SLOPING OFF...
...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for...September 2024
A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST - A LANCASTER AT HOWARD’S
Howards Field was, as many Club members will recall, one of our flying sites. It was north of Ringwood in a farmer’s land (Mr Howard?), a rather cramped but very attractive set of mown runways hemmed in by the river Stour and a hungry wet ditch which was fed from time to time by model aircraft, very similar to those awful trees at Strawberry Field or the maize at Oldfield.
I was a newish Club member and had flown at Howard’s a few times, but on this occasion I arrived to see a 100” span Lancaster built by Bob Smith (see Tevor’s piece below) being assembled, with Trevor Hewson casting a very keen eye on the procedings, because it was he who was going to fly the beast on its maiden.
I can’t remember the actual details, but this was a brick-built monster with loads of NiCad cells and must have weighed 15 lbs at least. It sported a superb home-built retractable undercarriage and opening bomb bay doors
After the obligatory photo session, Trevor took it down to the end of the prevailing runway and did a short test run, getting the tailwheel off the ground and proving that there was plenty of power. The batteries were then given a “top up” charge - not something we need to do with LiPos but very necessary with the old technology. The model was then lined up with the runway again and I was positioned at the far end with camera at the ready
Clive Spencer giving scale to the model Trevor and Bob the Builder It was a big and heavy beast
The short test run is on this video here https://youtu.be/8YOx4APiSls
Somewhere there is a video of the flight but all I have left is this of the take-off. https://youtu.be/PMAuLnBbEqc
You can see that it is crabbing across the sky and I remember Mr T saying he had to use a lot of rudder offset to get it to fly straight!
Despite the short landing strip, the out of trim attitude and the inevitable tension it landed safely - and has never flown again
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Bob Smith phoned me out of the blue for advice when he embarked on his first R/C building project - a 104inch Lancaster. The phone calls continued on and off over the next five years until eventually in 2009 came that inevitable final call - "It's all finished and I want you to fly it for me"! Bob had made a beautiful job of the Lanc and, after a lot of inspection and inquisition, and just a few final adjustments, I had to admit that there was really no good reason why we shouldn't give it a go. .(Taken from Trevor’s website here) |
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