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A message from Clive Phillips in Australia to Ted Szklaruk.
A continuation from "The Bee Goes Down Under" August 2016

Hello Ted,
Trust your summer is letting you get enough FF time in. Our summer was extremely kind to us and I got some good days in, and the Bees behaved themselves admirably. Today we had an overnight frost and woke to a glorious cloudless and windless morning so I got my favourite outside FF Bee and ventured suitably attired into the flying paddock. Set the timer to its maximum of 90 seconds and launched. She circled straight overhead and was almost out of sight when I just heard the motor cut out and it seemed to take even longer getting down. Lovely landing in the next paddock about 200 metres away. Here's a happy Bee keeper. Note the mown runway behind. A slight breeze started from the right and as there are too many trees just out of picture on the left it was back to the hive!

Most flying is indoor in winter and I have been experimenting with miniature electric motors in a chuck glider whose drawings I still have. With the same timer and battery as the Bee, but a lot smaller motor it is doing very well in our single court hall.

The leading edge damage was caused by impact with a chair leg on landing. The setup weighs in at 18gm so with the 7mm motor it cruises around quite well. Definitely helps fill in the winter time. Unfortunately I have been a bit slow getting going on the winter projects as I had a second stroke on 28 April which put me in hospital for 3 weeks, and a bit more lack of balance is obvious. Hence the need to power chuck gliders - as for these DLG things, you need to be an Olympic athlete to get involved there

Thanks once again for mentoring me with the Bee. Of interest is that a club member is pressuring me to make a Big Bee with RC. Maybe..

Cheers Clive