Next Indoor event FRIDAY 17th February 2012 at Shelley College.
A charity night!
All the entyry fees will be donated to the charity that trains puppies to become guide dogs.
Click on "Whats On" or "Indoor Meetings" for details.
Happy Birthday Michael Goode
66 on Monday 30th January
or so "Facebook" tells me
?
OFF to the USA.
I saw Rita Thompson on the 14th to let her have the money Colin's radio and model had made. She tells me this will pay for the outbound flight to visit her son in Motor City USA.
Colin Thompsons Radio and Cortina Glider.
Rita, Colin’s wife, let me have his Multiplex radio and a rather magnificent 3.5 metre span flying wing, also by Multiplex to sell for her. I am not a very big EBay fan but I have in the past bought and sold a few items so that is where I put these up for grabs just after Christmas in the hope that wives and girlfriends had given money to their model crazy partners. I must have guessed correctly because each item received over 400 visits during the 10 days auction time and strangely enough both had 13 people tracking them. I learned more about German R/C equipment with all the questions asked in the ten days than I am ever likely to remember – complicated or what! When you get the hang of it it is good sound stuff though. The radio was won by a man from Chesterfield who chose to collect it. He drove a rather nice Mercedes two seat sports car with the second seat occupied by a very pleasant young Irish lady. Obviously he appreciates art and German technology. The radio made £160 and he was very disappointed to learn that he had missed the glider by about a tenner.
The Cortina is to go to Kent to a house in the middle of a wood when I looked it up in Google Earth; that is if I can ever sort out the carriage for it. DHL and all the other carriers on line booking sites stop at parcel sizes 1200mm long and a telephone booking has to be made – guess what, no telephones are manned over the weekend and I thought these companies worked 24/7. The glider fetched just over £100 and after EBay have had their cut I think I will be able to let Rita have about £230.
Very sad that we have had to sell Colin’s model gear but having met the gentleman that won the radio I am sure Colin would have approved of the recipient who is going to convert it from 35MHz to 2.4 GHz.
BMFA Subscriptions for 2012.
Full senior membership is up £2 to £31 for the year.
Family partner is up £1 to £20 p.a.
Juniors are raised £1 from £15 to £16.
Go to the bottom of the page for news of the new 
range of cells.
A Blast from the Past
On Tuesday 27th Sept who should turn up at the field but Dave Ashby on his mountain bike. Dave (the second "Man in Black") was , together with John Torr largely responsible for negociating with the Farmer, Hayden Hirst, back in 1988/89 for the Whams field we all now fly from. Not long after we purchased the field David left the club to take up full size gliding. I believe he is now an instructor at Sutton Bank and I know that cross country flying is what he likes best. If anyone wants to buy a 1 to 1 scale glider Dave has one for sale.
Nice to see you again Dave and dont wait 20 years before you visit us again.
A Good Idea.
I can't claim this as my own because I saw it up at the Whams on Sunday but it appears to be a good way of always having a binding plug with you when you most need one.
Drill a small hole in the corner of the your membership clip and thread a wire through it. Slip on that clip thing that comes with your bind plug and solder the wire into a loop. You should always have a bind plug with you when your favourit model goes blank up at the field.
Ron looks happy after his first flight.
In Praise of Horizon Hobbies Many of you know that I was one of the first people in the Huddersfield Club to buy a Spektrum 8 when they were first released. I never had any trouble with it and was somewhat surprised to find my set on the recall list. On contacting Horizon I was given a Fed-Ex reference number and my transmitter was collected on the Monday morning and returned the following Friday with a report as to what had been checked and changed – All at no charge!
Prior to sending it away I realised I had no models to fly because all my “fleet” had been transferred to the one transmitter. Richard Steadman very kindly got me over this problem by lending me a Dx5 transmitter which very easily bonded with a couple of my models. So between Richard and Horizon no flying was lost and my Dx8 was upgraded and checked.
Horizon’s service does not stop here though! I thought it may be a good idea to have a second transmitter for myself in case I ever had to send one away again. I was talking about this at the Whams field when David Baker chipped in and said that he had a Dx6i with a range problem that I could have. Payment was agreed and made in liquid form and I duly sent the transmitter to Horizon with the explanation that it was second hand, had a known fault and could they fix it and bill me for any work and parts. Not only did they fit a new RF board and return the set with answers to a load of questions I had put to them in the accompanying letter. The work and the return postage were not charged.
THANK YOU HORIZON HOBBIES – absolutely superb service!
Two nice pieces of kit - and the floors not bad either!
Jim’s Flight in a Pitts S2-B
It has taken more than eighteen months for my son Jim’s shift pattern, the weather and Cas Smith’s (the pilot) availability to come together so that he could enjoy the present his uncle bought him for his 40th birthday. Unfortunately this conjunction arrived when I was on holiday in Madeira so I missed it but Uncle John went and took the pictures. After the flight, which included a lot of aerobatics and hands on “perform your own aerobatics” my brother tells me that Cas told him that for someone who had never piloted an aircraft before Jim was a natural flyer.
The pictures below tell a better story than I can and I wish I could find the pictures I took back in April 1984 when a large group from this club went and flew in a Pitts S2-A (the open top version) so that a comparison could be made.
This pilot is based at Full Sutton and if anyone is keen to have a go he is available for bookings or we could again organise another club trip. The cost is quite high at £150 for just over half an hour air time but as both James and I can confirm it is a once in a lifetime experience.
The Company is AEROCAS and telephone is 01430 430 109 or 07711 258 080.
Just a Thought!
I found two pictures of the Sarasota RC Squadron flying field that I visited a few years ago. Photoshop did a good job of stiching them together as in the result below.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could have facilities like theirs. A scaled down version would not be impossable except for the weather. Note the wind direction, fixed pilot positions just visible as small fences set allongside the runway and an East to West runway which even the pilots are not allowed to enter. All models taxi on and off the runway.
FOR SALE:
OH0518 £15 per 5 litre (5% Nitro 18% oil)
OH1218 £17 per 5 litre 
(12% Nitro 18% oil)
OH 2018 £19 per 5 litre (20% Nitro 18% oil)
Blackstone Model Flyers Members Only ring Alec on 07802 710408
VAT INCREASE + oil cost increase has now been added - Sorry folks but it is still a good buy!
Hit the link below to take you to the new OptiPower range of Li-Po cells. Open the .pdf file for the full specification and price list. These cells began hitting the shops in mid August 2011
http://www.optifuel.co.uk/Library/Library.aspx?cat=16&cnode=16&name=OPTIPOWER%20RANGE
