Official newsletter of the Christchurch Radio Fliers ClubTail feathersTail feathers

May, 2017

A rearward C of G ?

Who knows what a hawk who attacked this glider was thinking? Was he trying to help the pilot with a slightly rearward Centre of gravity problem? Perhaps it is a timely reminder to check your models regularly to see that servo connections, clevis keepers, batteries, engine bolts etc. are all secure. At a recent aero-tow meeting at Omarama a 1/3 Wilga tow plane with a 157cc motor had its prop depart the airframe midair as a result of the engine bolts severing. Check it out at:

https://youtu.be/o7Fql9QBpEU

2

Good turn-out at club AGM

The club AGM was held at Tait Commu-nications, Chris Hellyar’s place of work, last month with 22 members present. This represents over 1/3rd of our mem-bership.Following the AGM, Craig Clapham gave a very interesting talk on flying the Tiger Moth and other aircraft at Mandeville, near Gore.

Awards presented were:

Most Improved flier: HAMISH BELLMost helpful: JEREMY MCLEANBest prang: STU DUNBARBest Build: PETER BARLOWBest Floatplane: PETER HEWSONClub Champ: MATT MCKENZIE

Club champion, Matt McKenzie

3

1. Present: Owen Brownlee, Daren Holder, Ray Blampied, Roger Atkinson, Graeme Holmes, Ray Homan, John and Matt McKenzie, Geoff Tie, Chris Hell-yar, John Isitt, Jeremy McLean, Craig Clapham, Peter Hewson, David Bately, Alex Hewson, Wil-liam Miles, Stu Dunbar, Guido Donaggio, Chris Bell, Vaughan Laurenson(21)

2. Apologies: Keith Reid, Victor Tan, Peter Barlow, John God-dard, Mark Brown, Murray McAvie.

3. The Minutes from the 2016 AGM were tabled by the Secretary, Peter Hewson. These were ap-proved by the meeting (CLAPHAM / TIE). There were no matters arising from the minutes.

4. Craig Clapham presented his president’s re-port orally:

Presidents report 2016/2017:The main points of the report were:a. Club membership has been consistent over the year and, although some have left, new members have joined to leave a membership in the 60’s.b. The Lake Forsyth event was profitable, de-spite some bad weather on the Friday night. He was pleased that so many club members pitched in to do all the jobs that make the event success-ful.c. Health and Safety rules for the club need a little more work. This is something the incoming committee will address.d. The club runway surface is now much im-proved thanks to the purchase of two rollers for the club and the application of fertilizer by Roger Atkinson.e. The Halswell Quarry group remains strong, even though the port hills fires forced them out temporarily.f. This has been a steady-as-she-goes year for the club. He thanked Nigel Philips for his service on the committee. Nigel resigned this year.

5. The Treasurer, John Isitt, presented his finan-cial report :

Minutes of the AGM, Christchurch Radio Fliers ClubHeld at Tait Communications, Waireki Road11 April, 2017

Treasurers end of year report.It has been an interesting year as far as fi-nances go. TheMinutes of the AGMChristchurch Radio Fliers ClubHeld at Tait Communications, Waireki Road11 April, 2017g change, which involves constitution changes has been brought about by the MFNZ insur-ance company refusing to cover members who aren’t financial. The insurance will cover those who have paid their fees to the club before the 1st April when the new insurance year starts. Plus any new members who join the club throughout the year.I for one can’t understand why a shorter pe-riod of time can’t be paid, say to the 1st June and then yearly after that. That grip over, we have a situation where we have had two pay-ments in one financial year. At this point I would personally like to thank all those that did pay their fees early. I believe that was helped by keeping you all up to date with what was happening and the advanced notification given to you all through the maga-zine and word of mouth. What this means is that the Profit and Loss statement that you have been given at the start of this meeting is slightly misleading. The profit of $5,378.08 should read $1,353.08 once the extra $4,025 in fees for this current financial year has been taken out.

continued p.4

Full size Tiger Moth pilot, Craig Clapham

4

The Lake Forsyth fly in was going to be a big financial loss this year because of the extra safety fencing and signage that was needed under the ‘Health and Safety’ legislation. Thankfully the MFNZ donated a one off payment of $1,500 to cover these costs. As a result we made a small profit of $535.79.The other one off cost was the building of the ‘So-lar Station’ at an all up cost of $958.29. The rea-son for the low cost here was the work put in by Keith and the use of second hand batteries. When I first saw the Timaru set up I was informed that the cost was around the $1500 mark.On the balance sheet you can see that the club does have a healthy cash reserve. With $15,007.15 in insurance cover, $13,476.32 in high interest investment, $5393.37 in the check account. At the end of the financial year we had Total Equity of $33,876.91. Last financial year we made a $2,370 loss and this year with the donation of $1500 combined with the early payment of $4025, we would have had a loss of $146.92. As most of you already know the MFNZ have increased their fees by $5.00 per member. It is my proposal that we increase the yearly fees by $5.00 to cover these increased costs. This will bring the fees for a senior member to $160.00, Family members to $170.00. Junior members’ fees will remain at $20.00. The $20 discount for early pay-ment will remain, but the date will change. I pro-pose that this increase be effective immediately. Thank you all for your support. John IsittTreasurer .Accounts were accepted (ATKINSON/CLAPHAM)

