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Roger Stollery

MYA Member
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Posts posted by Roger Stollery

  1. This boat was at the AGM boat jumble and everyone who looked at it smiled. However, the BOTTLE boat is not a joke, but a fantastic sailing machine made out of rubbish and full of good ideas. Radio sailing's go-kart! Of all the boats that I have sailed in my 65 years of sailing models this is my favourite because it handles so beautifully on every point of sailing, is light and responsive, and has a fantastic performance for its 72 cm waterline, particularly off the wind as you can see from the attached photographs.  With its transmitter many live in a Persil packet, but this boat has a beautiful wooden stand.

    It would make an ideal Christmas present for a young person as it is light and small and would immediately create a smile as it is so unusual and great fun! It is the ideal boat to learn to sail with, because it is so easy to sail. Rigging involves only sticking the rig into the hole in the deck and connecting the sheet.

    There is BOTTLE Championship for most juniors and seniors on the River Deben every year and also at Guildford at the Brass Monkey just before Christmas but it can compete with DF 95s even though it is not quite as long. I am open to any reasonable offer for this complete sailing boat.

    2023-11-25 Bb 7 for sale.pdf 2023-11-24 The BOTTLE boat leaflet.pdf

  2. There is a long story about this boat which was brought round to my house in Godalming as a collection of semi-completed parts and was not sailable.  I spent some considerable time making one of my YOT BOOT cassettes, fitted it with radio, varnished the fin which gives a relatively short draft of 19 inches, found a ballast bulb and completed the most interesting part of this boat which is that it is a swing rig, as in the first idea I had for a SWING RIG. It is unique as there is not another one like it. The attachments show a bit more of its history and images of it sailing well. It is now taking up too much space in my garage and has to go, hopefully to a good home and I am open to any reasonable offers. It fits into the Vintage Marblehead category of Radio 1974 to 1982.

    2023-11-26 BLOODAXE 78 advert 2.pdf

  3.  John,

    Most of what you say in this footnote for the 36" class rules issue is correct, that class rules do need to be changed to keep up with the technological advances, but in your mention of the 10 rater class, you need more information to correct the comment made up the control of the roach area. While you are correct that there originally was no height limitation, the draft was controlled by the concrete edged lakes on which the boats sailed so there was no need to create an artificial draft limit. The 700 mm limit only came about just before the Millennium as a concern that clubs might be sued at a big event because of the lack of depth of water. A simple practical limitation. Originally, all the sail area was measured in a straightforward and simple way using a tape and simple calculation with basic arithmetic. This was in the era of gaff rigs, where there were virtually no roaches on any of the sails. the only class rule needed was length X sail area divided by a constant < or =10.  Just one line was sufficient.

    The problem occurred in 1923 when the secretary of the MYA, Edward Hobbs, who was very well read about the full-size world and every sort of rig description, decided that the MYA should follow the YRA, the equivalent of the RYA, in their measurement of sail area, which substituted batten limits for the actual measurement of the roach area and adopted the measurement of only 85% of the foretriangle area. In those days full-size yachts had many headsails so for the official measurer it made measuring this part of the sail area easier. Mr Hobbs, probably looking to the full-size in awe because as they were 'bigger'and had more authority, he thought this would be better, but it was was a huge mistake. It was a completely disastrous move in that it destroyed the simplicity of the rule, because in the development of Bermudan rigs and particularly the tall rigs in the London clubs where winds were generally light, as the height went up so did the area of the sail and so there was an increasing size of 10 raters. This was particularly noticeable in the 1940s and 50s when impervious and stiffer materials replaced cotton. It came to a head after Warlord's winning the 1966 10 rater Nationals, with an unmeasured wing mast (which the MYA were advised of before it was made, but did nothing about limiting the area) and also the ability to use Mylar material to create virtually any size of roach led the MYA to appoint the subcommittee of John Lewis, Chris Dicks and myself to review the rules. The 1968 rule change document brought back the simplicity of the rule with all of the area measured and because of the free area gained since 1923 the constant in the formula had to be reviewed in order not to disadvantage existing boats.

    This should be a warning that sport of model yachting should not necessarily follow full-size ideas, but develop rules that relate to what we want to do with the development of our models and their sailing. Currently the MYA is heading down a route that members don't want following a higher authority with instead of a single line, there are 29 pages of short bits of text with constant cross-referencing  and you have to read all this bumph until page 16 before finding the simple formula and then there is the complexity of the measurement system, which you have already commented on...

