Radio Control Flying

[Jeff Higgins]

This is something I was pretty heavily into back in the 1980's and 1990's, before family and career pushed it out of my life. Well, now that I'm well into retirement, I've found time to get back into it. My how things have changed. I first flew back in the glow engine era, when the first four cycle glow engines were becoming available. I still have a number of those airplanes, and will soon fly them again, but in the meantime I've discovered, and am enjoying, all of the advances in the hobby.

I've already posted some pics of my old airplanes, as well as some of the new ones I've acquired in the last couple of years. So far, my new ones have all been of the "ultra-micro" variety, both in size and in cost. Until now. I just got home from the maiden flights on my new "park flyer" size airplane, the next step up from ultra-micro. Boy, what a wonderful flyer - size does, indeed, make a difference. Here is my new 850mm span Pitts S1S, sitting next to my ultra micro version of the same airplane. Tennis ball included for scale:




These both fly on clean, hassle-free electric power, with brushless motors running off of lipo battery packs. The larger one uses the same 11x7 (11" diameter, 7" pitch) prop that my old .40 ci four cycle glow engine uses. It has some serious power, to where it will accelerate vertically out of a tail slide.

These things also have three gyros on board, one for each control axis. The little one would, quite frankly, be quite difficult to fly without these gyros. They are invisible to the pilot, totally non-intrusive, but add a great deal of stability in choppy winds and such. Hell, back when I was first into this hobby, the Pitts itself had a horrible reputation as being difficult to fly when scaled down to R/C size. The "fix" for the R/C versions was to design them with longer tail moments to aid in stability, so they just never looked right. Until now. The gyros do not impair aerobatic capability in any way, so this short-coupled, four aileroned little bipe really tears it up when you want it to, but it's as docile as a Cub when you need it to be. What great good fun.

[cabmandone]

Many years ago a good friend was into flying those. He had one that had about a 5' wingspan. He was getting pretty confident and one evening we were out in the country flying it around. He would let it pass over his head and behind him and without looking turn it around and bring it back... that is until one time it seemed to be taking a while to come back. We both turned around to see it spiraling toward the ground. Last time he flew that thing.
Cool hobby.

[Jeff Higgins]

One of the cardinal rules is to never fly the airplane "behind" you. Orientation is the big concern. It's hard enough when it is in front of you.

Here is a pic of my old Ultimate 10-300 bipe. It has about a 60" span, and is meant for a .60 c.i. two cycle glow engine, or a 1.20 c.i. four cycle glow engine. I checked weights on a variety of glow engines, and found an O.S. 1.08 c.i. two cycle that was quite a bit lighter than any 1.20 ci four cycle. Reasoning that it could carry the weight of the bigger 1.20 four cycle, there should be no reason I can't mount the 1.08 two cycle. It has about double the power...

This thing was (is) an absolute beast. Look at the sizes of the control surfaces. This thing can fly a full loop - knife-edged. In other words, on the side of the fuselage, using the rudder as the elevator. Its roll rate is about 1080 degrees per second - three full rolls per second, and it will do that while accelerating vertically.

Notice, though, the super long tail moment compared to the Pitts. And the sheer size of the tail feathers. This was necessary in the old days, pre-gyro.

[Jeff Higgins]

A little more on stability and orientation...

Here is my ultra-micro Gee Bee Super Sportster. There was a time when this airplane was considered pretty much un-flyable as an R/C model. Too short coupled, too unstable. Even the real ones had their problems, killing a number of their pilots. In the R/C world, bigger is more stable, and a number of manufacturers attempted "giant scale" (1/4 scale, 1/3 scale) versions of this airplane, all to no avail.

Enter the modern gyro stabilized R/C airplane. Now even a tiny, 20" span, 4 ounce model can be made to fly well. Granted, it is still more of a handful than other designs, but it is no problem for anyone with some R/C stick time.




Back to orientation. Here is what the bottom of the Pitts looks like. The Ultimate shown above uses the big yellow stripe on the top of the top wing, and the lack of any stripe on the bottom of either wing, to the same affect. These stark visual differences between the top and bottom really, really help when you are watching from the outside and trying to control the airplane.

