TOPIC: Port Meadow Oxford Sat Sept 6 2024

I went flying up at the Oxford club’s Port Meadow flying site on Saturday last, the day was mainly for free flight competitions but sport flyers were also welcome. As it happened I was the only sport flyer to turn up which was a shame as the weather although very dull was perfect all day.
From the car park it was quite a trek out to the designated flying area, thankfully I carried my overload of models on my fishing trolley which helped a lot. I always take far too many as back-ups to make sure I can get plenty of flying in and only give a few of them one to two flights each once I have got them trimmed again. Well that was the idea but I seemed not to have been quite careful enough in the choice of motor rating and not removing some of the excess nose weight I had on the models from the last time out when it was windy. The results were that some of the flights were quite a bit less than good.

There was hardly much drift and the 90 second max set in the comps meant the models were only landing 50 yards away, so I made the most of it by testing my KK Cadet, which turned out to be very successful. This is a model I had converted to look like a mini KK Chief and it was powered by twin ‘toy’ power units in Cri Cri fashion. The first pic shows it just before touchdown and well illustrates the dullness of the day. This has generated thoughts of a twin engined scale model jet, maybe profile in foam of similar size, think Vulcan, Victor, Valiant etc etc.....dream on....


The next three pics are of what I think of as my ‘3 graces’ in that once I have made sure they were back in trim, they fly gracefully (as long as they are not trying to loop!) and look like beautiful silhouettes (to my eyes anyway) as they cruise on high and wide circuits. They were very satisfying to watch and were totally appropriate flights for models of bombers or airliners, I even heard a clap or two from the other modellers at times which was very rewarding.





The fighter sized models however mostly failed me as (A) my very old TSP L1’s would not ignite for my Hunter or Jetex Wren or ( they were still out of trim a bit. As a result I managed to somewhat disassemble my veteran L2 Powered Spook and Skyray. Both the last two crashed, one into one of my model boxes and the other inside the other box, fortunately no other model was damaged.




The ‘Trompe L’oeil’ profile Harrier model made up for all the other tiddlers by flying its socks off as usual. The first flight it started doing aerobatics high above us then as the motor quit at an unfortunate moment it went into a spin for a long way down then righted itself and glided down to nice landing not far away. It did that under power once before, that was quite spectacular to watch. On the next flight it went absolutely straight down the field then started doing aerobatics on the last throws of the power surge, then it turned and glided someway back towards us. This was much to the delight of a young Chinese lad acting as fetchermite for me. Photo by Chris Brainwood.




Simon Milan was also present and although competing in the meeting he flew a pair of Rapier/TSP powered models. His Convair B58 had been repaired from the earlier meeting at Oxford went it got damaged and due, I think for either poor launches or lack of trimming, it got damaged by piling in immediately after the launch. His Opel RAK.1 however at last managed a lovely level flight on a TSP L1 before an awkward arrival put paid to flying for the day. Next time Simon!



Although I had spent some time beforehand checking over my three battery powered igniters, eventually all three gave me trouble. I managed to tread on one which helped it not a bit, a second finally burnt though the filament, which admittedly was very old and like a chump I didn’t have any spare filaments (elements?). The third gave good service but although it has 6 cells they were all well used and eventually gave up the ghost. I then resorted to fuses with no luck at all but tried again later with the 6 cell and managed one last light up for Simon’s final but still unsuccessful attempt with his B58. I will do better next time and remember to make up some spare filaments.
I was surprised when the other modellers all started departing after their prize giving, leaving me and two others with the field to ourselves at 3pm. But by then I was rather tired and instead of getting more so ahead of the drive home, after a couple more flights I packed up too. Altogether a splendid day out and hopefully to be repeated a couple of times next year.

As I tried to attach too many pics (oops) in the above text here are the missing pics. My long nosed Cadet and Spook (showing also a sleeve adaptor for L1 motors) plus the models of Simon Milan, his Opel RAK.1 and B58 (Simon Milan photos).

A video of the event by Chris Brainwood is here, my models referred to above can be seen in action (or comic action) at 2mins 48secs for the Cadet and 4mins 05secs for the Stratojet.: