Model Airplanes

[sam am I]

Back in the day, we used to build balsa wood airplanes and hand line fly them. We'd cut, sand, straight pin and glue the perforated wood kits pieces together a top of the outlined templates. I recall we'd put wax paper on top of the paper templates so when the pins were pulled, the sub-assembly would just pop off the templates ready for final assembly, wet paper skinning the ribbed wings and fuel proof painted with dope........A lot of FUN my Dad passed to me when I was maybe 8 yrs olds........ We used the infamous Nitro fueled Cox engines, .049, .049 Golden Bee and the like, hook up a start battery to the ole glow plug and finger start these things (forward rotation hopefully if it didn't back fire, smack your finger and run backwards). We'd hand control line fly them for hours, we never had enough extra money to install the RC servo's and buy a radio but, had a ton of fun flying at any rate ........................Fast Forward.

Drones!! Yah yah, "grrrr, grumble grumble!!" So aside from all the irresponsible people that exist in all walks of life doing all kinds of dumb things (you know, driving boats over others in boats, drinking and driving at 1000 MPH going wrong way on our interstates, shooting up our kids at our schools and flying commercial 747's jets full of families while high on coke), these things are out of this world fun to fly!!

To a old kid who cut his teeth building and loved flying balsa wood model airplanes, these higher end drones (not the Wal-Mart type toy drones) of today with all of the computer controlled flight stuff, GPS navigation and images stabilizing controls and real time displays are yesterdays RC planes on mega steroids.

And funny thing is, actually drones (most if not all, non-toy type) of today's era are much safer then yesterday's flying RC models with all their built in real time FAA safe fly stuff such as no fly zones alerts/warning/shut downs, obstacle avoidance sensors and GPS/vision guided auto fly home features that weren't even possible in the RC planes of yesterday.

So yeah, if ya have a chance and loved flying those things we did and might have hand built as I did in the past and are still a bit of a kid at heart, do ignore the BS stigma due to a few bad apples in the bunch and get one!! If not just to enjoy flying again, which btw some fly so wonderfully easy but, get one for taking beautiful pictures, video's while on vacation and the like.

And/or for perhaps gathering otherwise more difficult real time look ahead info on like potential hunting, camping, driving area's and terrain's, fishing area's potentials, roof inspection, back 40 surveillance/quick flood damage assessments/hazards, property wide Insurance policy yearly snap shots, 4000 acre dairy farm cow counting/wellness checks, wind mill inspection, wolf reporting, crop circle monitoring, what's over that next ridge look ahead, saving a life or two, limitless possibilities..........They are, IMO, a truly wonderful advanced tool (not a toy, not mine anyway) and a pinnacle of today's technologies brought together to do something not even possible once upon a time and not so long ago either. And unlike the commercial aspect and introduction of the TV for example, they're definitely not a evil demon seed brain washing tool made to take over mankind and manipulate his free thoughts and will but, I'm hooked none the less and was long before these ever came about

BTW, I have and fly the DJI Mavic Pro Platinum, DJI Spark and pre-ordered a Oori for my office fun and just ordered a DJI Mavic Air lane:

More Air info, these really do fly this well FWIW

 

[bigdee]

Oh yes hours of cutting balsa wood, skinning delicate tissue paper over the frame and making it durable with multiple coats of paint. The bigger cox engines would just about break a finger. I still remember the smell of dope and fuel and the agony of defeat when hours of work ended in a crash and a pile of sticks! Many of mine never flew but hung from the ceiling with wire.

 

[sam am I]

Oh yes hours of cutting balsa wood, skinning delicate tissue paper over the frame and making it durable with multiple coats of paint. The bigger cox engines would just about break a finger. I still remember the smell of dope and fuel and the agony of defeat when hours of work ended in a crash and a pile of sticks! Many of mine never flew but hung from the ceiling with wire.

Ditto, even had one (a beautiful triplane) that never flew fall off the damn wall and crash, I was pissed

 

[Scott Danforth]

There is a propeller, engine and nose cowl still embedded in the roof of the elementary school i went to. We managed to salvage the radio and parts of the plane.

A year or so later, twin K&B outboards on a pickle fork tunnel refused to turn and hit the rip-rap outside the marina at about 70mph. The motors flew about 70' and sunk in 20' of water

just like real life, boats are as expensive as planes

 

[southkogs]

I've played with the DJI Phantom 3 quite a bit. One of the guys I know has the Mavic and another group I know has a couple of fixed wing and a couple of the Inspires.

They are a lot of fun to fly.

Recently I got a couple of smaller models (palm-of-your-hand size) and they're a riot too. No GPS control to those, so it's much more active.

