Fergus Russell 1

Cheers for the advice so far. My location is fixed as the site is on the outskirts of Orpington so Orpington or Sevenoaks keeps me within commuting distance of my work. At present I travel 30 minutes to get from Aberdeen to Montrose (I am moving back in with the parents once the current lease on my flat is over adn before moving to Kent) so to travel this distance every weekend for some good flying isn't a concern. I'm looking for members experience of their clubs and points of contact within various clubs, this is so that if I am going to do a club visit I might be able to do a one day tour and get many sites in the one day. The club finder is a nice tool but only directs me to websites and what I'm looking for is information from members and their experiences of their own clubs as well as other clubs in the surrounding area. I also require information about onsite storage, if any. I have a possible solution to my lack of workshop problem in the form of maker and hacker spaces.

I am in need of assistance and direction and guidance and recommendations, all the things a 24 year old needs. I recently (And luckily as the engineering industry in Aberdeen has went down the sewers, almost) successfully obtained a graduate job in Kent. I am due to move in September and having been a member of the Montrose Model Aero Club for 16 years I need to find a new club. I understand that I will need to transfer my insurance from Scottish Aeromodellers Association to British Model Flying Association but I need to find a club, preferably with similar facilities. Montrose is quite unique in that we had our clubrooms and workshops in a dedicated building and the flying site is on the old 1913 RFC aerodrome. For someone such as myself who gets shouted at by mother for working on the kitchen table this clubroom/workshop set up is ideal and as I don't know how my new housemates will take to me balsa bashing in the kitchen and storing an oily model in the house this is still preferred. Even if a kind member were to let me "camp" in a section of their garage/workshop for a while until I find my feet or a storage company where I can store stuff in a locker that would be brilliant. As far as what I fly at the moment I am only looking to take one or two aircraft down, a small foam-e acro wot and possibly a 68" Glens Extra. The extra is IC so a club that has IC flyign would be ideal. I am due in the area for a work site visit/house scouting/family holiday the last week in July and the first week in August and I would be looking to possibly do a visit of clubs in the area and may even bring the acro wot for some flying in the area.

THE KIDS ARE BACK!!!! Been a while since an update but University work caught up with me and needed to take priority. As of Tuesday the 17th May I finished my final ever exam and now have heaps of free time. So what have I been up to? Well this afternoon I got the wings skinned and I am almost ready to join them together. I found a new use for my Bachelor's Year dissertation as can be seen below:- Below is the wing in it's current state just a dry fit just now:- I have also treated myself to a new flightbox kit from SLEC. My old Ripmax one from 2002 was beginning to show signs of plastic fatigue and needed replaced badly. Here it is below:- I have bought car paints from halfords to paint this in "Ford Signal Green", mainly because this is the closest colour I can get to Kawasaki Racing Green. Hopefully their primer, colour, lacquer system will hold up to the job. In other news I have successfully obtained a job in Kent so if anyone from Kent is reading this and can recommend a club that allows all types of IC aircraft with turbines and petrol as well that would be most helpful. I'll be paying a visit at the start of August to scout for houses and possibly even pay a few clubs a flight and a visit.

This weekends progress. I did this while watching the afternoons rugby, was really wanting the Aussies to get a kicking for their thievery last weekend. I hope to try and get the wing structure completed this week coming. I now have much required clothes pegs for clamps, I did have clamps but found they exerted too much force for this application, handy for gluing together the firewall though.

Thank you all for this. It's certainly a mixed bag, hopefully the recent quad copter fashion can bring us some new members. I feel that some public engagement could do us no harm in trying to get people in. Our town used to have an annual Wings and Wheels event which was great for public engagement as getting into the show ground was a paid for event but coming over to our flying site was free, sadly the event fell by the wayside but not due to lack of public support. I feel the newspaper and billboard approach may help our cause and wouldn't do any harm. The Montrose club is fortunate enough to have one of the original 1913 wooden huts from RAF Montrose as a club premises where there are meetings every Tuesday and Thursday during the day and we have a meeting on Friday nights as well with flying taking place on these days and on Sundays. We fly off what used to be the main runway of RAF Montrose, to see what was the first RAF airfield in Scotland and the Second in the UK no longer have any active flying on it would be a sad state of affairs.

At the age of 23 i am in an unfortunate position of being the youngest member in my club. There hasn't been any new members join for about 3 years and its beginning to worry me. Has anyone here had any experience of recruitment drives in clubs and any experience of youth engagement with either scouts, ATC, ACF etc. One thing i think we should be doing is advertising our big fly ins in the local paper to try and at least get some of the public aware of it. Again does anyone have experience of this.

This evenings progress. Decided this was a good point to get to at this point. Hopefully be a bit more further forward after the weekend.