Fees for subscriptions were raised by $5 to ac-commodate the MFNZ fee increase, and these were to be effective from next year.SENIOR $160 (reduced by $20 if paid by the due date)FAMILY $170JUNIOR $20

6. Election of officers. Ray Homan and Geoff Tie were nominated as Scrutinising officers and the following were elect-ed:

President CRAIG CLAPHAMVice Pres. JEREMY McLEANSecretary PETER HEWSON

Treasurer JOHN ISITTClub Captain KEITH REIDCOMMITTEE: WILLIAM MILES, CHRIS HELLYAR, ROGER ATKIN-SON, DAVE BATELY

Club Patron DES LINES

7. Prize giving. Ray Homan was selected as scrutinising officer, and the following prizes were awarded:

MOST IMPROVED FLIER Hamish BellMOST HELPFUL MEMBER Jeremy McLeanBEST PRANG Stu DunbarBEST BUILD Peter BarlowBEST FLOATPLANE Peter HewsonCLUB CHAMPION Matt McKenzie

8. General Business

a. AGM date. This was set for May next year to allow for fees to be paid to MFNZ in the earlier time frame to cover insurance. The month later date will allow for auditing of the club accounts before the AGM. (ISITT / AT-KINSON)b. We voted on changes to the constitution, proposed by John Isitt, b.1. Change the wording from:“Notice of General Meeting shall be given to all club members by written notice in the club bulletin sent by ordinary post to members last known address and shall be delivered not less than seven days before the meeting’.to:...sent by post or electronic means that is in common usage at the timeAn example may be by Email, text or Face-book, or a combination of the above. Such notice should be reflective of the general use and ability of the members.Passed.b.2. Change fee payment to be paid by 31 March in a given year.Passed.c. Strip maintenance. Graeme Holmes sug-gested that we develop a roster for mowing of the strip to avoid relying on only one or two members to do the job. He also suggested getting jumper leads and a wire brush for the mower. He will write a operator manual for the

5

procedure to start and maintain the mower.d. Stu Lill has advised that he wants to resow the paddock at Burnham and that we may have to move temporarily to the next field.e. It was suggested that more members sign up to our Facebook page to share modelling photos, stories etc.f. Lake Forsyth is becoming more prone to flood-ing. Roger suggested that we mow a new site

for a strip close to the rail trail. This could be used as an alternate strip should flooding be-come a problem. It was also reported that the local Iwi may want to buy the reserve from the CCC in the future.

Meeting closed at 8:40pm with thanks to Chris Hellyar for the venue.

Club Examiners / Instructors:The following CRFC members are officially recognised MFNZ Examiners and/or Instructors for our club. See one of these if you want to have your WINGS BADGE updated or awarded:

MARK HALLIDAY ANDREW PALMER GEOFF TIE

JOHN ISITT CHRIS HELLYAR RAY HOMAN

ROGER ATKINSON ALEX HEWSON JEREMY MCLEAN

KEITH REID DAREN HOLDER

6

Another rare bird. What’s this aircraft called?

Be the first to get your entry in to the editor ...

Congratulations to several of you who correctly guessed last month’s aircraft was a Saunders Roe Princess. This was a British flying boat aircraft developed and built by Saunders-Roe in 1952. It has the distinction of being the largest all-metal flying boat to have ever been constructed.The Princess had been developed to serve as a larger and more luxurious successor to the pre-war commercial flying boats, such as the Short Empire.The project suffered delays due to difficulties encountered in the develop-ment of the Proteus engine.Although the initial development contract had been successfully met, BOAC eventually decided to focus on

its land-based routes using the jet-powered De Havilland Comet instead. The era of the large flying boat had effec-tively ended prior to the aircraft’s completion.

