Many of you will have noticed there was no newsletter in July, the reason for this was nothing happened apart from continuous wind mixed in with rain. The other day the lovely Carol Kirkwood mentioned Preston having something like 300% of its normal July rainfall.
As I edit this newsletter the sun is shining and its pleasantly warm out there until tomorrow (Friday) then it all changes again for the worse just in time for the Blackpool air display.
Before anything else is written it is with great sadness that I have to report the passing of Rob Cunliffe. Rob had been a member of the club on and off for many years, I first met Rob in the early eighties, Rob was a straight talking person no beating about the bush he said it as it was. Rob had spells away from the club to pursue other interests. One of these was owning and displaying Newfoundland dogs. These dogs were the most gentle dogs you could come across. Rob entered competitions with them where the dogs would swim out and rescue a person from a lake. I remember once Rob telling me how much food the dogs consumed, it equated to a small armies rations !! Condolences to Robs family RIP Rob
Flying Field News
So flying field news
It rained, it rained a bit more, people stood under the hut shelter and watched the rain fall and the trees blow
Due to the weather the BMFA scale competition day was called off, I am not sure if it has been arranged for later in the year ??
Our annual club fly-in was also blighted by the weather with only a few hardy people turning up. I would like to say that there was a window in the weather when a few of us had a flight but it was more like a gap between the blinds for a two minute flight.
Its days like these that you have to improvise and adapt to the conditions, our events co-ordinator with a little help from myself created some protective head wear that I think might catch on.
From a health and safety point of view you do have to be careful that it does not slip down over your face as it tends to cause suffocation and your vision is not ideal for flying.
Bulk buys of this protective head wear are available from Jake Reid.
Below are a couple of photos which capture the spirit of the day
Fast forward to last night (Wednesday 9th) and it turned out to be a wonderful evening for flying, in fact the afternoon was aswell if not a bit windy.
There were some splendid models on the flight line
Phil leach was there, he was on a quick visit from his home in France. Phil flew his Dave Boddington trainer which must be thirty years old if not more more. The way to describe the way Phil fly’s it is a faith in the elastic bands that hold the wings on. The original description for this plane years ago was ‘A gentle introduction into RC flying’, don’t think Phil read that bit !!
Jake had a couple of new planes one being a very nice T33 shooting star in German colours. This has a 90mm EDF fitted and consumes 6s lipos at a rate of what Robs dogs consumed food, a very nice plane though
Second on Jakes list was an Extreme Flight Laser fitted out with a 12s lipo power system, a very nice flying plane which performs all the manoeuvres at a graceful speed.
Brian (scale man Brian) brought out his beautiful scale Mustang, again this was a 12s setup and flew fantastic. The detailing on this model is a credit to him.
Pete and Paul the display parachutists did a couple of drops, no injuries and no search party needed to recover them.
Now one of our trainee pilots Mike ( sorry do not know his surname) arrived with a birthday present his son had bought him. The present was a Hobbyking powered paramotor. This had never flown.
Mike explained that the instructions had been useless when it came to how to set the wing up and how to trim it.
Give it a go was the cry from the pits so a few of us stepped forward to try and get it airborne.
I think at this point out I should point out that none of us have ever had any experience of such a flying machine and that soon became apparent.
After a few failed attempts to get the chute full of air it became apparent that the chute was on the wrong way round and was changed over.
More experts joined the party with more words of help (not !!) but it refused to even try and leave the ground.
Anthony and myself spent some time trying to get the chute to inflate level but gave up. I have this morning looked on youtube and from what I can see you need a tarmac runway so that the buggy part can get to speed, our grass is to long for the small wheels.
There are more videos of these crashing on take off than there are flying. I did find decent video where a guy did get it to fly quite well however he only got two out of six take attempts and they were interesting to say the least.
The club trainer was in operation for a few flights with Steve Warburtons grandson Thomas getting a couple of flights along with Dominik.
Later in the evening there was a flight with the two Spitfires we have in the club. The flight was very good only spoilt by one of the Spitfires still having its decals missing, poor effort by the pilot not sorting them out yet.
This photo is the one that has been completed properly
Lets hope for better weather going forward
Club Trainers
Below is the list of current trainers for the club. Get to know these people if you are learning to fly. Ask them for their phone numbers so that you can ring them to check availability. This save’s wasted journeys which can lead to frustration for trainees.
Jason Reid, Jake Reid, Anthony Ollerton, dave Hindley, Mark Conlin, John Higgins, Brian Holdsworth, Chris Vernon, Andy Harrison
The vast majority of these trainers are in employment so their availability is governed by their work. Please bear this in mind when arranging a flying session
Don’t forget the main training session during the summer is Wednesday nights, weather dependant of course
Chris V