Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
Sloping Off - our newsletter

Visit to KW Flying Dutchmen Club in Canada

She Who Must Be Obeyed decreed that we should visit her friend in Canada – they trained as nurses together in Nottingham. Consequently I found myself in Waterloo in Ontario for a fortnight. Waterloo is about one and a half hours drive west from Toronto. On the middle Sunday I was bored listening to reminiscences or nursing tales so I took myself off to the KW Flying Dutchmen Aeromodelling Club in nearby St Jacobs at the intriguing address of 1075 Bo-De Lane.

The club has a large field dedicated to model flying next to a gun club, all on a farm where the farmer seems to be into diversification. A reasonably large clubhouse with mains electricity and rows and rows of LiPo chargers was the only major building – a large BBQ was on the veranda and judging by most of their girths it was used regularly. It takes one to know one before anyone has a go at my shape! I was welcomed once I explained who I was and shown around with introductions to all and everyone.

On the field were some gazebo like structures with picnic tables underneath which had in front of them seven permanent tables that they use to assemble and test their models. In front of that were pilot positions with netting from which all flying takes place. The field itself was immense with no trees for at least 800 yards although the runway was far from flat with a rise at the southern end. They had no restriction on using “gas” engines although they had moved towards electric in recent time. They flew all types of craft from wings to gliders with quadcopters and helicopters as well. Surprisingly they were still using 72MHz but some had moved to 2.4GHz. They all griped about the model shops in the area closing down and they all obtained a lot of parts from HobbyKing and Banggood in China with what seemed to be a lot quicker delivery than we get. On further discussion it seems that there are a few model shops but they all involve a drive of at least an hour and were to their eyes too expensive. Although there is a HobbyKing warehouse in the USA they did not trust it to have the bits they wanted and anyway the import duties are pretty steep from the USA but not from China/Hong Kong.

As I arrived there was a 42% scale model of what looked like a Piper Cub (is it not a Decathlon? Ed) flying which was enormous. At one point a group of five went out onto the field with identical foam wing craft and proceeded to have immense fun trying to knock each other out of the sky. I am glad to say they failed although there were some pretty close calls. All in all they had a set up they could be proud of and one I wish we could emulate. Judging by the numbers there that day it was a much bigger club than our own and they had integrated wives and partners into the day’s activities.

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