Child Beale floatplanes October 2003

By Mitch Mabbutt

The Reading club hold two events a year at the Child Beale park (nr Pangbourne, Berks,) on one of the park's lakes.
We (HWDMAC) had an excellent club attendance with ten pilots at the October 2003 meeting.

We had a great day although the wind was very cold. some of us had more success than others with several planes ending up in the drink.

Here are some of the pictures from the October 2003 meeting.


The club group photo. Note Dave Medlock ( in the background) looking over his shoulder the reason being that he was still flying his electric Pico cub at the time!	My first real Float plane. This is an Ace Seamaster 40, built from the original kit. Unfortunately it became one of the losses of the day when the elevator servo failed.

Father and son get ready for a dip. (Dad is the one holding the plane).	Oops! spoke too soon. This little Pico cub is powered by an MP Jet brushless motor/gearbox and 3 Li-Poly cells. It stayed up for so long, he was still flying it when we had the group photo taken!


Medlock senior gets away with his Magnatilla	A bumpy landing broke the port float.. It was a long wait for it to drift back to shore.

John's Magnatilla off for another flight.	Alex was doing very well until a hard landing broke one of his float mountings.

Andy Hopper's OD floatplane. Based on a WOT4 wing and powered by a Laser 70. It has retracts as well! This was the most flown plane of the day.

Mike's Ready 2 trainer was proving very stable on the water and was surprisingly easy to get in the air. I think this was perhaps over confidence?	No this hasn't been dumped here, this is where it landed. It only goes to show that floats can seriously affect the handling of an aircraft. It took off OK but would only fly in left hand circuits.

Glenn king is back again with his Cougar fun fly. He uses floats of his own design made from foam covered in Solar film (they don't get much easier or cheaper than that).	Another photo of my ill fated Seamaster. (I've got to get another one!)

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