[tcar]

Started with glow-plug control line planes... we had 'dog fights' in the park every Saturday morning.
Cut the ribbon on the tail of the other plane.
Flew .049's.

The glow-plug RC... remember when we had to add mufflers... remember the plane being covered with oily slime from the exhaust after a flight... gallon jugs of fuel.

The electric/battery planes are so easy...
Did not know about the gyros... neat.

[dad911]

I started with control line also. R/C planes in the late 70's-90's. R/C helicopters in the late 80's, 90's, easier to fly in the backyard. Still have all the prop scars, no glove or chicken sticks for me....

Bought a lathe and milling machine to fix/upgrade helicopters.

Now I fly with Clearview flight simulator.

Timely thread though, built a sport plane, .40 size, therapy when my dad was dying from cancer(1992). Would like to convert it to electric, and fly it.

[astrochex]

Originally Posted by tcar

Started with glow-plug control line planes... we had 'dog fights' in the park every Saturday morning.
Cut the ribbon on the tail of the other plane.
Flew .049's.

The glow-plug RC... remember when we had to add mufflers... remember the plane being covered with oily slime from the exhaust after a flight... gallon jugs of fuel.

The electric/battery planes are so easy...
Did not know about the gyros... neat.

My dad was big into control-line planes for many, many years in the Valley. He raced competitively for much of that time, even going to the world championships for team racing one year. I recall Russians coming over to the house on occasion with their very beautiful airplanes. That was manly stuff, very high speeds in close quarters. I never caught the bug like he had. He flies carbon fibre sailplanes now in his 80s.

Nice planes, Jeff. Especially like the Bee Gee, I’ve always been a fan of that unique airplane.

[RKDinOKC]

Was into R/C back with Byrons had their big hoopty in Ames. Was there when they first flew their 1/5th scale Enola Gay. Even got signatures of the surviving flight team.

Instead of getting back into planes I done helis until I got to where the parts were too small to fix.
Really miss the old day of commeradery and flyins at the flying fields. People don't do that much any more with electrics and bind and fly radios.

[wdfifteen]

This looks like so much fun!

[porsche4life]

Check out the videos on Flighttest.com. Lots of planes to build cheap planes out of foam board so you can play with no fear of wadding it up.

[Jeff Higgins]

These planes are made of some kind of closed cell foam. The little ones come completely assembled, radio equipment installed, and are quite literally ready to fly right out of the box. All you need is a suitable transmitter, battery charger, and flight batteries. The bigger one required some assembly, but it took less than half an hour and it, too, was ready to go.

Frequency control was our single biggest concern back in the old days. The FCC had assigned a frequency band - 72 mhz - to radio control flying. There was a different band assigned to surface R/C, boats and cars. On that 72 mhz band, there were about 20-30 "channels", or narrow parts of that band, available for use. They were numbered for easy identification. I remember I had radios on channel 40, 44, and 56.

Problem was, anyone with a transmitter on your channel could control your airplane. We had to be very diligent about our "frequency control" - if someone on your channel turned his transmitter on while you were flying, it was an absolute certainty that your receiver would get electronically "confused" and you would lose control of the airplane. Most flying fields used clothes pins marked by channel that you had to be in possession of, clipped to your transmitter antenna, before you could turn it on. It was a really, really big deal, for obvious reasons.

Well, those days are behind us. Everything runs on 2.4 ghz, on the same "channel", but utilizes a bit of cell phone technology to keep us out of trouble. Each transmitter transmits a "globally unique identifier", a code unique unto itself. There is a process through which we "bind" that GUI to the receivers in our airplanes. Once "bound", the receiver will only respond to commands from that particular GUI.

These new transmitters will store a number of models. Mine will store 30, but some will store hundreds. It will save trim settings unique to each model. All we have to do is choose the model we want to fly from a menu and make it "current" before we fly. Gone are the days of a transmitter for each and every model. The transmitter is the "expensive" part. Mine was a couple hundred bucks, but you could spend much, much more.

Battery chargers range in price from about 20 buck to hundreds of dollars. The smaller batteries are less than 10 bucks for a flight pack, the bigger ones might go for 40-50 bucks. They are good for hundreds of cycles.