7

Committee CornerMINUTES of the Christchurch Radio Fliers Club Inc.Committee Meeting, 9 May, 20177:30pm, Peter’s place

Present: Craig Clapham, John Isitt, Roger Atkin-son, Chris Hellyar, William Miles, Dave Bately, Jeremy McLean, Peter Hewson 1. Apologies: Keith Reid2. Health: Dave looking much better following surgery. David Shaw had been in an accident with his gyrocopter, but was not badly hurt.3. Minutes of the previous committee meeting were read aloud by the Secretary and accepted as a true and accurate record of the last commit-tee meeting. Accepted (KEITH / CRAIG)4. Matters Arising: a. Full size aircraft traffic over Burnham. Chris has spoken with CAA (Rose) about procur-ing a higher height limit. He said that CAA do not appear to be against granting a D.A. above our field and so he will pursue it.5. Correspondence: a. Receieved email from Des Richards advising of new documents posted to the MFNZ website, namely the Wings Badge scheme, re-vised bylaws, the draft MFNZ constitution, mem-bership renewals. b. Email sent by Craig to a Phyllis Briggs offering her help with flying a Mavic drone if she wished to come to our field.6. Financial: John presented the April / May accounts which were approved (JOHN/CHRIS). 7. Club captain: Keith was away working on the Kaikoura post-earthquake rebuild.8. Newsletter: Peter announced that the next issue was immi-nent, but that he was having problems with the Spark email system.9. Webmaster: Chris reported that traffic has been up on our website, but that he needed more photos and videos to post from members.10. Safety & Noise: Some concern was expressed about the noise from the DLE 20 engine on the Dragon

Lady.11. New Membership granted to Jeff Preou.12. General Business: a. Jobs for the new financial year were allocated:MOWER – Craig, John, Jeremy Graeme. Peter tabled the new mowing procedure form that Graeme has now done for the club.LAKE FORSYTH SUB COMMITTEE – Rog-er, Craig, William & Peter b. Wings programme is now on the MFNZ website. New questions are posted and an advanced Wings Badge for those who want it. c. The new meetings calendar was presented by Peter and agreed to by indi-vidual committee members. d. Stu Lill will be away for several months and his son, Ben, will be dealing with the farm and the site. e. Dave wanted to know who the MFNZ insurance underwriters are. f. Roger wanted to know if a flier can be a member of MFNZ without being a mem-ber of a club. Yes, was the answer, but the fee was higher than belonging to a club. g. The club accounts were given to Peter to pass on to the auditor, Brian LeVail-lant. h. Invitations were received to a McLeans Island club fly-in at Darfield and a CMAC aerotow fly-in at Thompsons Road (Willows).

Meeting closed at 8:45pm.

8

Sunday 8th January

Back home and back out to the field, a pretty nice day, pleasant, sunny and just enough wind. Good turn out considering many would have been still holidaying. Good flying and great to catch up with the guys. I see the charging dock is up and running inside the caravan, looks great.

Sunday 15th January

Wind returned so stayed home.

Sunday 22nd January

Rain and wind arrived, never went outside.

February

Yes well meant to be the best month of summer with warm and light winds. But in fact most Sundays were dismal so the Sunday fliers lost out somewhat.Your observer went of the boil somewhat but managed a couple of nice Sundays if my memory serves correctly. One day being a particularly rainy day that cleared out at the field and the half dozen or so fliers had a great morning. By the time I came back home it was raining well and truly.

Managed to leave town for a long weekend in Cambridge, but see the weather on that weekend was again full of rain.

So to get back on track:

Sunday 19th March.

A far better day, with sun and light winds. The club members all agreed as there was Brilliant turn out, including our area representative Alex. So the flight line was busy.Peter was there with his hanger of large aircraft. Boy they are getting bigger Pete. Alex had kindly donated a number of used model aircraft to the ‘find a new home’List and I see a few members thumbing through and sneaking off with an acquisition.Including myself. Many thanks for your kind donations Alex and good luck with your new house. Must mention Geoff’s , Tower Hobbies Ultimate Bi Plane that he has been flying for a few weeks. Performs faultlessly from what I can see, and endless fun, well done Geoff.

Sunday 26th March

Another bad weather day.

Sunday 2nd April.

At last a beautiful morning, sunshine and no wind, well no wind until I got there, aSoutherly blew up annoying the good crowd of fliers. Some of the early birds would have got in with good calm conditions, but by 9.45 it was blowing. This of course does not put off everyone and flying continued at a brisk place. Good chance for catch up and cuppa though.

Sunday 9th April.

Well it really was a calm sunny morning, much to the enjoyment of a great numberof members. The electrics mingled with the combustion motors, and a fair number of powered gliders took to the air. There was a reasonable amount of ‘off runway” landings, and Mike spent sometime looking for floating parachutes hidden in the long grass. The charging station situated in the caravan was busy with numerous Li Poson the charge. This new innovation is worth its weight in gold. We were reminded of the upcoming AGM Tuesday night, good turn out expected.

Sunday 16th April

Another good Sunday, pretty lucky with autumn weather and a reasonable crowd of fliers.. Some great flying.

Sunday 23rd April. Wouldn’t read about another great day and pretty good turnout, although a little on the low side. Flying was perfect, except John managed a low level loop right into the strip with a powered model, the result was balsa, covering and smoking 2 stroke looking very sad. The crash committee helped with the pick up and John was heard to mutter,’ can’t blame anyone else’.

