Sloping Off - September 2004
Chairman's Chatter
by Clive Spencer
22 May. Visited Sandown Park model show with Neil & Derek Longman, Jim Ruffell & Peter Chaldicott. The event was quite good but there were not many bargains to be had. My purchases where limited to an XTR Flight Sim & two eight cell battery packs. The flying display & weather were excellent with the best demo by far given by Ali Mashinchy with the turbine powered Euro Fighter. He even managed to get the golfers on the other side of the park to stop playing & watch.
6th June. I arrived at Howard's with my newly rebuilt Extreme only to find that the brand new wing bolts had larger heads on them than the originals & would not go through the outer holes in the wing. I therefore decided to settle for tuning the engine only and put the model away. This was greeted by protests from the assembled club members, the ringleader being one M Morris. 'You're not going home without flying that plane' was the cry, & I was told to push off whilst the assembled crowd butchered my model to make the wing bolts fit. When I was allowed back the aforesaid bolts were in place & the wing had some very strange looking holes in it, so having run out of excuses I was obliged to fly the thing. To my surprise she flew very well indeed, needing only a couple of clicks of up trim to have her flying straight & level. After some mild aerobatics & mooching around for a few minutes a half decent landing was made & honour was restored on all sides. The moral of this story being to check your model is ready before you go flying, otherwise you will have half a dozen club members descend on you from a great height when you arrive at the field.
9th July. Kings Park. Great demo of heli flying by Phil Wheeler, using his electric Eco 8. Neil's similar model had a crash when the swashplate bolt snapped in half. On examination Phil's was almost ready to give up also, he has since drilled out the hole & fitted a larger bolt. I had my first try at flying my Robbi Eolo electric heli & found it a real struggle, although Neil kindly said I did not do too badly for a first attempt. I did not fly my other model because of radio interference, which was also present on Brian's model. The interference seemed to affect the channels in the low 80's, myself being on 83 & I believe Brian was on 81.
The Reflex XTR flight sim has since proved somewhat problematical. On one hand, when it is working properly, it has the best graphics by far of any flight sim on the market, but it has a nasty habit of suddenly stopping with an error message, stating that your transmitter is not connected or not turned on. You use your own tranny with this system and have to state the make of tranny you intend to use when purchasing the sim, so that the correct lead is supplied. I have yet to discover if this is a problem with the software within the XTR program or, as has been suggested, a compatibility problem with windows XP. I am not making any judgements at this time but I would advise potential purchasers to visit the Reflex web site forum at www.reflex-sim.de before purchasing this system, as I don't appear to be the only one with this problem.
At our last committee meeting, the subject of flight safety & instruction was high on the agenda. We have received some criticism regarding the availability of instructors for new members learning to fly. I must remind all members that instruction is on a voluntary basis & those who wish to take advantage of it must ring the duty instructor on the day, to ensure that he is available. Flight instruction is a service that we try to give on a regular basis, but as with all voluntary schemes, it cannot be guaranteed that someone will always be available.
This brings me to a more serious subject of flight safety. It has been brought to our attention that some members who have not passed the club proficiency test or obtained a BMFA 'A' certificate have been flying unsupervised. I cannot stress enough that this is contrary to our rules, which in itself would disqualify any claim made on our club insurance. One local house owner near Kings Park, who found a model stuck up a tree in his garden with C&DMFC stickers on it, has also contacted us. This gentleman had the good grace to contact us after finding our web site & returned the model without making an issue of it. If the plane had caused injury or damage he might not have been so cooperative & if he had rung Bournemouth Council we could have lost another flying site. Without belabouring the point, I must warn all members that your committee will be forced to take drastic action against anyone who breaks the rule regarding flying unsupervised without the appropriate certificate, if only to protect the club & retain our local flying sites. SO PLEASE DON'T DO IT for all our sakes.