The ultra micro planes run from under $100 to maybe $150. My bigger Pitts was $200. You can buy replacement parts, from wings, to fuselages, to empennage, to landing gear and everything in between. So, once you have the transmitter, charger, and batteries, the airplane part of the deal is actually pretty darn reasonable. Pretty cheap entertainment, really, when one considers an entire augured-in write off, with no survivors, might set you back a couple hundred bucks.

[dad911]

Jeff, who makes the larger pitts?

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by dad911

Jeff, who makes the larger pitts?

E-flite makes them, and Horizon Hobby distributes them. They make the little one as well. As a matter of fact, all of my new airplanes come from these guys. Horizon Hobby sells a number of brands, but E-flite is their "house" brand. One of the cool things about them is that they support local hobby shops in that their on-line pricing is exactly what you would pay locally through their partnered shops. There is one about five miles from my house - dangerously close (if you couldn't tell already).

There was a time when on-line sales were killing the local shops, who could not compete price-wise. That made it really hard to run in and grab that one thing you needed for a day at the field, to continue with a build project, or for a repair, or whatever. It's also really nice to look at and handle something before you buy.

https://www.horizonhobby.com/

[porsche4life]

This is one plane that has caught my eye. Crazy flight times!

https://youtu.be/CAeDhuSNK2M

[SCadaddle]

43 years in the hobby, the first 42 shared with my Dad until he passed away at age 98 earlier this year. I've flown once since then, just to see if it was a hobby I wanted to stay in now that he is gone. Jury is still out on that decision. It's certainly not the same without him. None of our models are either down at his office or his home now, they and all the engines, kits, radios, building supplies you name it are taking up 2 bedrooms, 1/2 the garage and most of the attic in my home nowadays. We flew mainly glow from .049 to 4 stroke 1.20's, but in the later years I delved into the electric models. Once you go from glow to electric, it's hard to go back to being a "Slimer" with the glow models. 2.4ghz radios----I own exactly one, and it was won in a raffle at a fly-in several years ago. Still new in the box. I have and will always fly 72mhz. It's always been rock solid and now that everyone else is flying 2.4 there is rarely a frequency conflict that required the old frequency board and clothes pin system of policing the frequencies. The JR7202 was one of my favorite transmitters along with the JR scan-select receivers and the little Berg 4 and Berg 7 receivers.

The ultra micro offerings such as your Pitts are enticing, they are less than the FAA mandated 250 grams/8.8 ounce licensing requirement. The larger "foamies" such as your other Pitts are just incredibly light in weight compared to what a similar size Top Flite Pitts kit finished in sig coverall painted with K&B SuperPoxy paint and powered by a K&B 40 would come out as. That one you better have plenty of speed on take off and landing. They certainly wouldn't float like what you have nowadays.

[SCadaddle]

12 years ago, Dad at age 86 with my 1/4 scale Rutan "Quickie". Yes, it is 25% the size of the real aircraft! Saito 56 for power.

[911boost]

Great comments on the local hobby shop versus online Jeff.

While not airplanes, I do use my local shop for my RC rock crawler, which gets pulled out camping after a few malt beverages instead of driving the larger SxS’s etc.

[aschen]

Have a few of the horizon hobby UMX series park flyers as well. It is really nice to be able to hit a local park to fly for a half hour instead of a day trip with a trunk full of fuel and equipment to a flying field.

My favorite are the mini sized helis in 450 size and smaller. The modern tech have really decreased the learning curve and increased the ease of access. I used to pay 300 for a tail gyro and a servo. Now you can get a bind and fly complete machine and be up and flying in 10 min for the same investment.

[cmccuist]

Here is a fun website. You make planes out of rain gutter and corrugated plastic. Now that the political season is over, there are loads of corrugated plastic signs out there.

Plastic Planes

[flipper35]

Our youngest saved up and bought the Horizon B17 with 3 axis stability. We then bought the Corsair with SAFE so he could learn how to fly in the field across the road from us. We also bought the controller to PC cable to practice on the computer. Real planes are more fun, but these are much cheaper.

The Corsair is a hoot to fly with the rates up!