 

[bruceb58]

I have about 20 RC planes in my garage that I need to finally get rid of. Gas powered, electric powered and gliders. I am getting married and moving from my 3 car garage house with no cars in it to a 2 car garage with one car in it. Anyone in southern California can get a good deal! Free is a good deal! :lol:

I have RC sailboats and gas/elecrtric cars as well. Needless to say, the garage is packed.

 

[sam am I]

I've played with the DJI Phantom 3 quite a bit. One of the guys I know has the Mavic and another group I know has a couple of fixed wing and a couple of the Inspires.

They are a lot of fun to fly.

Recently I got a couple of smaller models (palm-of-your-hand size) and they're a riot too. No GPS control to those, so it's much more active

I have a few lil no GPS types too I fly in the office, take super high amount of on stick control to keep those bad boys from crashing. That Oori I guess is a no GPS type and does 60 MPH, no way can I run it that fast, just out of my league.

 

[bruceb58]

I was very much into RC planes until 10 years ago. Before I took my last job, I almost went to work for this company for their unmanned aircraft division which is 15 minutes from my house.

My friend who used to be my boss works there. Go into the building and people are flying tiny electric airplanes around the office.

https://www.avinc.com

 

[MTboatguy]

Boy Bruce, that is tempting me to drive to Cali, I love playing Air Planes and RC Copters!

 

[82rude]

I read this post at the perfect time.Theres a drone racing league race on tv tonight .No pun intended ,man do those thing fly! In 1974 I had a hand line spitfire which went exactly once around then up and then into the dirt and shattered into a million pieces,lol.

 

[southkogs]

In 1974 I had a hand line spitfire which went exactly once around then up and then into the dirt and shattered into a million pieces,lol.

^^^^^ I had that one too!!! I haven't thought about that thing in years!

There's a first person view quad copter racing league here in Middle Tennessee. I don't have the eye/hand coordination anymore to fly at the speeds they're moving through the obstacles. But it's cool to watch them go.

 

[levittownnick]

Many quality hours of my preteen life was spent with models (in the '50ies) but regretfully I never mastered the art of flying them. After what I remember as an acceptable build, it wasn't long before I crashed them to smithereens on a maiden flight. Years later, when I had kids myself, I got back to the models but unfortunately was not much better. Today, my kids (All adults some with adult kids) and I still laugh about it. I wish I could claim success but that is not to be. But I still would not trade the time spent.
Levittownnick

 

[82rude]

southcogs the dr1 league uses first person head sets and races all over the world.I believe one of the races in last year was though the old Packard factory in Detroit.

 

[jbuote]

OH Man, I remember..
As a kid, my dad taught me about R/C models..
He had a Sweet-Stik, and I built an H-Ray as my first..
Bad a blast with those.. Built a nice P-51 too..

Still have a half build F4U Corsair, engine and radio for it.. Will probably finish it someday..

Recently been using heli's.. EXI made some bare bones kits a while back so that was fun...
Nasty when they crash though... haha!

Have 1 quad.. Cheaper type, with a camera.. No first person or gps or anything, but it's pretty fun...

Maybe a little to easy though... Doesn't feel like the challenge of flying, at least to me...

Flying anything these days, we have to let the local airports within 5 mile radius know (by law) that we'll be flying, where, and roughly how high.. (Unless that's changed in the last few months..)
Usually about tree top level with the heli's and quad..

And with all that flying we did with R/C's, both my dad and I went on to full scale too and got our private pilots licenses...

In the blood I guess... LOL

 

[southkogs]

southcogs the dr1 league uses first person head sets and races all over the world.I believe one of the races in last year was though the old Packard factory in Detroit.

Oh yeah - had forgotten about that! I had seen this footage:

 

[82rude]

Always wanted a r/c submarine but with my luck id still be sitting on the bank at camp waiting for it to come up,lol.I may try a lowcost speed boat .Wouldn't it be cool to put a camera on the sub and go fish hunting?Or do they only go down a couple of feet?

 

[BWR1953]

Well, I started flying RC in 1972. Kept at it for 20 years then took a break to go fishing for a couple decades. Got back into it in 2009 and flew for another 5 years until my health took a dive in 2014. I sold off pretty much everything shortly thereafter but do have a couple of unfinished planes about.

1973 - Man, I can't believe I was ever that young! LOL!
1/2A powered Bonzo.

 

[82rude]

Cool planes ,love the spitty,the most beautiful fighter ever produced.Couple of others I liked were the corsair and the jug (p 47)

 

[BWR1953]

Cool planes ,love the spitty,the most beautiful fighter ever produced.Couple of others I liked were the corsair and the jug (p 47)

Yep, the Spitfire is my favorite WW2 fighter. BTW - it's the only Allied fighter which was continuously produced for the full duration of the war.

 

[southkogs]

The "jug" was sure a work horse, but I think the Corsair was probably one of the prettiest planes fly. I love the sound of a real live Merlin though - you can't miss a P-51 on the inbound.