Park Flier - Yes! its a new idea - fly planes outside!
While Mark was charging his rubber powered, infra red plane's capacitor he thought he saw a whiff of smoke - sure enough, the wires where one the wrong terminals and the polarity was the wrong way round - Bugger !  The microprocessor chip was red hot and melted the foam it was glued to. The capacitor did not seem damaged so I charging it properly and was surprised to find the system still worked! Although left and right seem to have been reversed?!   By now the sun was very low on the horizon and the sky was still pink. I wound up the plane and launched it and it flew OK and responded to its controls even at quiet acute angles to the single side mounted sensor. I flew “control line style” going round myself so the sensor was pointing towards the transmitter. This was rather tricky as left was now right and I can't really fly R/C planes, so my mistakes cancelled out the opposite controls!
So, yes you should be able to fly an infrared controlled, rubber power, plane in the evening on a small park, empty car park or big garden.
This machine was using the AC3 infra red receiver, which is bang bang and continues with its last instruction if it looses its signal, which could be helpful outdoors.

Flite Hook are coming to our next event too, so bring some cash for their nice small plane goodies

Bernard has been selling his electric, free flight two cell, Depron models, he sold five at our last event!!

Dr Chris and Eric Hook are getting close to making a DIY servo kit for indoor planes  It consists of a printed circuit board which is also the base of the servo.It will initially be supplied as a part kit for construction by experienced experimenters only. Depending on the level of interest it may later be supplied as a more complete kit.It should not be attempted by anyone without experience of surface mount components or reasonable mechanical ability. It is not difficult to make but does require careful setting up of the mechanical components.I will supply the printed circuit board and a pre-programmed PIC chip which contains all of the software to enable the servo to function,together with some diagrams and building instructions.The other electronic components required are several resistors,a capacitor and a small integrated
circuit for the bridge amplifier. These are not supplied but the FARNELL
order numbers are included with the instructions.The servo amplifier has been
tested with a conventional servo over several months and has even survived
a burnt out pager motor. With careful construction and a 1.2g pager motor the servo will weigh about 2.5g. It is designed to work with standard radio systems and has been tested with Futaba,GWS rx's.It is designed to work on 3.6-4.8v just like a conventional servo.It is not difficult to make subject to the skills outlined above.
The servo kit will cost £13 consists of a pcb+PIC  chip +2 pages of constructional notes +3 diagrams and a photograph of the finished article.

There might be some computer conundrums at the end of the month as Mark is swapping his ISP and maybe the Nutz one too.

Alas, we have learnt of the death of  ‘Lincoln’ Fowler last week. His wife says he collapsed and died instantly at home. He was noted for building high quality stick and tissue machines, which flew very well despite him being relatively new to indoor aeromodelling. In his early years, when he was in his native Sunderland he built huge marine engines, then he worked on early jet engines while in the RAF and came down to Leicester as an engineer working on the generators in the power station.  We are sure Tom, Alan and Dr Eric will find him a table in the great sports hall in the sky, where rubber stretches forever and basket ball nets move out the way.

More good news form Dr Chris - The 1 cell Jigglet is now a very practical machine and flies for at least 4 mins on a much abused single nicad and my CF1 combo receiver. It uses the KP orange pinion and the JR gear for 3.5:1
It is 12" span, foam and has flown using a 1.5g pager motor. There is plenty of power despite the fact that it weighs a rather excessive at 15g.Where the weight has come from I do not know but I am sure I can get it down to 12g and then reduce the volts to the motor which is running from a super efficient voltage booster. It remains to be seen how long the motor lasts but at £7 a go I do not care. It does not fly as slow as its bigger 15" span brother but it is still pretty slow by indoor terms.
My 15" one cell Jigglet is being used to teach a friend to fly .He has never hit the wall once which is amazing as he has not flown outdoors never mind indoors.It is a good trainer as it will turn equally well both ways in small circles without losing much height and is of course very slow

Danish Aeronutz Michael writes .... I was just going to do a quick free flight test session of the blue foam Jiglet in the backyard. Unfortunately I had forgotten to drain the battery, so instead of a few circles at lawn height it took off  and just climbed away in nice big circles until I couldn't see it any more. I live in farming country, so no hope of finding it again now the crop is growing. At least I know it will fly with power to spare! I made a new Jiglet - now renamed "Piglet" because it is made form pink foam this time. Instead of Depron for the wing I used styrofoam and wing struts. this model is 3 grams lighter than the first one and tips the scales at 6.5 grams. He will be fitting his GS1 two channel infra red controller to the new machine.

