RC Plane Fans

[vleath]

My husband is so into RC planes/ helicopters, and trucks. OMG it is soooo expensive. I love them and watching him fly but the cost hurts. Especially when a crash happens! I bet over the course of 7 years he has spent like 20k at least it adds up little by little. He asks why I dont get into the hobby. I am like WTF money does not grow on trees around here certainly only 1 of us can afford that hobby.

 

[Instigator]

Vlea, I know what you mean about the hobby getting a little expensive little by little.

 

[Lab]

vleath if he is good at flying the heli's have him look into photography with it.. you can get a decent light weight high def camera that the larger helis can carry.. a lot of lots that go up for sale people hire planes or helis to fly over to take pic's of the large lots.. doing it with remote is a lot lower overhead costs so you can beat their prices easy..

 

[vleath]

Oh yes he has talked about that for sure. I keep telling him to get moving! LOL I dont mind that he has the hobby it is that there is something he has to have all the time. I tell him cant you just buy an airplane or heli and finidh it play with it and then when it breaks buy something else why do we have a storage building full of them and like 10 in my bedroom haha

 

[Dakota]

A lot has changed since you last flew then. Electrics are way better now.. they are getting bigger and more efficient. Ducted fans have come a long way and are very cheap to by kits from several different vendors. I started about 1.3 years ago. Went directly to electrics and learned how to fly by myself.. NO Buddy Box!! Downloaded a pirated copy of Real Flight 4.5 RealFlight R/C Flight Simulator - The most realistic recreation of R/C flight ever!™ and bought a Honey Bee CP that came with a cheap Sim. I threw away that sim and used the controller to power Real Flight. When I was comfortable with my landings in the sim... I started building my rc planes from scratch via free .pdf plans over at rcgroups.. Once I learned how to fly without crashing and destroying my planes.. I bought my first kit.. The SAPAC JAS-39 you see above. it's my first store bought rc plane. my first real build!! I know it will fly well as I have enough training and experience to keep it from stalling.. I'm certain it will fly more than 10 times.. lol

I also have the Airfield 57" Mustang that is still in the box, also as a kit.. I don't like the RTF.. They sell those with the cheapest electronic equiptment.. It will most certaily result in a total loss if anyone goes the RTF way... It's also a lot cheaper the ARF or Kit.. I have set up a date of Aug 14 to maiden my plane as I don't want to fly it without it being painted. I'm in communication with Callie-graphics to see about getting some new and different decals so I don't have to repaint it the same. I want to see it with another paint scheme as the original.. Maybe a Tiger Meet scheme!! Now, that would be kool.....

Cheers!!

I DID notice the huge move to electric back when I rebuilt a model I had destroyed. It's kind of amazing how they can draw all that power from batteries now. BUT, I am, and fear always will be, a fan of nitro/gas. You get a sense of realism out of it; especially the 4-strokes. I have had an inkling to build a kit and get back into it (Still have my old radio. . . not the fancy new 2.4s, but it works!!). Just afraid of the re-learning curve. I'd hate to crash again.

 

[Lab]

lol.. dont let him get into salt water tanks.. you will see that helis are a lot cheaper to play with..

 

[Dakota]

lol.. dont let him get into salt water tanks.. you will see that helis are a lot cheaper to play with..

I can attest to that.... THOUSANDS of dollars in the long run. I had a "small" tank for a few years.. now it's a baby nano to help with costs (still have a fresh water though, too)

 

[vleath]

Funny you mention it. When he told me to get into a hobby I chose a saltwater tank and yeah I settled on a Biocube because of the expense. Filling that thing up with live rock was a cost in itself. Now it is just maintained because I have to remind him how much coral is. But I do have a very happy firefish. The hermit crabs had to go it started killing stuff and since I did not know which one did it they both went to the pet store.

 

[Lab]

i do pretty cheap on coral bought a few to start with then cloned out a bunch of disks and the local pet shop will trade me for new ones.. when i was working on getting the tank going i ended up making a grow shelf in the tank to raise the corals faster..

I had a bunch of sponges until i had a power failure and the temp spiked had a few that i started on disks until the pet store told me they dont want them because they are too hard to keep alive

 

[Instigator]

Finaly finished my ducted fan Gripen.. It flew it's maiden last Saturday and landed in one piece. No damage on landing..

Digital Flame Job..

 

[Instigator]

I flew my Gripen Saturday evening with 2 cameras on board. This is the view from the left side.. right side view coming soon, just need to upload to youtube. It's the second flight I put on Her and even though it was very tail heavy with the battery as far back as possible. I managed to bring her down in 1 piece. It was very sensitive in Pitch, but managed to do a 2 point landing with barely scraping the tail cone.. Good flight!!

YouTube - My SAPAC Gripen's second flight.AVI

 

[Andy1100]

I used to fly quite a bit, went through some ARF nitro kits, but then found Start Here and built a .40 size for about $25 and it flies as good as any balsa plane, and is near indestructable. I might have to build a coro-cub and start flying again! This is what I built...
http://www.spadtothebone.com/SPAD/DasPlasStick/cs01.jpg

 

[son et lumiere]

It's a beauty to watch these things fly.