Patch News – October 2025

We are now in mid-autumn and the clocks have gone back, so we expect the British weather to take a downturn. We lost a few flying days in October and some days were ‘less than optimal.’ One such day was Sunday 5^th when a few of us turned up with various models as usual, but mostly with mowing in mind and the vague possibility of flying if the weather improved through the morning. Sadly, it didn’t, and the wind continued to blow ferociously, but Dougal Entendre decided to fly his Wasp E2K pylon racer anyway.
It was a good choice of plane for someone who was determined to fly despite the gale and Dougal flew before we got down to mowing and then flew again when we had finished. Well done Dougal for showing the rest of us how to do it! Some of Dougal’s in-gale flying can be seen at the start of this month’s video. The patch looked much better once mown that day and better still when 1066 and Woody went up and cut it again on Friday 17^th.

Speaking of Woody, it’s hard to believe but he reached the big 70 on Saturday 25^th Oct.
He was kind enough to do the right thing and brought cakes along for everyone on Sunday.

On the last Sunday of the month there was quite a brisk north west wind blowing but despite that, Snoopy (aka Patrick Beagles) took the decision to take his BMFA ‘A’ test. Snoopy has been practising hard for the test with his Durafly Tundra in recent months and that is the model he used on the day. He had already asked club examiner Dougal to bring along the necessary paperwork so there was no backing out just because it was windy!
Dougal said this about Snoopy’s flight: Patrick put up a very good flight performance given the wind conditions. His simulated deadstick was no problem at all despite the wind and his plane’s rubbish glide angle! I had no hesitation in awarding him a pass. Congratulations Snoopy, a good flight and an excellent result on a less than ideal day.

Several new or revived models were flown in October and I’ll begin with Woody’s Delta. The model is a later version of one originally built by 1066 for the club’s Delta competition way back in 2015 when club members built deltas of their own design but they had to have a flat plate wing of a specified size and outline. They then competed in a series of tasks over the following few months, great fun. Some flew better than others but they all flew.
Oh look, ten years on and Dougal is still wearing that same coat! Back to the models now… 1066’s was a good flier and he enjoyed it so much that he built a Mark 2 version that used a Kline Fogleman wing section and it flew even better than the first one pictured below.
Eventually 1066 got a bit bored with flying the Mark 2 and it was discarded, just cluttering up his workshop, so this month he removed the running gear and passed it on to Woody.
1066 used to fly it with a fairly high KV motor and it was quite fast, but now, Woody has fitted a Tornado Thumper 3536/08 motor powered by a three cell 2200mAh lipo battery.
It flies very well, slower than previously of course which is just what Woody wanted and, as you can see in the video, is an excellent, steady flier. It’s good to see it back in use again.

Sticking with Woody, he had a bit of a mishap with his foamboard Typhoon in October.
He was flying it really well and did a lovely low pass over the patch, pulled up vertically, and promptly stalled! The Typhoon’s fall was halted by a large bush alongside the track. Fortunately, the damage was not too bad, less fortunately (for us) although I was filming at the time I missed the bush entry! Here’s a couple of screenshots from the video I took.
Not wishing to hurt Woody’s feelings I haven’t included the Moggie mishap in this month’s video, instead I have included Woody flying his foamboard F-16 with rather more success!

At one flying session in October I was flying my FMS Futura but was struggling to take-off with the slightly long grass wet with autumn dew and eventually I snapped the nose-leg.
Although the EDF jets look nicer in the air with the undercarriage removed I had left mine on as I was rather enjoying landing on wheels and taxiing back, plus I was unsure how well the Futura would go from a hand launch. Having snapped the nose-leg it was time to find out so I removed the main undercarriage legs as well and asked 1066 to try launching it.
No problems at all, it went away perfectly and had an increase in performance as well as looking better. While all this was going on 1066 mentioned that there was an Arrows Hobby Avanti for sale on Facebook for a sensible price and someone reckoned the seller was PAM member Page Boy. I have always liked the Avanti so I contacted Page Boy via WhatsApp and we discussed the Avanti between Futura flights. But during one flight there was a sudden bang as the Futura and John Warren’s Tasman clipped each other! John’s Tasman carried on flying perfectly but the Futura spun in, and on examination afterwards, it seems that one of the Tasman’s wheels had removed a large part of the Futura’s fin. Fortunately, the Futura damage was not nearly as bad as I had expected and I will soon have it flying again. So then it was back to chatting with Page Boy as now I really needed the Avanti! The deal was done and Page Boy even delivered the plane to me that evening.
Despite me featuring the Avanti in the March Patch News I had forgotten Page Boy even had one but he had only flown it two or three times as he is currently bogged down with other things and hasn’t been able to come flying. He decided to do a bit of a thinning out of his models and as the Avanti is in ‘as new’ condition he thought it would be an easy sell.
The EPO foam Avanti comes almost finished with an 11 blade fan, 2627 4500kv motor, 30A esc, 6 axis gyro, and 3 x 9g servos all pre-installed. All I had to do was replace Page Boy’s Spektrum receiver with a Multiplex one and it was ready for the next flying session.
The specs say to use a three cell lipo with a capacity of 1300mAh to 16oomAh so of course I promptly fitted a 2200mAh pack! This is my first Arrows EDF so I had asked other club members what they use and most seem to use 2200mAh packs, hence my decision.
1066 gave it a chuck and I’m happy to report that it flies beautifully. It’s slightly nose heavy with the 2200mAh lipo but it’s fine. You can see the Avanti flying in this month’s video.