Caution !! ASDA rice pudding with nutmeg and Sultans - yuck! If you want sultanas in something try the Irish soda bread with Sultanas - much better. Very popular with the Duke of Rutland's ants last weekend.

The National Space Centre will be opening in Leicester soon, features a space shuttle mission mock up thingy and has two big rockets too. The outer fabric of the building took three months to inflate using Simon's bike poomp (It's French)

The effervescent and charming Vicky Farmer of RCS Technik and Falcon kits fame has moved her email address to RCS@rcscale.co.uk (lets hope she has told old Chris whathisname) Thier SE5, DH2 and Tiger Moths are always welcome at our events.

Mark has made a couple of F4U Corsairs, using 2.5mm Depron wings to see if these are better for 14" span mono planes. The wings have been cooked in the oven (the only thing that has been cooked properly) to form a nice shallow airfoil. The leading and trail edges have been sandedded with wet and dry. A simple sanding and joining jig is used to create the most perfect joints since Peter Smart last made one. The rest of the plane will be 2mm foam to keep the weight down. One will be rubber powered with a CapRx receiver and the other will be electric direct drive KP00 powered with a combo receiver.

Model Flyer was not in Smiths due to distribution failure. Electric Flight has some nice models in it this month and a review of the SE5 Kit by Falcon made by Mikes dad. There is a photo of Mike's foam D8 flying indoor too. But alas not one of Dr Chris' one cell infra red Jigglet which was at the same meeting.

Bernard’s new mini free flight planes include a BD4, Isle of Thanet sports machine and a Pistachio M10.

Barry teamed up with Andrew and produced a free flight, twin electric motor Depron, Miles canard. It was not flying initially with sweptback wing so they swapped it round so they swept forward and flew much better !!!
John broke the wing on is super, stick and tissue DH bipe plane, which was made from kit

Hello to all the new folks. We are looking forward to seeing Andy’s new machine, he will be along with his co pilot. He says the new one is looking better than the last, which flew horizontally ok and turn well.

Yet again the Aeronutz are developing new indoor machines.
Mark has made two new 14” span F4U Corsairs. One for  rubber power with rudder control (11g) and the other is two channel and electric power (20g). They both use 2.5mm thick Depron wings with just a little airfoil bent into them and the LE and TE edges sanded to shape. The big drawback with this design of wing is that the dihedral breaks are just a very simple butt joint, which not very strong compared to a double skin design. To make these joints accurately Mark has made a couple of jigs, they seem to be as good as we will ever get so  we will see if they are strong enough at our next fun fly. Next season we will start experimenting with elevator control so we can do carrier landings, Reno replica races  and such like. Under these conditions the wings will need to be quiet ridged so its an important area of development.
We have always been well placed to take advantage of any new technology that come along. GP batteries are now producing 70mA hr NiMH cells which weigh 2.4g - a big saving compared to the 50 mA and 110 mA cells we currently use. There will be some drawbacks to these new cells so Graham and Mark are currently testing them to see how they perform. If we can get a reasonable performance from them they will be ideal for use in our mini infra red controlled, sub 20g, foam planes. We might be better off using three 70 mA cells instead of two 50 mA cells as small electric motors like lots of volts? Or maybe use just one cell and a super efficient voltage booster powering a coreless pager motor to get a better power to weight ratio which would be good for a really small plane of about 15g? Alian is making very small, very tough, carbon fibre props that are much more efficient than the U80. So if we can put all this together in a nice plane we can’t help but succeed!

John Mack flew a really nice free flight, stick and tissue, sports, rubber power, win motor machine Avenger designed in the 1943  He had the usual twin problem of not being able to get it to turn.