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Second
indoor flying meeting of February. Still light when I arrived, hopefully sign of rapidly approaching spring. Numbers
slightly down due to clash with the England “v” Ireland rugby match. For
those that did turn up plenty of airtime and a lot of laughs. Several
new models, Paul had a indoor version of the Pogo, this seemed just the right size for the hall, mastered the vertical take
off straight away but didn’t quite get the landing, had a few very good flights, I have the plan back so must build
one as my Pogo is a bit large for indoors. I
had tested my two new models outside earlier in the week, the “Superman” creation was even less controllable indoors
than out. It’s only two functions with elevons giving roll and pitch. The absence of rudder makes it very difficult
to steer indoors. “Bank
and yank” is a superb way to fly given plenty of speed and space, indoors you want to fly slow and steer with the rudder,
an application of aileron to “superman” just produces a very rapid roll due to the lack of span with no apparent
change of direction. He prop hangs fine but again the lack of rudder is a problem. So
after breaking both arms in coming together with the wall, he has gone to A&E for repair and to have his feet cut off
and hinged back on. The
other model that looks like a toilet seat is in fact semi scale. It’s based on the Lee Richards Annular Monoplane No
3. It is scaled down from a free plan, the original model was a Dave Boddington design, I’ll have to do a bit more research
and find the original article. The
fact it looks like a toilet seat and is called “annular” is pure coincidence. As
a model it flies superbly slow speed handling is superb, prop hangs easily and when opened up is very quick. I
did try my little Spitfire indoors but it didn’t like “bank & yank” at slow speed. Getting
a bit bored with just flying around indoors we had a go at limbo, using very solid poles and bar in the guise of a five a
side net was not very kind on models that hit it (most if not all did). The hall is booked for two more Saturdays 10th & 24th March. British “summertime” starts on the 25th of March so these will probably be our last indoor meetings until the autumn.
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