Hope this newsletter finds you well and ready to go for a great season of sunny weather, light winds and great flying.
If only !!! This winter has to be the wettest and darkest for many a year. The BBC news announced earlier in the week that January/February have been the wettest on record, I for one did not need much convincing of that fact.
Anybody who does not think global warming warming is happening have got their heads in a bucket of sand in my opinion.
One of my hobbies is skiing and the alps this year have had the strangest weather pattern for decades reports are saying. The week before I went to Italy (Feb 2nd) there were recorded temperatures of 14 deg C across the alps. Even if you were not good at science at school I guess you can work out that 14 deg C and snow is not good. To counter balance that this last week a lot of the alps have had up to two metres of snow. A friend of mine was in Spain a few weeks ago and it touched 29 deg C in February.
Lets hope we get some settled and warm weather for the summer, we are long overdue some.
Flying Field
A few brave (or mad) people have managed to fly over the last two weekends. I went down just to get out and get some fresh air.
So to summarise the field at the moment is as follows.
Wet wet wet, followed by wet wet wet and mud mud mud. The field has certainly taken a battering with all the rain and the mild weather has meant the grass has grown considerably.
If you do go down to the field please try and walk/stand around the edges of the pit area as the pits area soon gets churned up due to foot traffic on it.
Now I know what you are all thinking ‘When will the grass be cut’. Currently it is not in a condition to get any mower on the field so its hand launch or big wheeled models, there were a couple of WOT4’s managed to get off when I was there.
The field will drain when we get a good run of dry weather and the pits will recover but exercising a degree of care if you at the field will help things in the long run.
We are not alone in this situation another friend of mine is a member of Green Drive golf club and they have not been able to play since October but he still has to pay his mortgage like payment each month.
Below are a couple of photos some recent field activity and the clean up after.
Now there a few people in the club who are or have finished building a model called the EEK. This model is an insane little pylon racer style plane. Jake was selling a few laser cut packs a while back.
The other weekend Josh flew his and it was like a missile, blink and its gone. I think they fly with a small 4s Lipo in them.
I have found out that a certain couple of members are squeezing in a 6s Lipo into the fuselage, apparently it wont need velcro to hold the pack in as its that tight. We await the test flight !!!
Indoor Meetings
I missed the February indoor meeting which was the flight sim evening
The turn out was not great which is disappointing as bringing the gear down the event takes time.
If there any subjects or topics you would like to see at the indoor events then let the committee know.
At this meeting Jake brought another model from HSD Jets. These models are manufactured from foam and are fitted with turbines, servos, flight control ECS.
Having seen the Red Arrows Hawk he has from the same manufacturer fly I am really impressed with them. It will be interesting to see how the foam stands up to paint flaking and small impact damage.
March’s indoor meeting got off to annoying start as the room we normally use had been booked out to ‘Mystic Meg’ so we had to use a smaller room which turned out to be OK considering.
Now if she is that good at what she says you would of thought she would of known the room was double booked surely.
Anyhow the meeting started with Anthony (safety officer) reminding everybody about some safety points and duty of care when at the field. These were then related to an incident that had happened at the field the previous Sunday.
This then lead to a discussion about the incident that went ‘off piste’ shall we say but thankfully was brought back on piste eventually.
I am always for having a spotter when flying, someone who can observe the path for people. I know this is not always practical and it is the upmost importance to keep your eye on your model.
Now there seems to be trend of Jake bringing a new model to every indoor meeting. I as editor of the newsletter have decided he is hogging the pages of the newsletter so below is a description of the latest model
Its a green and grey jet, cost a lot of money, looks very nice and has thrust vectoring. There you go
Now as some of you may or may not be aware Andy Moore has for some time been meddling with solar power charging capabilities and has a system in his garage which he uses for charging his batteries.
Well Andy brought along his latest creation with regard to charging stations and my oh my what a creation it is.
When he wheeled it, yes it was wheeled in on its own trolley there were comments about Frankensteins charging stations and other comments that cannot be really published in this newsletter.
I found the whole thing fascinating even the story about meeting an asian man in a chippy to purchase the equipment. This man had purchased one of Amazons crates which is full of returned items. Andy said the man had not got a clue what he was selling and managed to rob them of the man, sorry get it a good price.
Andy demonstrated the unit in action and brought along his wife’s hairdryer to show how much power it could provide. What impressed me was how many amps the unit can stand been drawn on it.
The solar panels are mounted on Andy’s garden fence which makes access to them easy.
This something I am going to look into with regard to powering my garden pond pump and UV filter lamp.
Enclosed are some photos of the unit and the list of components, if you are interested in more information contact Andy himself
List Of Components:
The system based upon Renogy 200AH (1.54KW)
LifeP04 battery, 30A Renogy solar charge controller unit rated at 2000w continuous, 4Kw max, Renogy inverter with UPS function and bluetooth app enabled. AC lithium charger for when there’s no sun, twin lipo charger, WiFi smoke alarm, 2 420w solar panels in parallel producing 16A max.
I know some people said whats the point but the point is Andy wanted to do it and he has done it and if he charges all his batteries with it then what a great result.
Flying Season Readiness
Now is the time to start going over your models and checking things for the season. All the little jobs you said you were going to do at the end of last season now need to be done.
Nothing worse than turning up at the field on a nice day and finding something wrong that you knew about last year
Regards Chris V