Peter Valentine

Peter Valentine "pod and boom" (1972)

At the Sywell show over the Easter holiday in 1973, Peter Valentine came second in the first UK helicopter competition sponsored by RCM&E.  This was Peter's second design of helicopter and although it was flight proven it was not demonstrated at the show due to the very blustery conditions.  It was though very compact and tidy looking and proved of interest to Micro-Mold and thus became the genesis for a range of helicopters under the name of Lark.

Peter Valentine Mayfly (1974)

Whilst the Lark was undergoing production development, Peter developed a slightly smaller version called the 'MAYFLY'.  This was powered by an OS 10 and was a complete 'homebuild' which also included the miniature radio gear fitted to the machine.  Whilst it was successful, because the radio gear was 'bespoke' and not generally available it was considered to be too expensive to be a viable proposition for commercial production however, the Lark was later to be offered with the 'Linnet' body conversion which retained the Mayfly look.

0.49 Cox powered Mayfly at Odiham 1974  Again at Odiham 1976.

The Mayfly was further 'miniaturised' and powered by a Cox 049 as noted above, however a final experiment powered by a Cox 020 proved to be too small and never successfully flew.

Peter Valentine carried on experimenting with the lark developing it into its MK2 version, then a 40 size version plus a 60 size though the latter did not make it into production.  Many years later he even 'electrified' the Lark though date and model specifications for this one are not known.

Peter Valentine Wallis Autogyro (1974)

 

Peter also designed an autogyro late 1974 however as noted it did not fly too well and needed more R&D; note that this is not the basis for the Micro Mold Wallis Autogyro; that model was designed by Roy Sturman a few years later.

 

Note that Peter Valentine passed away in 2003 however, the UK Lark guru's are Peter and Mark Cristy having collected a lot of Peters development parts for the Larks.