    On 19/07/2022 at 11:18, John949 said:

    Rules need to change as technology advances.  Taking the 10R as an example, the original rules (well the oldest ones I can find!) had no restrictions on draught, sail roach or mast height.  Presumably these things were limited by the materials available at the time (wood & cotton!).  Thanks to carbon fibre and Mylar, rules have had to be introduced to limit (or at least measure) these parameters. 

     

  4. Why is MYA Council rewriting history?
    What is happening in MYA Council? The reason for asking this question is that the current situation is that one person, the MYA technical officer, is making a proposal to change the 36" class rules.
    It is re-writing history, because  this proposal goes against what Council decided at the February meeting in 2017, which was to reject the proposal to allow carbon spars in the class. The Tech Team had been working on this for 2 months and had put together a very balanced argument for removing the current restriction on spar material. During this process, information about the potential change had been sent directly to 130 owners and there was also a 36" item on the MYA Forum for discussion. Council were asked at that historic February meeting for this proposal to be put to those owners for a vote, but despite approval of the Tech Team's work, Council stated that there must be a process for changing this national MYA class rule. In particular trustee Vic Bellerson stated that "You cannot have one or 2 people proposing to change the rule and there needs to be a process where the proposal comes from the class members".

    36" Class Captain, Peter Moore included this process in his single page 36" Class Owners Group rules, most importantly including following;
    7.    Change to the 36" Class Rules a) Any proposal to change the class rules shall be made to the Class Captain in writing and be supported by at least 5 members from different affiliated clubs. These COG rules were subsequently agreed by Council and the vote went ahead, successfully removing the spar material restriction. The 36" class rules became effective in October 2017, almost a year after the original proposal.
    The success of this new idea of the COG getting ordinary member invonled in running their particular class led to the development of a similar idea for the other classes, led by the MYA secretary, Chris Cook, and these were posted on the MYA website later in 2017.

    So what has changed in Council to create this reversal of approach? District councillors have come and gone, but 5 voices in Council who remember what they did for members then, should have not allowed this current situation to be tolerated.

    36" Class Captain, Dave Kent should just throw out this attempt to change the rules. The reasons appear to be just nitpicking, although one or 2 small minor items could be updated if owners require them to be changed. As neither 36" radio or free sailors have had any problem with the rules in the 5 year period since they have been in operation, there is clearly no need for the drastic change, like making them more complicated and lengthy, more difficult to understand and doubling the number of class rule pages, just to satisfy one person. Class owners and ordinary MYA members need Council to ensure better consideration than this.

     

    • Like 1
  5. Dear Darin,

    Many thanks for chasing, but there is no need as I entered on 1 June  online in the normal way and got this response from Hugh McAdoo on the same day.

    "Dear Roger,

    Many thanks for your entry 

    Best Regards 

    Hugh"

    So, something must have gone wrong with the system in my entry not being added to those already listed. I am not sure how entries get on the list, but I imagine that this happens automatically with Austin's system. Rest assured I will be there and am very much looking forward the sailing and meeting you all again.

    Very best wishes, Roger

     

  6. Dear Eric and John,

    I found the discussion about King Max winches very interesting as one of the things that we discussed on the way back from the M Worlds in 2018, was how to improve our boats and as we have been using the trusted Jackson winch, which then could not be repaired, I decided to use the basic two turn King Max SW 4805-2 PA winch, which gave the required travel 210 mm for my UP swing rigs and only cost £11 from the Component Shop, just as a trial. The trial was much more than that and lasted over 18 months with complete reliability. As John Taylor mentioned my King Max winch is slow at just over 1.5 seconds, but with practice you can adjust your buoy rounding technique to minimise the slowness.
    In the process I redesigned the BOOT to relate to the smaller winch in order to be able to put ALL the weight below the waterline, rounding the base from rectangular to circular to match hull shape as shown in the attached.

    As I always use my LAM (Leech Adjustment Mechanism) on my A rig I selected the most basic Futaba T6L TX and RX because it has analogue trims and so I can see/feel exactly where the trim is being adjusted. The trial started in September 2018 and went right through the incredibly windy 2019 season with absolutely no problems at all with regard to reliability. What I like about it is that it cannot overrun, it is always been a problem with my previous winches when something goes wrong.
    As it only weighs 45 g, it makes the complete BOOT weigh only 129 g (+65 g mh battery) this definitely achieved an improvement, to which the Hollom/Stollery Winder fin adds the further improvement, which keeps the DIY made UP equal or better than the best.

