Hello, and welcome back to ScaleMeDown
and to Colwick Country Park where we're
here with the British Water Plane
Association (BWA) for a float plane meeting.
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Colwick Country Park is located in the
heart of Nottinghamshire, not far from
Nottingham itself and just off the river
Trent.
This is just one of the lake venues
available to the BWA
and it hosts a fly-in at this
venue three times a year.
Here the aeromodellers share the water
with a local model radio-controlled boat
club, the public, and the local wildlife.
There was weekend camping available by
the lakeside.
We also had use of the association's
rescue boat.
On this particular weekend we were
treated to some lovely warm weather and
some great company.
There were various types of water planes
flown over the weekend so let's meet
some of the aeromodellers and their
machines.
Let's start by meeting Stuart Knowles
and his Laker X.
"well I can't claim to have built this"
"one - it came to me from a guy in"
"doncaster who"
"built it. It's a scale up from the"
"original laker"
"I think this one's 80 inch"
"which is about 10 inches bigger than the"
"original"
"I think today is the first time it's"
"flown off water"
"I had flown this at home"
"off wheels and it flew pretty well"
"but today's been its first water"
"takeoff"
"it's not gone bad for its"
"size"
"it probably needs a 90 engine but you"
"put a 90 in then there is not enough"
"clearance for the prop and the canopy so"
"it's have to be down size to a 60"
"which means it just takes a while to"
a"ccelerate but once on the step"
"it"
"it was away fine"
Stuart also flew this lovely Dave
Boddington designed Seamaster which was
very reminiscent of the Schneider Trophy
seaplane racers.
"Hi, I'm Kevin Ward, this is a Tony Nijhuis"
"Sunderland flying boat"
"I built it"
"under the instructions of Ian Watkins"
"who built one for himself"
"It's powered by two 3s 5000 batteries"
"It flies really nice. I'm on Spektrum"
"radio and it flies roughly"
"three times a year"
Next, let's meet John and his Seawind.
"This is a Greatplanes Seawind - they"
"don't make them anymore. There was quite"
a" few around a few years ago. I've"
"actually had this plane about 15 years"
"I've only just learnt out how to handle"
"it on the water. It looks so beautiful in"
"the air, but they don't handle so well on"
"the water. This one's fitted with an"
"OS Alpha 110 four-stroke. I think you'll"
"find it goes quite well"
But not all the models at this event
were super exotic.
They were the ubiquitous Wot4s and
AcroWots fitted with floats and a number
of Hobbyking foamies including this
Grumman Albatross from Avios.
But the most popular Hobbyking foamie
was the "Skipper" and there were quite a
few at this event.
We met up with Bob who was having a bit
of trouble with his.
"Yeah this is a skipper, it's from Hobby"
"King"
"Costs just over 100 quid, comes with all"
"the servos and the motor and the speed"
"controller so all you need is a"
"receiving a battery and away you go"
"It flies really well once you can get it"
"off the water but these are notorious"
"for"
"being very difficult to get unstuck and"
"part of the problem seems to be the size"
"of the step underneath"
"It's not quite enough, so I've got"
"another one of these and I've built that"
"up and I'm going to do the same with"
"with this one as well"
Thankfully Bob persevered and he did
eventually get it unstuck from the water
surface and of course then it flew just
as well as this blue one did.
To me, the design looks reminiscent of
the North Star delta wing model of
yesteryear.
But Bob wasn't the only one who was
struggling with some design challenges.
Our friend Dave was grappling with his
HSD Jets Cessna 182.
We think the assembly instructions for
the floats are at fault here as the
angles look all wrong.
However, Dave also persevered and
eventually got some good flights with
his model.
I got the opportunity to test our Wots Wot
on my own design floats,
however they kept doing this impression
of a submarine
which the expertise on hand reliably
informed me that this was because the "V"
on the bottom of the floats was too
steep so they couldn't plane properly.
Never mind, calling international rescue
and no permanent harm done !
And our friend, Peter got to try his hand
at water planes for the very first time
using his Flair "Kite" that we recently
put up onto floats.
Meanwhile, Gwen and I both got the chance
to fly our eFlite Maul M7 that
recently featured here on the channel.
We fitted this with an onboard Foxeer
Runcam camera to get some in-flight
shots for you.
Well that was a lot of fun. We're gonna
go home and dry all our gear out now.
I hope you enjoyed that, thanks for
watching and we'll see you next time at
Scale Me Down