Esher & District Model Flying Club

President: D.A.E. Smith B.Sc. (Eng.), C Eng., F.I. MECH. E.
Vice Presidents: M. Charles Esq. J.S. Barker Esq.

COMMITTEE

October 2001

Diary

Editor's Notes

Firstly, an apology for the lateness of this issue which should have appeared in July. The main reason for this is that, come the July deadline, I didn't have a single article from anyone. This seems like a good opportunity to remind you all that I welcome any articles relevant to flying, model flying - or the running of the club (as long as they are constructive). Don't worry if you do not think writing is your strong point, I will be happy to turn your ideas into words if you wish.
What is depressing, is that I have just taken the above paragraphs almost word perfectly from October 2000's newsletter!!!!

Please note in the Diary that the club is returning to the Winter Farm on Saturday 6^th October. Keith

Wednesday Club Evenings

The Sports ground is to be sold off which means, almost certainly, that we will lose the use of this site on a Wednesday Evening. We are OK until January but beyond that is a big question mark. So we need a new site, preferably with room to fly at least electric's on, preferably a Wednesday Evening. A bar would be nice! So, please remember that this club belongs to all of you - get out there and see if you can spot another likely venue!

AGM

This will be held on Wednesday 12^th December at 7.45 sharp. Please try to be there.

Please let the Secretary know of any nominations for the committee. We really do need a few more members to be willing to put something back into the club. Keith

Web Site

We now have had a club web site running for a whole year and it is clear that we are getting some outside queries so the site is being read. We even got one request for information about Fun Flyers from the Far East! My thanks again to Dennis Fernie for setting this up for us. I must now see about adding a "Hit Counter". This is a small programme that tells you how many people have gone to your website and can even tell you how much time they spent and on what pages. Keith

A Club Day Out

The Photo That Sums Up This Years Fly-in!

Saturday 16^th June threatened to be very wet, but that didn't stop most of the club from turning out on Brooklands runway for the club fly-in. Thankfully several people had brought gazebos with them and by 9:30 everyone was sheltered under them.

The Photo above certainly sums up the day. Not only was the rain not going to stop us, but, as can be seen, the far side of the runway turned into a sizeable lake leaving several people wishing they had brought their seaplanes!

The rain continued, off an on, for most of the day. However, at least a tarmac runway doesn't get muddy and as soon as there was a break in the cloud people would get airborne. Leading the pack - and putting in quite a lot of flying all day - was Rosso with his little scale Turbulent. It was certainly making the water turbulent as its OS 25 FSR engine struggled with the larger patches of water.

John Bransgrove's perennial, (he has been flying it for more than 10 years) and very adequately powered (Super Tigre 3000), Jiant Jabberwock had a new trick up its sleeve this year.

John had fitted it with a neat tow line mechanism. The towline can be passed through a key ring taped to the nose of a Zagi and then back to a release mechanism on the Jabberwock.

Volunteers with Zagi's were quickly found. Questions about how best to steer a Zagi on a towline proved to be superfluous as the Jabberwock simply took off and went vertical, dangling the Zagi beneath it!

The tow release worked fairly well. It would occasionally snag but, fortunately, good choice of line meant that it snapped easily if it snagged on release and both aircraft were able to land safely.

John tells me that the 66 inch span, 14½lb, Jiant Jabberwock is an excellent flyer and is still available as a kit from Ratby Aeroplanes.

This being a fly-in, instead of our usual display, the lack of public meant that everyone in the club could fly.
Although the bad weather prevented some from turning up, for a number of flyers this was their first experience of flying from a hard runway. I expect that one or two went home wondering where their tail skid had gone but, fortunately, only two people managed to discover just how hard a hard runaway can be (of which more later!)

Jeff flew a new addition to his stable. A Black Horse Models Super Air. This was a clean looking low winger that comes as a very complete almost ready to fly for (at the shows) less than £60. Everything except engine and radio were supplied and most of it was already fitted. The standard of construction was very good - right down to pinned hinges. The Super Air flew very well, Jeff demonstrating knife-edge flight amongst other things.

As I found out a couple of weeks later, like a lot of these Vietnamese kits, the aircraft is made of some form of boxwood and not balsa. This results, not only in it being somewhat heavy at 6lb 4oz for a 49 inch wingspan, but as brittle as egg shell. Mine hit the ground at quite a shallow angle when the radio went into fail-safe, with a stopped engine - and in thick corn. Yet over half the aircraft was reduced to match wood. I'd expected to find a few cracks and a broken propeller!

The nice long hard runway was an opportunity for some first flights of new aircraft. For many, this was the first time that they got to see a jet flying when Tony Major put on a great display with his Vector.

Mark, Alan and Tony had all built new Toffee Bombers. Since these came out as a cross between a Wellington Bomber and a Whitley Bomber they call them "Whitwells"

Mark, Alan & Tony Pose with their New Whitwells

These simple scale aircraft, 80" span and weighing 12-14lb, fly beautifully on a pair of Irvine 46's. They probably fly well on a couple of 4 strokes as well, but Tony had a few engine problems and didn't get to fly his one!

Alan Does His Usual 3 Point Landing (Wheel, Wingtip & Tailplane!)

Gus had brought along his, beautifully finished, large scale Mitchell bomber. Another aircraft that has been waiting for a nice long runway to try it out.

Gus was having difficulty getting both engines to run reliably but, as can be seen below, there was no shortage of advice from other club members!
Not surprisingly, Gus never did get the engines right and, sadly but sensibly, the Mitchell has yet to fly.

This One is Worthy of a Caption Competition

Dennis Fernie brought along an equally impressive large scale P51 Mustang which, again, had yet to fly.
The obligatory engine tinkering was again to be seen with, of course, lots of helpful advice.

Finally the aircraft was ready to fly. So, with a large audience watching, a smooth and uneventful take off was followed by a very scale display (although minus the lower engine cowling to ensure the motor did not overheat.)

Sadly the P51 story does not have a happy ending. As it turned onto finals, throttled back but with the nose well down, it appeared to drop into a spin. The unforgiving runway wrecked the engine almost as badly as the airframe

Oh - and the other crash of the day - that was me with a Delta 362 making an "unscheduled landing" during a, very low slow roll.

Well the 'plane wasn't badly damaged but the Super Tigre 29 was wrecked - the silencer ripping off of the crankcase and embedding itself in the wing. Concrete runways sure are hard! Keith

Book Review

One very wet Saturday afternoon, I sat Solarfilming a wing in the lounge (Julie was out!). On the TV, I found a black and white film from 1952 called "No Highway in the Sky". It was a quaint but very amusing film with James Stewart in the lead roll.

After the film, I couldn't help wondering if it was based on a Nevil Shute book called "No Highway", a book I had heard of but never read.

After a week or two of hunting through bookshops, I was surprised to find that all of Nevil Shute's work is now out of print. Ironically, I then found I had a copy on my own bookshelves which I didn't know about (we have more than a thousand books!)

'No Highway' is a story that, I think, will appeal to most aviation enthusiasts. Written from the perspective of Dennis Scott, a new Head of Structural Research at Farnborough, it tells of his finding that one of his new staff, an eccentric and very theoretical boffin - Mr Theodore Honey (with "the features of a frog and rather a tired and discontented frog at that") - has an unlikely theory that metal stressed and vibrated constantly will eventually fail. Not only that, but it is possible to calculate exactly when this will happen. To humour Mr Honey a spare tailplane, from the brand new 'Rainbow' airliner that has just entered service, is put on a vibration rig to test his theory. Scott is alarmed to find Honey has calculated that, for this structure, failure will occur in 1440 hours. Honey isn't alarmed though - he just wants to prove his theory - the "real world" is others' concern.

Although everyone else thinks Honey is losing it (especially when he uses a Ouija Board in his research), Scott is aware that the prototype (just under 1400 hours service) had recently crashed in a remote part of Canada. However, this had already been "proven" to be pilot error. Checking with the airlines, none of the production aircraft will reach those hours for at least 6 months, so there is no immediate cause for concern. Scott does, however, order the noisy vibration testing to continue 24 hours a day - much to the annoyance of everyone else!

Honey is packed off to look at the wreckage and this is where the "real world" catches up with him. He discovers he is on the second prototype and it has already flown 1422 hours. The crew won't listen to what they think is a crackpot demanding that they must turn back. What can Honey (who finds higher mathematics much less complex than people!) do and is there any credence in his theory? You will have to read the book to find out! It should be available at the library.

It is when you bring in a bit of history that this story starts to get frightening. "No Highway" was published in 1948. The film (Called "No Highway in the Sky" so that the Americans wouldn't think it was a road film!) came out in 1952. De Havilland Comets started breaking up in flight due to metal fatigue in 1953 and continued crashing because pilot error was blamed. (Not so well known is the fact that two Comets had crashed genuinely because of pilot error - pilots were not used to the high-speed airfoil and tended to rotate too far on take off!)

Nevil Shute Norway worked for de Havillands in the holidays while at college before joining them full time, as a stress and performance calculator, when he graduated - all rather spooky! Shute left de Havillands in 1924 to join the R100 airship team.

Reading "No Highway" wetted my appetite for Shute's work and I soon found another of interest to modellers - "Trustee from the Toolroom" written in 1959.

This story is about a model engineer. A quiet and modest little man who makes an even more modest income from writing in the Model Engineer magazine. He has no children and no real need of money and is happy in his small existence.

Despite getting letters from readers all over the world, he has never been further than a day trip to the coast. Suddenly, he needs to get to a Pacific Island to help his niece. With no money, he is amazed to find that he has devoted readers all over the place who will bend over backwards to help him. The story details his exploits getting half way round the world and back again armed with nothing more than a battered suitcase and a miniature petrol generator! Well worth a read.

Final thought: "I doubt if any of my books will be read in fifty years' time," Shute said in an interview in the 1950's! Keith

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