John's Landing Video's

Here are the video's of John Marchant's first landings of both his Strega and Mystery Machine during our Eastbourne flying session on Saturday.

Well done John (again!)

Ian's Fairwell flying session at Eastbourne

On Saturday a good sized group of us met up down at Eastbourne to fly with Ian for the last time before he moves over to his new house in Wales. The wind was virtually non existent at first, as even the paragliders couldn't stay up. We set up camp just to the East of the 'paragliders hump' and enjoyed a few flights before they took to the air and decided to fly right in front of us and get between us and our models. It's a pity that these particular paraglider pilots don't adhere to there own guidelines given to them by there governing body which tells them not to fly in between an RC model and its pilot but these guys didn't give a $%** and continued to fly directly in front of us, so we decided for safety reasons to move along the hill (towards Eastbourne) and fly on the edge of the wooded bowl.
Ian led the way by hurling his heavy old Euphoria off and we watched as he sniffed out little bits of lift from right across the bowl. I managed to find lift with my Ascot and enjoyed some soaring and some down wind landings when the lift disappeared.

  

John M got to fly his Strega (after removing the ballast) very well and his mouldy cruised around in the light lift. After a practice circuit he made a very good landing all by himself.
Ian and myself plus Scotty (Weasel) and Robin (DLG) managed some very lift soaring but unfortunately the lift just wasn't there for the foamy wings.
John then appeared with a big 'T' tailed thermal glider. After some initial trimming and changes to throws John was up there and enjoying his new built up thermal soarer. Just to prove his first landing with his Strega wasn't a fluke he made another successful landing with his big floater - Well done John!
It was good to see Ian D and Richard out with us flying on Saturday morning.
For me flying my Ascot with 4 Buzzards in the light thermals made my day. It was a case of chucking your model out there and if you were lucky then you found a little lift otherwise if you could make it all the way round the bowl then you would get plenty of landing practise.
After a good couple of hours of flying or attempting to fly session we went our own separate ways with seven of us heading for a pub lunch.
At the Plough we were joined by Jim H and Rob P to drink Ian's health and to see him on his way.
Thanks to Tony for my lift and to Jim on getting Ian home safely.
Martin took a load of pictures during our flying and managed to capture the fun we had flying plus the loads of banter that was being given out all morning and carrier on in the pub. Thanks Martin for your pictures. Its very much appreciated to be able to publish such quality images.

Ian's last flying session and send off

Hello all
As most of you will know Ian Ashdown is moving away from the South East to the sunny skies of South West Wales.

This coming weekend will probably be his last flying session with us before he moves in early March.
Given Ian has been a very active member in the club over the last few years, I thought it would be an nice idea to give him a little send off this Saturday at 1.00pm at The Plough Pub in Plumpton Green .
The idea was to get a bunch of us together and go flying in the morning and then go off to the pub for a pint and a some food with plenty of fun and banter thrown in.
So far out of the 29 members of the club we have just 8 confirmed coming to see Ian off in the pub.

1. Ian A
2. Paul H
3. Rob S
4. Scotty
5. Tony C
6. Robin A
7. Jim H
8. Graham U

If any of our other members or friends would like to come and say good bye to Ian then please let me know ASAP as I need to send you a menu for you to choose your meal so I can give the pub numbers and meal choice.

I would like to wish Ian and Kath all the very best in their new adventure in Wales. Ian has helped a lot of our club members with his years of flying knowledge and Instruction. I will personally miss him as a flying and drinking buddy.

He will be taking his full sized glider (Slingsby Kestrel 20) down to Talgarth (Black Mountains Gliding Club) for some brilliant flying in the Brecon Beacons.

Wednesday UPDATE: Looking at the forecast for Saturday it looks like it will be a SE wind which is about the worst wind direction we ever have. I'm not sure if we actually get out flying as the flying sites are limited. There is a chance we might end up on the Ashdown Forest with our DLGs as most of the people who have said they will be there for lunch have DLG's and the others who don't then you are welcome to come along and have a go.

Phase 6 build posts

The Phase 6 build blog post has now been moved to the main horizontal menu above. Rather than spam the blog with my pictures of the build which might not be interesting to anyone.

Trailing and leading edges roughly sanded now back onto the fuselage.

Here is a link to the Chris Foss Phase 6 build blog page

Sunday 17 Feb - Newhaven Cliffs

Today it was the perfect weather to try flying at Newhaven Cliffs - the forecast was S to SSW 15 to 30 mph. We arranged to meet at the Fort car park at 09:30. When I arrived I was surprised at the turnout - within 5 minutes of arriving, I was joined by Martin, Paul, Ian A, Scotty, John M, Tony, Graham U, Mark J and Robin. That was a record turnout for recent flying sessions.

