Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
Sloping Off - our newsletter

GETTING ON A BIT, BY BRIAN WISEMAN

I think that my flying days are coming to an end. My reflexes are still pretty good for an 85 year old. I can still do the Tumbles with my Extra 300. This is where I put the nose down give it full throttle and it will loop in its own length. Sadly it's the only tumble I am capable of nowadays. I find that I can manage two flights instead of my usual three or four.

Anyway, last summer I was seduced by the twin Cessna Grand Tourer. It is as usual a foam plane with two what seemed to me to be rather small motors. I did wonder how it would fly. I thought it would be underpowered. It has a retracting undercarriage which is clever because it has of course a front steerable wheel. It is 47 inches wingspan.

Because I have not been well for some time I got Ian Hammond to take it off for me. I find that when I have had a few weeks off the planes cannot remember what to do. He got it up and away and it flew for about 100 yards when there was a small bang and one of the props stopped. Being the highly skilled pilot that he is, Ian managed to turn it round and glide it back to the runway.  We discovered that one of the motors had pulled away from what I suppose we could call the fire wall. The motor was screwed to a plastic plate which was glued to the foam nacelle. There was not enough glue to hold it. When these motors are given some throttle they do have a pull. I can remember in the early days of electric when we had to make up our own power trains I did have a motor fly straight out of the front of a plane. Both plane and motor survived and lived to fly again. I can see that in the Cessna there is a design fault. There is not a glue strong enough to hold a motor to the nacelle.  I took the plane home and drilled the plate then stuck it back and put two long screws through the plate into the nacelle. The screws were dipped in the white glue called Sticks Like. It used to be called Sticks Like S**t but the name has been changed for marketing reasons. I find that it is good for electric foam planes. It is rather like No Nails but white

So with a reinforced motor mount I took it back and tried to fly it again. This time I took it off and away it went the motors are quite adequate for the plane and it gets along well. In fact it’s quite fast: I had six minutes and found that I had over half the battery left. The screws etc held and it flew well. Ian Hammond had a go and pronounced it to be a wonderful flyer. It looks good too. It would have looked nicer with about three feet longer wings but we cannot  have everything. After two flights I had to give up. I find that on the third flight nowadays things start to go wrong. It certainly is a nice plane and does fly well but like many of these small foam planes it does have a design  fault.

I look forward to having some more flying with this plane but as I write the weather is against the idea. I thought global warming would mean hot wind  free summers but it does not look quite like that from where I sit.

Brian Wiseman