Sunday 30th April

A wet one

Sunday 7th May.

Well it was overcast and wet in town, but just perfect out at the

9

field. A moderate number of club members ventured out to the near perfect conditions. Noted some newer members so good to see we still attract new and not so new fliers to our ranks.Roger put in an appearance, along with Stu and Paul, Keith and Joseph. Managed toTest fly a re build, well re furbish really of a older model of mine called ‘Dragon Lady’ I had damaged the wing in a Lipo fire, yes a battery short out (they do burn well) so had set about making a new wing with a foam cutter, my first crack at thisPart of out hobby. Worked ok, need, more practice, but got the

Ray’s Dragon Lady reborn - a CRFC classic moderl!

wing built and re furbished the fuse, put a 20cc DLE up front and away we went. Flew well, some

minor adjustment to be made but am happy, just need to dig the floats out for August.

Grant McFaull

I thought I would pen a few lines as no doubt some of you have come across this issue – and / or have you own fix for it …but for those who haven’t - I went to go flying today, with my repaired SIG Extra 300 – which has a 26cc petrol motor in it. It needed repaired as it met with a minor prang some time ago, with what appeared to me to be a bit of a control problem, but I put it down at the time to dumb thumbs …anyway the repair was basi-cally to refit the wing mounting and a minor tip repair ….After going out to the field ( I was alone there ) I got it ready to fly, and checked the controls – odd I thought – one aileron is moving less than the other – upon checking, the left wing servo seemed loose , so packed up and came home.How many kits have wooden plates, that you glue 2 x hard-

wood blocks onto, which you then screw your servo on to; then affix the plate to the wing with 4 x screws ? Quite a few I think – and this is what the Sig Extra method is ….taking off the wooden cover I find one of the blocks ( which I always epoxy on ) had come loose, hence the servos was almost floating around, giving limited – (and probably no control in the air) aileron movement.The fact it had come loose could be for any number of reasons – but probably a com-bination of aileron movement

stress, coupled with the fact it’s a petrol engined plane, with some vibration...It may have been this loose aileron issue that caused the prang in the first place…but one can never be certain.So I have now re-glued both aileron mounts with epoxy – but have now added screws – through the covers into the wooden mounting blocks as well, to give a greater level of servo mounting security. Some of you may already do this, but if you don’t, it’s a simple fix to a potential problem.

Servo mounts – and security

President: CRAIG CLAPHAMVice Pres. JEREMY McLEANSecretary: PETER HEWSONTreasurer: JOHN ISITT

Club Captain: KEITH REIDCommittee: WILLIAM MILES, CHRIS HELLYAR, ROGER ATKINSON, DAVE BATELY

Committee, 2017 /18

10

Prez sez

Hi CRFC,Well winter’s here and we now have the luxury of a green runway again, with the occa-sional sheep deposited ferti-liser dosage for good measure. There has also been a notable increase in bird activity from what I’ve seen around Burn-ham which has been great fun for me at least as self ap-pointed bird scaring officer, I should point out that no birds have been damaged by me or my model but they do be-come quite unimpressed when a glow motor powered model comes near them! Last Sun-day (7th May) several groups of magpies were squawking from various pines around the field too so magpie combat

season is clearly on the way. Well there has to be something good about winter!Next week we start our annual planning for this years’ Forsyth flyin, which will be held on the 26/27th of August in fine warm and calm weather condi-tions and will produce a lot of happy model flyers combined with substantial gate and toilet donation box takings for our club to use for whatever worthy cause we see necessary. You know where I am going with this... There’s a bunch of stuff that needs to be done over the weekend in question, and also on Friday 25th in setting up, traditionally this all gets done by 10 to 15 people. If there were 20 it would be a lot less onerous. In fact it would not be onerous at all if there were 20, so if you the reader could chuck your hat in the ring in some way (particularly the Friday morning and Sun-day afternoon) I will personally

make sure that your points in the club championship compe-titions this year are at the very least doubled and you will get the trophy at the next AGM. I will also make sure you win the best model trophy at the fly in. Hmm that sounds a bit like match fixing, so I may have stretched the truth a bit there and made you think model fly-ing is as corrupt as cricket has become, but a few hours of your assistance in late August would be bloody good.Lastly you may have seen the email I sent out recently regarding our landlord Stuart being away on holiday for the next few months. For those of you who fly on weekdays could you please contact Stuarts’ son Ben on 027 462 0130 for permission to fly weekdays until further notice. I’ll change the note on the gate to reflect this too.Thanks and safe aviating. Craig

In the absence of our landlord over the next few months, Stuarts’ son, Ben, should be contacted on

027 462 0130 for permission to fly during weekdays