    Cheers, Roger

    2021-09-23 BOOT 2 details with Futaba T6L receiver.jpg

    2018-09-22 BOOT 2 completed.pdf

  7. Derek has asked an interesting question.

    I am aware of this being discussed at the highest levels on many occasions, with cost ruling it out for model sails, as Gavin confirms.

    My experience of measuring sails for 55 years is that there is always the occasion when even an expert sail maker makes mistakes; he is human and owners DO NEED A MEASURER to ensure that the sails comply.

    We need a supply of measurers and the MYA are not encouraging this.

    Thank you Brad for making the point that, for the whole of MYA’s 110 years existence, clubs have had adequate traditional procedures for measurement, which do not need fixing.

    Measuring is not rocket science and any constructive person, who makes anything, uses a measuring device without a problem and without lengthy training sessions.

    Many of the good ideas for helping measurers have been purposely stripped off the MYA website by the current regime and this is very sad.

    History created by the combined efforts of a hard-working Tech Team does not need to be rewritten by a single mind able to operate without any technical check.

    MYA Council needs to be more concerned about membership needs and less about the RYA, who don’t care about radio sailing; only taking our money.

    And what about publicity, not even mentioned as a vacant post in the latest Yearbook; it is a disgrace.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  8. Quote

    From Darin - This may sound at odds with what I have been involved in during my role on the MYA council but its worth pointing out that the MYA COG (Class Cwners Group) principle was to allow owners and skippers more freedom to promote their own classes not necessarily cast them adrift or push them down a Class Association route which they did not want.

    I was one of Darin's colleagues on Council putting together the simple draft Class Owners Group frameworks for these classes after the success of the 36" COG created in 2017 to get owner agreement to the rule change freeing up the mast construction.

    I totally agree with you that the intention was for owners to make their own decisions under the gentle guidance of the MYA Council. Apart from the Free Sailing COG formed properly in 2018, where the most important thing has been contacting class owners to get their views, this initiative was not taken seriously by the MYA in those intervening years until promoted this year in a more bureaucratic and overbearing approach which has not gone down well nor accepted by the few owners who have heard about it.

    Currently radio sailing is at a low ebb after the effect of the pandemic has been to reduce the enthusiasm for the sport and what is needed above everything else is to regenerate the enthusiasm for sailing Marbleheads and 10 raters at club and local level and not to concern owners with the politics at the highest level, which with such small fleet numbers in so few nations appears to be totally unrealistic.

    The attempt to break up the MYA and IRSA, which have served the sport well in the past is not good a good move now and needs to be treated carefully and at the appropriate time with more involvement from the owners concerned.

     

  9. I very much like Brad's analogy to the hole in the farmer's fence.  The hole must be so small that I am now unable to find it after 60 years of looking when making Marblehead sails!  Brad is also absolutely right that class rules should not be changed unless it becomes absolutely clear that there is some advantage be gained from a particular rule.  Trying to cope with 'what ifs' just makes rules more complicated for something that may never happen.  There have never been any rules about sail construction until we adopted the ERS when even then the single simple sail construction rule is that it has to be a "soft sail", which continued the understanding of the class tradition in the 70 years before that.

     

    The only thing I wasn't happy with in Brad's piece was the proposal to introduce a new rule on the question of setting a notional proportion of sail and batten thicknesses. So what if the sailcloth or the combination of layers is stiffer than the batten? Currently the rule doesn't restrict the thickness/stiffness of sailcloth which removes the need for battens if you really want such a stiff sail. Currently this is of no consequence, so there is no need to introduce another rule, firstly because this is a change to the class rules which is hated by measurers and owners alike and secondly from a practical point of view it requires more work to be done by the measurer for each sail which could be up to 18 Marblehead sails! 

     

    In both A and M classes the battens serve an important purpose to define the shape of the leech so unless we want a big change to redefine these shapes we should stick to the traditional sail shapes set by the battens and leave the class rules alone.

     

    If we put the magnifying glass away should we not take a wider view of the Marblehead class?  In order to improve its popularity and make it less expensive, wouldn’t the best rule change be the reduction in the number of rigs?

  10. Dear Chris,

    You asked a very good question about the procedure and timing.

    In an earlier posting you asked another related question, "You are also stating that this will be voted on by the owners, as there is no owners association for the class, wouldn't this rule change have to be approved by the MYA AGM?"

