SCSA News letter

At last year's club auction I bought a small power plane made by Mike the web. Last week I fitted some servos and a small motor. The motor is an Airpower 300XT out runner, this was designed to power a light shock flier, but flies this model around well enough. I have the wrong prop an 8 X 4 slow fly, I will try a 7 X 5 next, the way it leaps away from a standstill but does not go very fast suggests it is under pitched. The motor is rated 1150 RPM per volt and has a maximum current of 5 amps, I used a 3 cell 1300ma lipo I don't fly power very well, the broken off rudder/throttle stick on my transmitter doesn't help, it is beyond me how you are supposed to control anything with your left thumb, this should be a good model to practice with The model flies just as it looks, loops, bunts, fast rolls and inverted are all fine, take offs almost instant and lands slowly tail dragging using a little throttle. No prop hanging with model the little motor only has a thrust of 11 oz and the model weighs 13oz. I could not find anybody to video my flight and stuck the camera on my car, this is really a test to see if I can video, compress and send clips to the internet. Windows XP comes with movie maker, the compression tool for WMV9 is a free download, have a look at the short video clips below in a choice of resolutions
http://www.scsa.org.uk/video/redblue.wmv 19 megs720 x 576 or http://www.scsa.org.uk/video/redblue-small.wmv 7 megs 320 x 240 Both in Windows Media Video 9

Aerotow at Redmarley D'Abitot I've been to my first ever aero-tow event today (Saturday 13th October). I've been flying for 25 years and had an aero-tow release fitted to my ASK18 for over 10 years and yet today was my first time. The event was organized by Etienne Dodane and was at a private micro light air strip near to Redmarley D'Abitot right at the Northern edge of Gloucestershire and I was invited by Doug Garland. We arrived for about 9:30 and flying got under way about 10 o' clock after we had consumed coffee and warm croissants (breakfast the French way). First tow was a Minimoa which looked very good in the air - a bit like a giant moth. Second tow was with Etienne's 7 metre Duo Discus glider. This was a magnificent looking sailplane I hesitate to estimate the cost but it must have been in the several thousand of pounds bracket. The tug pulled it into the air and they were both gaining height gracefully. Etienne then found that the Duo Discus was stalling on the tow and he decided to release.
As soon as he released the model went into a stall and on the pull out there was a very loud cracking noise the Duo Discus completed a loop and on the down leg of the loop gained a lot of speed and it was clear that Etienne no longer had control of it. The model raced downwards and then suddenly the wings clapped hands and it transformed into an unguided missile. Luckily (not for Etienne) the Duo Discus hit a huge tree with a very large bang in fact the noisiest crash I have ever heard.The airframe was completely wrecked and most of it is still up the tree. Only the nose cone came to earth. Within 10 minutes the police and fire brigade had arrived. Joe public had reported seeing an aircraft crashing!! After this incident everything went back to normal after about an hour of waiting for Etienne to make sure he was happy for the event to continue. We had Doug Garland, Don Jones, Alan Ester and me flying from the SCSA. There was a relatively low cloud ceiling and wispy clouds were being blown around and you had to get off the tow below the clouds.
I had a good tug pilot talking me through the first launch which was brilliant and all under control. This being my first aero-tow I was very nervous, the tug raced away and within about 6 feet my ASK18 was airborne and climbing way above the tug. This was the right position and the tug gain height very quickly. My ASK18 was rolling about a bit behind the tug and the tug pilot asked if I had rudder coupled to ailerons, I had and when switched out things were much better. I was told to just keep the wigs level and not to bank in the turns - this was a very strange thing to do because I was not really fling the glider at all, just keeping it level - but it worked. The release was trouble free, the tug throttled back and I hit the release switch and I was soaring. My first flight was 14 minutes which I thought pretty good considering that I came off at a fairly low altitude (compared to the pros.) The landings were great, a big strip of mown grass, you couldn't go wrong. My second flight started well and then after being released I strayed into some cloud and disappeared. What a dreadful feeling it is to lose sight of a 4 metre glider about 800 feet up. I opened the brakes and squeezed a little down elevator and luckily it came back into view – I suspect it only lasted a few seconds but it seemed like minutes to me, I was very pleased to get down even though my hands were still shaking. I had 5 flights altogether which was quite enough for my nerves, but I could have had lots more, there were plenty of tugs and willing tug pilots. There were loads of pilots – say 15 gliders and 3 tugs. There were some very good and well known UK pilots taking part. Simon Cocker, to name but one, was flying a large Ventus 2 and he was performing high speed passes and aerobatics with his high energy sailplane. I enjoyed talking to him reminiscing about a PSS LearJet that I saw him fly in a model magazine back in the 80s and I bought a kit and built one. It was a real posers model but needed much more lift than our slopes provided so I sold it in Antics in Gloucester before it got broken. I enjoyed the event and might even be tempted to fit an aero-tow release to my ASW27 and then take it along top another aero-tow meeting next year. Thanks to Doug Garland for talking me into trying an aero-tow, he's been trying for ages to tempt - me and now just maybe - I might try it again. That's all folks. Bryan Tucker

The week last week Monday, a very light easterly breeze, I did a bit of electric thermalling with Guy. My Highlight got to cloud base once
Thursday at Frocester, enough lift but hard to see with the sun shining through the mist. photo Andy's AlliaJ
	Sunday, we did did not know where we should be. First we tried Haresfield but the wind was coming from the left of the slope , so we moved to Rodborough where the wind was coming over the trees from the right. Next to Minchinhampton common for some power flying. Photo:- not pantomime season yet but still the shout was heard. Mike took this well timed shot of someone trying to fly his Alula; this is probably the best of this type of hand thrown light weight flying wings

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