Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
 

Conversion to Railways by brian wiseman

Taken at the local railway exhibition, 5 Feb 2011—Ed (a closet railwayman)

I write short stories which seldom see the light of day because there are now few magazines which print them I did one about a Soldier and wondered if the Soldier Magazine printed fiction but they do not. However there was an article which in it which I would class as fiction like much of our military equipment stories. Someone had decided that an efficient form of flying is the sycamore leaf. It can fly great distances in the right wind. So they have invented a sort of flying wing with what they said was a twin sycamore leaf profile. It looked to me more like a twin bladed propeller. It did not say how it would be powered. It seemed to be about 5 feet across. The idea they said was that the soldier would have one in his pack (what, something else to carry?) When he wanted to look at the other side of a house they were attacking or in the enemy trenches he would take it out and throw it over there. Presumably there would be a camera and also the need for some sort of receiver. All that electronic wizardry (something else to be carried) was not mentioned. They said that this was of interest to the military. This was, remember, in the Soldier Magazine, not some fictional paper.

Some years ago I went to Farnborough not on the Public day. I went with a nephew who let me go on my own whilst he did some buying. I saw the stand with surveillance planes. These are the ones which I thought were radio controlled but were not. They had a programmed map inserted and would fly over enemy territory sending back pictures. The Israelis used something like them. They had a wingspan of about 8 to 10 feet and a small petrol engine. I asked how accurate they were and the man said if you took of from a football pitch they would do a round trip of I think 400 miles and come back to the same pitch. I was very impressed until I read a report form the Royal Artillery who were supposed to use the things. They had a nickname for them which I cannot remember but was based on the saying that they B off and never come back. (Boomerangs? - Ed, himself not a boomeranger) They did have an American pilotless plane there and it was about as big as a Dakota. I always thought they were small but this one was not. I expect they have to be big to stay up for over 20 hours.

You may know that I have given up flying, mostly for health reasons and taken to Railways. I got a friend who is an expert on them to fix me up with a system. I was going to do it myself but he suggested a modem system and I do not know enough to set it up. Anyway after selling the planes and putting down an area of table with a hole in the middle 8 feet , by 5 feet he went to work. When my son was young we had an electric railway. As you fed more power into the train went faster. There are many systems like that now but the latest is to have a sort of ring main with several wires soldered on to the rails. You then have a constant current and hand held controller which can actually control 25 engines at the same time You get one going then change to the next and get this going and so on. I can have three going round at the same time at different speeds. Sadly they will not loop or roll. But when they go wrong they do not come down from 200 feet and end up in a bin bag.

Brian Wiseman

I’m sure everyone knows that Brian is also B Leonard Wise, our newly certificated flier. Sadly, he is moving on to a new hobby and we will miss him. I’d like to thank him for the 22 (23 counting the next one) episodes of  “Diary of Flier” and the numerous articles recounting his various real adventures with model planes. If only more modellers could also write amusing and interesting stuff! - Ed

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