Mini Mike’s latest E-flite Electro Streak flies extremely well, and he has proved that it will reach 125mph. 1066 got jealous and decided that he wanted some of that action so he set about building an Electro Streak from the long discontinued Great Planes kit.
I pictured it last month, built but awaiting it’s covering, and it’s now finished and flying.
Here’s a little of the Electro Streak history that I gleaned from the Outer Zone website:
The Electro Streak was originally designed by Tom Stryker and featured in November 1987 Model Aviation… it was kitted the next year by Great Planes. A 44 in span aerobatic model designed for 550 motors and 7 cells (Great Planes own Goldfire motor was included with the kit, the equivalent of a 7.2V speed 600 or the Simprop power speed 660) the Electro Streak is a fine exercise in minimal design, the lightweight air-frame offsetting the heavy motors and batteries of the day to give excellent performance.
Things have moved on a lot since 1987 of course and we now use brushless motors and lipo batteries. In his Electro Streak 1066 is using four cell 3300mAh packs for power.
For the first flights 1066 fitted an old Propdrive 3542 1250KV motor along with a 70A speed controller, but has since changed to an E-Power D3542 1450KV motor and an 80A speed controller. He says he’s not sure that there is much more power but it certainly sounds better. You can see it flying in this month’s video with the Propdrive motor and it appears to have reasonable speed and plenty of power for vertical climbs but the motor does sound a bit rough. If you fancy building an Electro Streak for yourself you can find out more and download the free plan from the Outer Zone website by clicking HERE

This month the action shots are all ones that Kryten has taken over the last few years: >

This month’s video is a little different as I’ve made it with Microsoft Clipchamp rather than the old Windows Movie Maker that I’d always used previously. Movie Maker was originally released in September 2000(!) and was officially discontinued by Microsoft in January 2017 so it’s not really surprising that I was having lots of problems and crashes running it on Windows 11 in 2025. I was reluctant to change as I’d grown to know Movie Maker really well over the years and it had all the basic editing functions that I needed. But it ran very slowly and I had to save my work every few minutes under two different filenames as I knew it would randomly crash and I’d lose whichever filename I was on at the time.
I discussed the problem with my son who understands these things and he talked about 32-bit/64-bit etc and suggested I try Clipchamp. So I bit the bullet and after an awful lot of faffing about I seem to have got the hang of it, and it did not lock up or crash once.
I don’t think any of you will notice anything very different in the video, I’ve tried to make it much the same as before but there will be a few small differences. This month the clips were filmed by me, MacFly, Dougal, and Captain Slow, thanks for all your efforts guys.
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 Final Funny:
For homework, a teacher told his students to ask their parents for a story with a moral. The next day, each of the kids told their stories, until only one little girl, Katie, was left.
“Katie, did your parents tell you a story with a moral?” asked the teacher.
‘Yes Sir…my mum told me a story about my dad.”
“OK Katie, go ahead, let’s hear the story then.” said the teacher.
“Well, my dad was an RAF pilot in Iraq and his plane got hit by enemy fire.”
“He had to bail out over enemy territory and all he had was a bottle of whisky, a pistol, and a survival knife. He drank the whisky on the way down in case the bottle broke, and then his parachute landed him right in the middle of twenty enemy fighters.”
“He shot fifteen of them with the pistol but then he ran out of bullets. He killed four more with the knife, then the blade broke, and then he killed the last one with his bare hands.”
”OMG!” said the horrified teacher. “What did your mum say was the moral of this?”
“Stay away from Daddy when he’s drunk!!!”

Colin Cowplain