Patch News – October 2023

October has come and gone and by the time you read this the clocks will have gone back an hour, winter is certainly on its way. I was away for part of the month and it seems I missed one very nice Sunday morning but overall October has been pretty miserable, especially the last week of the month. Some mornings were rather foggy and, as you’ll see in the video later, I found out just how thick the fog was when I flew FPV one day, it wasn’t good!
One of the few good things about the onset of winter is that the grass has almost stopped growing so little mowing is required. The bullocks came and went but mostly ignored us and they seemed unimpressed even when Gordon Bennett tried to make friends with one.
It showed no interest at all, maybe the jar of horseradish sauce he was holding didn’t help.

The first new model I’ll feature is MacFly’s very nice Ripmax Wots Wot Foam-E biplane. This is what the Ripmax website says about it: The Wots Wot Foam-E makes for a perfect all round sports foam aircraft. The Wots Wot Foam-E combines the slow speed characteristics of the Wot4 Foam-E and the precision and ‘locked in feel’ of the Acrowot Foam-E. The Wots Wot Foam-E has been specifically designed to suit a popular 3S 2200mAh Li-Po battery resulting in a model that will fit in a hatchback car boot fully assembled! For a little more flight time, try the Hi-Energy 2700mAh pack instead. The power system consists of a higher power 920kv outrunner brushless motor with 40A brushless ESC that really packs a punch giving the airframe over 1:1 power to weight ratio! Using a popular 2200mAh battery the duration is approximately 8 minutes. Supplied in RX ready format the four 9 gram micro servos, outrunner brushless motor and 40A ESC come pre-installed ready to connect up to your choice of receiver and li-Po battery. Using the latest in foam moulding technology you will notice the edges are very crisp and sharp without the weight penalty of a denser foam. The control surfaces use ‘live’ style moulded foam hinges but they also have plastic hinges moulded into the foam for extra security. Assembly is easy and requires only a cross head screwdriver. It’s so quick it takes longer to fit the decals than to assemble the airframe! In the air biplanes are associated with slow scale flight but not the WotsWot, thanks to four large ailerons the roll rate is fast and authoritive and the short moment of the design gives great elevator and rudder power. The Wots Wot really excels during slow speed flight and can be really docile with low rates on. Up the rates and open the throttle for flicks, spins and knife edge loops are more! The stall is benign and thanks to the biplane configuration it really slows down nicely for landing.
This Wots Wot is not actually a new model, MacFly bought it from 1066 when he was selling off the models and equipment of the late Nigel Baker (Chris P Bacon) on behalf of Ursula, Nigel’s widow. I had done the original first flight of the model for Nigel and was immediately impressed, I really liked how it handled and felt at home with it right away.
Nigel had only flown it a few times so when MacFly bought the plane it was almost unused and in pristine condition so he decided to lavish some extra care and attention on it.
He added red and blue sunburst style trim to the upper surfaces of both wings, the tailplane and also the fin and rudder. But this isn’t just any sunburst, this is MacFly’s gently curved sunburst! He has made a superb job of it, it really is beautifully done. MacFly did admit that after many hours hard work he was beginning to wish to had never started it but he persevered and the end result made it all worthwhile. MacFly asked me to trim it out for him and I was pleased to find that the plane flew beautifully, exactly as I had remembered. After a couple of minutes I handed the transmitter over to MacFly who finished the flight with no problems and he has since had several more flights.  With his confidence growing on every flight he is finding out what the model is capable of and is practising more and more aerobatics. You can see some of the flying in this month’s video.

A couple of months ago Catapult King got caught out by the vicious tip stalling tendency of his Yellow Tail electric glider which resulted in a fair bit of fuselage damage.
But he’s now got it all neatly back together and he asked Dougal to fly it and trim it out.
It flew fine but Dougal reported that it definitely still has the vicious tip stalling tendency. The Yellow Tail has very thin wings which are probably the main cause of the tip stall but I think the tailplane looks rather small, maybe a larger tail would help. Any thoughts?

