Anyone fly R/C planes?

Busted Bricks · Anyone fly R/C planes?

I'm always curious about what hobbies people have. One of my other passions is micro R/C models. I'm just back from a 1 hour flying session in the local park. I flew my newly completed 29 gram electric model. The air was perfectly still so it was a joy to fly lazy circuits with it. It's the first time I've flown anything in nearly two years but it really is like riding a bike - you never forget how to.

Some years ago my wife and I ran a part time business called Indoor Flyer. I designed and kitted a couple of small models and also developed and manufactured micro R/C equipment.

MrMamod

Only till they crash but i do have a R/C tank and 2 helicopters ..

The Denying Dutchman

I used to have a RC glider. I rather had a nitro powered plane, (back in the nineties electro flight wasn't really an option) but in the over regulated Netherlands you can only fly those planes in very few areas.

IndianaRog

About 12 years ago my then teen son and I both learned to fly nitro powered RC planes...we had great fun, great crashes unfortunately and great rebuilding sessions.

Though I have not flown in years, I still have several RC planes hanging from the ceiling of my basement and lots of support equipment. Wish someone local would take it all off my hands...I could make them a heck of a deal!!!

NickB

This Mosquito belongs to me and my dad, it's got retractable landing gear and navigation lights. She looks very authentic flying around but is a bit of a handful flat out!

Pineapple11

The Denying Dutchman

A very nice plane indeed.

belugawhaleman

I built a RC plane complete with radio. Its all set
up But I have never flown it.

I have a few
RC tanks. not as easy to break as planes

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The plane that probably will never fly.

Paul[/img]

ministeamer

I have a little micro-scale Parkzone F4U Corsair and a Blade mCP X Micro 3D Helicopter, but I can't fly either very well.

a72001h

Never flown R/C but flew control line many years ago. Still have all my engines and models. Probably spent more time mending than building and flying!

Busted Bricks

I did a bit of C/L but suffered too much from dizzyness!

Stitch1615

I gave up R/C planes about the time I bought my second Harley in 2007.
At that time I had about 20 planes ranging from small electric helicopters to 1/3 scale gas planes.
My last crash was a 1/3 scale Hanger 9 Sukhoi 31 with a DA-100 engine.
It represented an investment of nearly $6000. (I had a job at the time)
A $4.00 on/off switch, that I rather stupidly neglected to make redundant,
failed when the plane was in a hover about 20' off the ground.
I decided that was enough and sold most all of it to the local hobby shop.
Like Roger I have drawers filled with remnants of all kinds and have but 1 original plane left hanging from the ceiling.
I recently bought a Park Zone T-28 and Blade MQX 4 blade helicopter for fair, non windy days.

ministeamer

benchmark

I do not fly planes but R/C helicopters.

Les

The only time I tried to fly a R/C plane the ground won.

NickB

logoman

I have a RC kite, not flown yet because the weather has been so bad.

Stitch1615

airspyder

I have a few R/C helicopters, a quad, and a bi-copter.
They have been collecting dust for a while now.

Bill

27ace27

I fly RC planes!

The best place to get them is hobbyking.com, they have the cheapest prices on the net. Currently I have a J3 grasshopper trainer that I never use, a floater jet covered in LEDs, and an EDF delta wing.

Busted Bricks

Busted Bricks

belugawhaleman

Busted Bricks

You are right, I was wrong.

BTW, I built a Z from blue foam and brown paper around 14 years ago. It flew OK on a geared speed 400 electric motor. Landings were fast, just like the original

27ace27

Busted Bricks

I don't think they are looking for retailers and they are already setting up a warehouse in the UK.

Hobby King is great for modellers (at least short term) but very bad news for the local retailers. The local hobby store is soon a thing of the past.

27ace27

I mean just buy a whole bunch of there stuff, mark it up a tad, and sell it locally. or is that allowed?

Busted Bricks

Sure it's allowed but there is hardly any profit in that and I end up with the warranty claims rather than HK. I can't compete against a business that gets state subsidised postage and doesn't charge VAT. In reality the customer is liable for VAT when the goods arrive in the UK but HK systematically under-declare the value to under the HMRC radar.

Sorry for the rant, I'm straying from the topic here.

Stitch1615

Busted Bricks

This is not a recent thing. I ran a part time business for a couple of years but between the recession, a weak Pound and Hobby King sales dropped drastically, I decided to call it a day before I ran myself into the ground. I had a day job to fall back on then.

Because I'm now unemployed I'm trying to start up a business but I've had so many setbacks already I'm starting to wonder why I bother. I should be a good boy and sign on for my JSA instead.

Stoker

Flew and built control line planes back in the 50's, before I was 10 years old. Got quite good at it for a kid. Flight Streaks, Noblers and homemade designs were painstakingly assembled and on occasion instantaneously disassembled. Silkspan and Dope, now those were the days!!!

Mid to late teens I worked after school in a hobby shop and was essentially ruined for life.

Thus was started in on R/C planes, boats, tanks & dune buggies a bit before Phil Kraft made proportional R/C common and "affordable", well sort of anyway. Started out with a Controlaire Reed outfit, but soon spent a months part time wages on a PCS (subsidiary of Kraft) four channel proportional with Kraft KPS-9 servos that were nearly half the size of a pack of cigarettes, and had one rotary and two lineal outputs.