    There is a Class Association for the class, because the MYA acts as this class' association just as it does for the IOM and all the other classes. This is clearly stated in the MYA Constitution. The need for responding to IOMICA to allow individual registered owners voting, also set up the ability to do the same with the other classes. The club returns each year give the database information for collecting the names and addresses of owners of all our classes. This is what the IOM NCA class secretary has to do each year in response to IOMICA's AGM motions.

    In the case of the other classes, it is the class captains which take on this role of communicating with all the owners. In the case of the 36" a great deal of time and effort was spent by the class captain, Peter Moore, the 36" registrar, the MYA treasurer and others to get a comprehensive list of email addresses for all 130 or so, owners. As each owner was emailed individually with the technical report for the proposal, every effort has been made to keep people informed just as if there was a 'formal class association'. It won't need to go to the MYA AGM.

    This individual communication with owners will continue into the voting process and so at the end of that there is no reason why the rules shouldn't come into force straightaway. When that will be will depend on the class captain, who will no doubt bare in mind that the radio 36" National Championship is on 11 March at Bournville of which you are both a member.

    You are right that the most important thing is to get people enthusiastic about racing this class and now that Peter is able to contact class members easily there is no reason why the enthusiasm generated by this discussion cannot be encouraged to grow.

    Cheers, Roger

  11. Chris,

    I have just read our view on the proposed change of material and would agree that if you already had a set of five rigs for your 36" you wouldn't want to, nor would it be necessary to consider changing anything, but your tallest rig or maybe second tallest rig.

    There is already a difference between the 1980s aluminium tube rigs on boats like TAXACHUN and the latest aluminium rigs using the lightweight IOM specification aluminium.

    The later aluminium spars are much lighter than the thicker walled aluminium tube, but despite that there is not that much difference in performance, with TAXACHUN still able to finish second in the 2016 radio nationals beating lots of boats with much lighter rigs. As the IOM spec and a basic carbon are of similar weight there is unlikely to be any difference in rig weight that would affect performance materially. So they should not be a big concern about existing 36"s becoming outdated by the change. They don't get outdated very easily!.

    I would take issue with Chris on the question of cost because he has not taken note of the fact that the IOM spec lightweight aluminium is of a similar cost to the basic carbon spars from Carbon Profiles as noted in the Tech Team's paper. Not only is the basic cost per metre similar but the cost of postage and packing for metre long lengths of carbon is much less than the cost for a 2 m length of IOM spec aluminium.

    Cost should not be a factor in this decision. As a builder of rigs, I would prefer to use carbon because one can make a stepped tapered mast with a flexible top more easily than having to use just one size of aluminium. These days you cannot get aluminium in the sizes and weights that are suitable for making our model masts and so the IOM spec is about the only option.

    Chris also mentioned wing masts or wing sails and from my own experience these are not good in light airs and I would not be thinking of designing anything that was taller than the length of the boat just to try out ideas that have been seen in the Americas and other fast machines in the full-size world. This class has huge potential for experimentation and so should we not look to the future with a class that already allows total freedom in area?

    More views on this subject would be very welcome as we only have seven days up to the deadline of 1 February for comments on the future of this great little boat.

    Cheers, Roger

  12. The text above only gives half the information, because the Tech Team's document contains a table giving the pros and cons of the possible change. The whole of the Tech Team's document is available on the website, starting at the 'News' section. It is best to read both parts of the document before posting on this forum.

    Cheers, Roger

  13. Dear Dave,

    I am glad that you have opened up the thread for the review of the 36" class rules. Although it is entitled 'Radio 36', the rules will apply to the free sailing 36"s also. Like the other rules that cover both versions of the class/sport, the rules are written as radio rules with a class rules supplement for free sailing.

    I can understand your frustration because of the time that this review has taken, but as MYA Technical Officer I have been incredibly busy on more immediate demands on my time.

    I'm delighted to say that the Tech Team have now completed their review document and this will be sent by email to all 36" owners by the Class Captain, Peter Moore, for a two-week discussion on this forum. After that the Tech Team will use the comments to guide the wording of the rule changes. The class captain will then send out a ballot for owners to vote on the rule changes.

    The review document is comprehensive, giving information about spar material stiffness, related costs and a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each material so that owners can make up their mind about the future of the class. The competition from RTR boring classes with no design input, enhances the 36" class because of the great freedom to experiment and to develop rig ideas, which has always mademodel yachting such a fascinating sport. Removing restrictions can only help to give this class a really sustainable and exciting future, with designers and builders leading a resurgence of this great little fun boat.

    Cheers, Roger

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