I met Antony in Ruskin Park flying one of his planes, I got chatting with him and it gave me the idea of starting a model building and flying club. I heard of a project called Make Me Smile Again through The Maudsley Hospital they were offering up to £750 for projects that could promote improve mental health through doing something fun and different, Antony told me about the BMFA competition and I thought it was a great challenge and I applied for the Make Me Smile Again project and told them what we wanted to do and the gave us the funding 🙂
Antony GIBBS
I’m french and I have moved in London in November 2009 to follow my girlfriend who works in the city.
Trained a photographer (BA in digital imaging, 1994 MMU – Manchester) I now make a living as a freelance web designer.
I want to pass the glider flying license and in the mean time I’ve been having lots of joy from flying some RC foamies as a first step taking me in the air.
I’m very excited by this project.
Help from experienced modelers
The BMFA got us in contact with Roger Godly, member of the Croydon Model Flying Club, who is willing to give us a hand in building the model.
His experience will be of a precious help in our project.
We need to set a day (preferably WE) and a place we could meet him and discuss how he can help us.
How it started
I had just spotted the BMFA Challenge when Stefano mentioned he would be interested in developing an activity around rc model planes at the Mosaic Clubhouse and that Make Me Smile Again could be a way of financing such a project.
So Stefano and Victor filled in the application form for Make Me Smile Again and on the 9th of February Stefano got a confirmation that they had agreed to support the project with £746 🙂
In the mean time, I got a chance to talk with Lucien Cabrol, the inventor of the COLAB Concept (French). He thought this concept was well adapted for such a project and gave me some useful guidance. The concept uses wings that join at their tips, having two major benefits: increased strength by triangulation and being far more efficient than a wing of same width.
More efficient in that it can get better lift, can fly slower and can fly faster that a traditional wing and still remaining more stable, and the best of all, such a wing is still simple to build using the same techniques as for a standard straight wing.
