga in Patch News previously but it was a long time ago and it’s worth repeating. The full-size Wilga was produced by Polish company PZL from 1962 until 2006 with over 1000 being built in many different versions. The version Black Horse have modelled is a 35A (no, that’s not how much current it pulls!) which was a mass-produced basic variant for sports aviation. It was fitted with glider towing hook, and was produced from 1968. It was fitted with a radial engine and the wingspan was just over 11M (36½ feet). The Black Horse model spans 1,720mm (67.72 in) and weighs just under 4kg (around 8½ lbs). Stanley has fitted a Turnigy Aerodrive SK3 motor from HobbyKing and says it produces almost 1300W on 8 cells swinging a 16×10 prop. It certainly has plenty of power for the Wilga, the model takes off rapidly and then stooges around beautifully on much less than half throttle for most of the flight, only requiring more power to perform some gentle aerobatics. I shot some nice video of Stanley flying the Wilga, but unfortunately the only landing I captured was the only one bad one he did. You can see the flight in this month’s video.

I got tempted by a HobbyKing promotional email a couple of weeks ago, it was offering a Sukhoi SU-27 kit for just £7.64! Alright, so it was only a Glue-N-Go profile model made of foamboard and with a centre mounted motor but at that price it was simply too cheap to ignore. Unfortunately the cheapest postage option from the UK warehouse was more than £5 which seemed a bit excessive when the kit was so cheap so the obvious thing to was to buy two and effectively halve the postage. After a few seconds listening to a ridiculous voice in my head telling me I didn’t need another plane I pressed the Buy button. 1066 has already bought the second kit for a future club raffle so pay attention, you might be the proud owner of your very own Sukhoi soon!The SU-27 has a wingspan of 750mm and is 1080mm long so is actually bigger than I expected. It also seems to be bigger than HobbyKing expected, the website says 650mm span and 900mm long, odd. The box contains nine pieces of pre-printed laser cut 5mm foamboard a plastic motor mount, a carbon tube, all the necessary linkages, and an instruction booklet. Oh, and 4 screws that are shown in the parts list but I have absolutely no idea what they are for! The builder has to provide a motor, 2 servos, speed controller, receiver, and 3 cell lipo. Unlike the stuff you can buy in art shops the foamboard is not paper backed and HobbyKing say it’s impervious to water. It all goes together very quickly, almost all with hot melt glue, and mine was ready to fly in just a couple of days. A servo on each side of the ‘fuselage’ drives one aileron and one elevator half, so up elevator also gives up aileron, and the elevator halves also act as ailerons. I would have expected up elevator to be combined with down aileron so it seemed rather odd. So would it work in practice and how would the plane fly? The short answer is yes, brilliantly! Despite my doubts about the way the control surfaces operate they proved to be perfect in the air and the Sukhoi is nicely responsive to both ailerons and elevator. The specs say 1300-2200mAh packs can be used and I’ve been using 1300 and 1800 packs with no problems. With a 3 cell 1300mAh graphene lipo mine weighs 450g and balances at the suggested C of G with no lead required. It does feel very light for its size and that shows in the flight performance, it will slow right down to walking pace and still remain easy to control. Open the throttle and it will climb away vertically but I have to say it does become rather noisy at full throttle so I spend most of the flight stooging around at high alpha low speed where it’s most fun anyway.The noise is a result of the centre mounted propeller, pushers that have the propeller close to the wing trailing edge suffer the same problem. I’ll try a few different prop sizes to see if I can quieten it down a bit but otherwise it’ll be a case of avoiding full throttle most of the time, not a problem.

Captain Slow spent some time visiting old friends in France during October. Knowing they were into modelling he took his Multiplex FunGlider with him and they managed to enjoy some flying on the land alongside their house. Captain Slow also discovered that his friend collects transmitters, he sounds like he could be Dougal’s new best friend although with only ten transmitters he’s not really in the same league yet!

1066 has been on a spending spree but not on new models, he’s recently relieved ex-PAM member Cyano Steve of his remaining modelling gear. From what I could gather he picked up a variety of top class 3D models (some in need of repair), batteries, and props for a bargain price. Cyano Steve used to buy top quality 3D models and 1066 has already started flying Steve’s old 51″ AJ Slick. The initials AJ stand for the designer Andrew Jesky, and Andrew is a world class aerobatic champion so he should know what he’s doing when designing a 3D model. 1066 seemed to be getting on very well with the Slick on the first few flights that I watched so we can look forward to some impressive aerobatics in the future. Right now he’s still being careful with it but I’m sure that will change!

In Patch News a couple of months ago I featured Dougal Entendre’s shiny new Freewing Moray that had an excellent first flight but crashed on it’s second flight. Last month I explained that the cause had turned out to be failure of the speed controller and in October Dougal had another go with the newly repaired model. He’d made a good job of the repairs and fitted a new motor and speed controller so all was looking good. Sadly it didn’t go well, the Moray rolled hard left from the launch and crashed. Presumably the motor torque caused the roll and Dougal’s application of right aileron wasn’t enough to stop it. Sadly, I’m not sure he’ll bother repairing it again.

Never mind, Dougal has a shiny new model to play with, or rather a shiny secondhand model. One of the models that 1066 bought from Cyano Steve was this lovely 3D Hobby Shop Velox and he’s now sold it on to Dougal.More details next month but for now, it’s a tad under 6ft span, weighs just under 9lbs, and Dougal flies it on 6 cells. It flies beautifully and I have taken some video which you’ll be able to see in the next Patch News.

Here’s a selection of Catapult King’s and Kryten’s excellent flying shots that I held over from last month: Video time now:Please watch the video full screen, it’s so much better with small models flying around.If the video won’t play for you CLICK HERE

An airline pilot dies at the controls of his plane and goes straight to hell where the devil takes him to the ‘arrivals’ area. There are three doors, marked 1, 2, and 3. The devil tells the pilot that he will be allowed to choose his own hell, but first the devil has to take care of something else, and disappears for a couple of minutes.

The curious pilot sneaks a look behind door number one. He sees a pilot going through pre-flight checks for all eternity. He looks behind door number two, and he sees a pilot that forever finds himself trying to resolve emergency situations. He looks behind the last door, and sees a Captain being waited on hand and foot by scantily-clad stewardesses.

The devil returns just as the pilot gets back to his waiting position but he only offers the pilot a choice of door number one or two. The pilot says, “But I wanted door number three!”

“Sorry,” replies the devil, “that’s stewardesses’ hell.”

Colin Cowplain