New member Simon Pattrick is settling in well with the club now and having joined us after a long break from model flying he’s quickly remembered how to fly! In October he brought along his latest purchase, an Arrows Hobby Marlin EDF.
This is what Inwood Models say about the Marlin: From beginner jet pilots to top guns the versatile 4S EDF Marlin will put a big smile on your face. If you’ve always fancied joining the jet set but have struggled to know where best to start, then ponder no more for here, in all its durable EPO-moulded loveliness, is the perfect entry-level jet, and what a cracker it is. We flew it extensively during the testing period and from the moment it confidently left our underarm launch we were smitten. Powerful, precise and arrow-like in flight you’ll find the Marlin inherently stable, beautifully forgiving and truly confidence-inspiring. With an aerobatic envelope to rival the very best that the EDF world can offer this is a jet that’ll look after you when you’re finding your feet and challenge you when you’ve found ‘em. From large sky-eating loops to locked-in knife-edge flight, s-l-o-w full flap passes and everything in-between, you’ll find your Marlin so versatile that it’ll quickly become a Sunday favourite. It looks good, it sounds good, it goes good! Assembling the Marlin is simplicity itself and with no glue is required you can be airborne within an hour of opening the box. Just add a 4S 2200 to 2700mAh 35C flight pack, a 5-channel Tx and Rx combo and go wake the angels.
‘Go wake up the angels’?! Both Bob the Builder and Mini Mike own Marlins and Bob has woken up a couple of moles with his! But they have proved to be excellent fliers although sometimes they’ve been a little reluctant to get off of our relatively small patch, especially if the grass has been a bit long and/or wet. No such problems with Simon’s Marlin though, you can see in the video that it shot into the air after using left than half the patch!
It might just be that Simon’s batteries are newer and better than those of Mini Mike or Bob. I note that the website mentions underarm launching so maybe that would be the way to go, removing the undercarriage would certainly make the Marlin look better in the air although the obvious downside is the risk of damaging the underside of the model and I can see the attraction of being able to do proper take-offs and landings.
Simon is flying his Marlin well and I couldn’t help noticing that in the video he flies two consecutive left hand rolls whereas by preference most of us would fly consecutive rolls to the right rather than the left, maybe we have a budding aerobatic expert in the making!

In the September Patch News I wrote about the new HobbyKing warehouse that had just opened in the UK and that although at the time there was virtually no stock there were lots of offers on backorder stock at very good prices. I ordered three 3 cell lipos and three 4 cell lipos and the expected delivery was quoted as the end of October. A couple of days ago HobbyKing posted a photo on their Facebook site of a container being unloaded at the warehouse so I was hoping that my batteries were inside but it doesn’t look as if they were.
The website has now been updated and shows lots more stock in the UK warehouse but sadly not the packs that I had ordered and my order still shows as Processing and the packs out of stock with no ETA at this time. Hmm…that’s not so good then, although I’m not really in any desperate need of the packs and hopefully it won’t be too long before they turn up. On the plus side both packs are now listed at a Reduced price that is 78% higher than I’ve paid so I’ve definitely got them at a good price… if they do eventually arrive!

Still on the subject of batteries, Dougal Entendre had a couple of flights with his large scale Spad on one of the nicer October days. The Spad uses two 4S 5800mAh packs connected in series to become 8S and that gets Dougal around 7 to 8 minutes of flight time.
I shot some video of the first flight from the ground and then followed the second flight with my FPV Ranger and you can see some of both flights in this month’s video.

Young Leo brought along a new model to fly in October, a Dancing Wings Cloud Dancer. Leo built the 1.3M span Cloud Dancer about a year ago from the Dancing Wings kit which was designed as a three channel trainer with rudder and elevator but no ailerons.
He says he’s hardly flown it since finishing it due to a lack of time but after some work it’s now re-emerged fitted with ailerons which are driven by wing mounted servos, a different motor, and a new speed controller. I wasn’t at the field to see it flying myself but I’m told that it flew well, it certainly looks good in the video and Leo seemed to be flying it nicely.
But never mind all the above, the most interesting thing about the model is that Leo had to rebuild the starboard wingtip. Why? Because of a serious crash or dodgy landing?
No, it was because Leo’s mum shut it in the car door! Oh dear, I bet that got ‘mentioned’!

Julian James dropped in to see us again one Sunday morning in October, this time in a North Wing ATF (Air Time Fix) with a Stratos wing, an ultralight soaring trike.
The ATF is powered by what I think is a single cylinder 27HP Polini 190 engine. It’s very much a lightweight machine designed as a motor glider for motor off soaring although Julian had the motor running the whole time we saw it flying.
Julian said it’s about as basic and open as it’s possible to get but can only be flown in very light winds. It’s a single seater so there could be no offers to take a passenger up this time.
It’s also available powered by a 21kw 28HP electric motor, I wonder what battery it uses?

Ever had a bad day flying? The guys in this F-14 Tomcat certainly did!
I spotted the photo online one day but have no details of the actual event although apparently there were a few mechanical failures of the swing-wing mechanisms on early Tomcats and it was possible to land safely with the asymmetric wings.

Now for some action photos, Kryten snapped most of these excellent shots for us on the last day of the month. The last photo, of Dougal’s Spad, is taken from this month’s video:

At last, it’s video time, this month with footage shot by me, 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

The propeller on the front of a small plane is actually only there to keep the pilot cool…
Just watch, if it stops spinning the pilot will start sweating like crazy.

Colin Cowplain