CG Falcon 56, Pitt's Special, SE-5a and attempts at a fine-scale scatch built P-51 and a Hansa-Brandenburg W.29, along with a few other stock fliers.

Nitro Ski Boat and hydroplanes, plus an electric hydroplane with split sponsons and airfoils to prevent the then prevalent back flips, often seen in the prototype unlimited class. This was done as a college engineering design project.

Modified a Tamiya motorized Pkw III to R/C, and innumerable plastic shelf type ships kits, such as Yamato, Cutty Sark, Lindberg CG tug & Fletcher class destroyer, and others not immediately remembered. And this was all with the big stuff, before the smaller sizes of servos became available.

May have been about the first to do an R/C dune buggy, as the day we (Huston's Hobby Shop) received the first delivery of a Cox Dune Buggy (.049 powered) upon its initial release, we put in
R/C steering and throttle and ran it through the orchard out the back door.

Haven't flown anything in several decades now, but I do keep looking at the new miniature electric planes. They are now making flying scale models the size that used to be for static shelf display only.

Hope this hasn't been too boring, but I had fun remembering and reminiscing!!!

Busted Bricks

I love to read stuff like this so thanks for sharing

R/C really has come a long way. My lightest model to date was just a tad over 2 grams!

With 2.4GHz radio the days of interference are over and with brushless motors there are not more burnt brushes. The equipment is good and cheaper than it has ever been before.

Stoker

wyvern

yes I fly r/c planes.

At the moment I have a trainer converted to float plane and a old parkzone spitfire that I upgraded to brushless and 4 channel with carbon re-enforcement in the wing. Its certainly alot better now.

Its a world away from when I started nicads and brushed motors - they could barely get off the ground. Now you can buy electric aircraft with a greater power to weight ratio than their IC engine counterparts.

Cheers

Guy

angus

Your post reminded my that I have a Micro Mosquito 3.0 R/C helicopter at a friend's place in the country. The good news is that that's where I am right now, the bad is that the battery seems to be shot and it'll only fly for about 30 seconds instead of the 5 minutes or so that it used to manage.

It's been out of production for a few years I imagine, but ironically although spare motors and rotors and just about all other parts abound, batteries no longer seem to be available. Oh well, its LED eyes still light up and it still manages to scare the dog. Mind you that particular animal is likely to faint at the sight of nothing more menacing than a tea bag -- so it isn't really that impressive any more

Busted Bricks

I know the guy who invented the Micro Mosquito. It will be using a single lipo cell so it should be no problem finding a replacment. Give the friendly people at bsdmicrorc.com a call. Weigh the cell beforehand so they can find a match. No harm if it has higher capacity.

mikethenerd2

I just purchased my first rc plane a couple of months ago. I have already crashed it and repaired it once. Luckily, a purchased a foamy for my first plane. My next one will be wood (after I master flying of course).

But other than steam, rc tanks are my first passion.

angus

46u

Had a few still have one but I was more in to racing buggies 1/8 and 1/5. All so have some helicopters but I am going to sell most of them.

This was from Diggers Dungeon in 2009. 1/5 scale IT rained all weekend and was cold but we had fun. Dennie's that owns grave digger raced with us. Received about $250 worth of door prizes. Drove 500 miles to get to this race. I all so got to go to the Right Brothers museum and marmoreal.

This is what my buggy looked like when I got home. It sat out in the rain while I turned marshaled or it would would have been dirtier.

ganuganu

I dont have experience in flying RC planes but i can support you to fit an valveless pulsejet engine to it.

Keith S

I used to be very interested in model aeroplanes, I had some R/C ones, but I was attracted to the elegance of the little free-flight ones. I built some when electric power was in its infancy, there were some little motors with gears from a self-rewinding camera, powered by rechargeable mobile phone batteries, that were about as powerful as a twisted up rubber band. I had a lot of fun with those. Nowadays you would be able to equip one with micro R/C.

Now of course, I am sick to death of aeroplanes by the end of the day. Even the most exciting job is still just "work" as soon as you are compelled to do it when you don't feel like doing it. Nobody is forcing me to play with steam engines, maybe that's why I like them.

BK

I had about 3 control line planes about 50 years ago, had great fun (after you get used to turning round and round and round....), used to love flying combat (cut the ribbon off the back of the other plane), great fun.

ministeamer

Keith S

I'm pretty sure people are still doing it, ministeamer! In fact, I think "combat" flying is quite popular with radio-controlled aeroplanes nowadays! I'm quite sure that soon we will even see actual combat, they are making goggles that you wear that connect wirelessly to a stereoscopic camera in the cockpit of a model aeroplane that allow you to "be there"! How much longer before people use this system, maybe with an infra-red "shot" detecting system, to have actual dogfights?

For some people this would be the height of excitement. In fact I am feeling a little enthusiastic about it myself, although I can imagine that starting out, trying to spot a wee little aeroplane and home in on it, trying to zap it with an IR "gun" as it flashes by, might be frustrating rather than amusing.

logoman

great thread, so satisfying to read about peoples other model building exploits, I have a LOT of respect for you guys. I saw a video of an RC steam powered airplane yesterday.. wonder if i can find it again..

ah yes..

MrDuck

Now that is interesting

The Denying Dutchman