On the way up the hill from the fort Martin didn't look too well and he decided that he would return to the car (and thence home), sorry you couldn't fly Martin.
The other 9 of us all went to the cliff by the coastguard station where somebody was already flying a mouldie in an F3F fashion (pylon racing on the cliffs), but he moved to the West a little to carry on out of our way.
I cannot remember all the models and combinations of who flew what when, but everyone had a good lot of flying with any number of foamies and mouldies and Paul also had his balsa Highside.
I took the club Spectre for Robin and both he and I were practicing landings in the challenging situation of the cliffs - very small area to land, lots of people and dogs passing and a very threatening bramble forest just behind where we land !! Paul gave us some help on positioning and approach, then left us to practice (thanks Paul, my confidence is returning)……..
The others were flying further out with their models , so we were able to practice landings almost continuously - John M was also joining us with his Wildthing and doing a great job, even managing some touch-and-go stuff.

Paul was also helping Scotty fly and land his 'new' Komet and he was doing a great job with it.
Graham U always has a lovely moulded model with him and today was the same - he was flying very well as ever and I saw him flying inverted circuits over the sea and many other aerobatics.
Ian and Paul were flying their mouldies (Merlow and Euphoria) and then swapped to the M60s for a bit of high speed cliff bashing. Tony had his Wildthing but I didn't notice whether he was doing landing practice or not, Mark had a foam glider with a v tail but it had a hard landing and the tail looked a bit loose.
We were joined by another flyer from Epsom club but he was waiting until later before he flew and 3 para-gliders who were very friendly and waited until we'd finished before setting up for their flying.

Many thanks to everyone who came.

Finally, it might be the last time we get to fly with Ian A before he moves to Wales in a couple of weeks' time in which case I want to thank Ian for all his help and guidance over the years he's been with us.

My first attempt at building a Chris Foss 'Phase 6' with landing flaps

I might be ab le to fly an RC glider now and then but when it comes to building then I must admit I am at best a novice and at worst an complete idiot. So I thought it would be fun to do an Idiots guide to building a Phase 6 with landing flaps. Jump onboard and share a laugh along the way.

Read the instructions!

Well that's me buggered straight away because I either can't read instructions or my brain just tries to ignore them or just wait until you have completely mucked it up and then try and read the instructions. Told you, I'm an idiot!

Well lets give it a go...……

Step 1-

Find the four pieces of plywood fuselage sides and give them a good sanding to remove all the 'release agent' that is present. If you don't remove this then it will cause you trouble when trying to glue things to the fuselage in the future.
After the sides are rubbed down, simply glue the back two sections to the front two sections and leave to dry. I did have to give a little sanding even on this first part just to get the front and back sections to mate up together well.

Find the four lengths of leading and trailing edge and cut to nearly the right length. Apply lots of glue to the leading edge and trailing edges and rub in well. Lots of air bubbles in my foam edges. Then glue on your edges and fix with plenty of masking tape.

Time for a cuppa and leave to dry for a day (or in Pauly time around 3 or 4 hours!) When it comes to patience - well I have none. Just like a three year old waiting to open his presents that are under the tree. Stand away from the building board and leave things to dry (yes Dad!)

Back soon...…..

PhoenixMP Snowy - Complete

After seven months on the building board my Snowy is ready to fly.
At 880g with nose ballast, it is only 10g over Stan Yeo's suggested all-up-weight, that is in spite of using Solartex on the wing and front end of the fuselage. All things considered the kit went together very well, I just had to make a judgement where the plan conflicted with the instructions and where Stan had copied wing fitting details from his other kits that did not match Snowy's dowel and rubber band arrangement. When I pointed out to Stan that the 1/4 inch ply former F2 was 5mm too tall he quickly sent me a replacement and thanked me for pointing out the anomaly which no other customer had apparently spotted.

Working on the well established engineering principle that if a thing looks right it will work right this model should fly very well, at least within the expected performance parameters of a two-channel rudder/elevator trainer. The low wing loading will allow flying in marginal conditions (my favourite) where the wind/slope combination offers minimal lift and the challenge is to keep the model airborne for as long as possible.

It is currently set up with a 35mhz radio control system, but I can swap to 2.4GHz quite easily if required.

I added splash of colour to the underside to give a nice contrast when it's banking and looping through the sky.

Happy landings

Russell H

Flying Vids at Itford Hill Feb 10th 2019

Videos from yesterdays flying at Itford Hill

Amazing Skies from Itford Hill

Ian and I went for a trek up to Itford Hill yesterday (Sunday 10th Feb). We waited for the rain to pass till mid afternoon and thought we had seen the end of the rain. The pictures below show how quickly the clouds over develop form a street of cloud and quickly build up and the whole line of cloud swings through 90 degrees and then it pours with rain. The rain blew through but behind this squall was another huge area of rain that covered the whole area in front of us. We sheltered in the bushes and waited for the rain to clear through and we were then greeted to clear deep blue skies.

AGM Saturday 9th Feb

We had our AGM yesterday at the Ardingly Inn. We had a good attendance and we were able to cover all our agenda within about an hour. After that we had a great meal and social event where the newer members were able to meet the longer-standing ones. Not everyone could come because it was a Saturday, but there was a good turnout and the meeting was very satisfactory. All those there decided on giving another donation to the BMFA this year for the use of Long Man and Ashdown Forest sites. I know our contribution last year was very much appreciated and Stuart Willis (SE BMFA Chairman) wanted to come to the AGM to thank us personally, but had another engagement that day.
Many thanks to all who could manage to come and many thanks to all our members for their continued support.....

Rob Stanley
Hon Sec