Ep 210: A Trailer, a Charger, and a Great Day Flying

[00:00:02] Good evening and welcome to the RC Plane Lab Podcast. I’m Dave.

[00:00:10] That was early. There we go. That’s the cue. Hi, Dave. How are you? Good. I can’t do this.

[00:00:18] How many times have we tried to do this and I still screwed up?

[00:00:21] I know. I know. And you said, this is on me, because you said, let me know when it’s time. And I said, Dave, do it when you feel the time is right. And I was early. You are quick. That’s okay. How’s Dave been? I’ve been up and moving. How about you? Same. Busy with other things, unfortunately.

[00:00:42] Yeah, not a lot of RC. Well, for me. Well, it’s RC related, but not plain.

[00:00:49] My biggest thing in the last couple weeks has been, unfortunately, fixing the website. Long story short, I did some updates on it because, well, you’re supposed to keep software and everything up to date. Yeah, they got whole teams for that,. And long story short, the theme that we were using apparently is not being supported anymore. So when I updated the PHP version or whatever it was on the site, the site broke.

[00:01:23] And it literally took me four days to get it back to how it is, which is not quite how I want it. But it is much better than not having one. So anyway.

[00:01:35] So I’m glad you’re doing it and not me because it’d still be broke.

[00:01:39] It was a lot more than I expected. And it was one of those, it was an evening thing and I was just kind of doing a few things on it. And then that happened. I’m like, oh, it’s going to be late night.

[00:01:51] But that’s okay. Turned into a week.

[00:01:52] Turned into four evenings and I’ll admit a lot of stuff at work happened on that too. So it must be nice.

[00:02:02] It was actually. I get a lot of stuff done at work.

[00:02:07] Like you’re supposed to. Exactly. So Joe and All is going on right now.

[00:02:12] Yeah, we’re missing that. Sad. It looks like the weather’s good this year.

[00:02:16] Yeah.

[00:02:16] It wouldn’t be slugging around. Sure does.

[00:02:18] I almost have to stay off of Facebook because there are so many posts and there’s so many things that I see that make me go. Oh, I should be there.

[00:02:28] I’m- I don’t know which groups, whatever I’m looking at, but mostly what I get is 3D stuff which unfortunately, is not an interest of mine.

[00:02:37] Yeah.

[00:02:37] But I don’t know why I’m getting the feed for all the 3D flight line stuff. I mean, it’s really cool stuff going on down there, but I would like to see more electric line, float line, and maybe a little bit more main line. Yeah, I’m getting a little bit of main line, but not much.

[00:02:48] I’m going to be honest. I think the 3D guys are probably the most prolific posters. Yeah, they’re younger. Due to their, their age and, and really due to their age and their, their abilities online. I don’t think you’re going to see the 84 year old guy sitting at the, the float line flying his, little cub off floats posting videos on online.

[00:03:12] Yeah, probably not.

[00:03:13] Although those are the ones I would like to see too. Yeah.

[00:03:16] Like you said, 3D stuff’s cool, but it’s just not my main interest.

[00:03:19] It’s, it’s admittedly more exciting. After five minutes of it, it’s like, okay, cool. I’ve seen that. Let’s move on. Ah, see, I don’t know. I, I really enjoyed the time sitting down there before, or after dark, but before it got to the, the gas engine shutoff time where they would all bring out their, their big lit planes. And it was a good show.

[00:03:40] I liked the night thing. That was cool. And it was cool, literally.

[00:03:45] Yeah.

[00:03:46] So that was nice.

[00:03:47] And all the, the smoke kept all the bugs away. And yeah, it was a nice evening. So anyway, maybe next year I’m planning on next year. It’s not going to be a, maybe if, if I don’t go next year, there is something majorly wrong. Let’s put it that way.

[00:04:04] Okay. So hopefully we’ll have Tommy back.

[00:04:07] Well, and I can’t miss two years in a row or else we lose our premium spot. We gave it away this year to somebody else. but you get to do that once before you lose it.

[00:04:18] So have to go, have to go, or just forfeit the money, have to go, have to go.

[00:04:27] Yeah. So we’ll see what next year brings, but next year should be a lot more, a lot busier for the RC side of things for me. And I think I said, so last episode too, that’s kind of the plan with doing more stuff this year now, especially with Tommy gone as a prep for having more time next year to do stuff.

[00:04:50] So, yeah. What’s new with you? Anything? Oh, didn’t, I’ve been playing with RC cars all week. Actually not much of that anyway, but what I’ve been doing is that staring at Reggie’s playing, going, yeah, I really need to do something about that.

[00:05:08] Or Reggie needs to do something about that.

[00:05:10] Yeah. Yeah. That’s not going to happen.

[00:05:13] That is true.

[00:05:14] But yeah, I’ve, I’ve almost got that second RC 10 back together. I’m waiting on the last couple of parts to come in because I accidentally washed one of them down the sink and didn’t have a spare. What did you wash down the sink? shock rod in. Ow. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently fell through. It was able to fit through the hole in the strainer. I’m not surprised. That’s small. Yeah.

[00:05:35] So I was, bleaching the parts with, peroxide hair product, a couple of days in a Ziploc bag out on the front yard. till they whitened up nicely, which they did, brought them back in. And in the process, I just put them in my strainer and rinse them off real good to get all that peroxide off of them. And then I throw them in a pot and boil them for half an hour to put moisture back into the, the nylon.

[00:05:59] And I went to start, reassembling it and realized I’m missing a shock rod in. And I know I put it in the bag, so I’m pretty sure it fell out of the colander and went down my kitchen sink. So if it was the last one on the face of the earth, I could probably take the P-trap apart and find it.

[00:06:14] But, oh, I don’t know. Well, if you caught it fast enough, yeah. But if you ran water, that’s probably small and light enough to where it’s, it’s gone. It’s probably gone now. Yeah.

[00:06:23] But so yeah, $15 parts tree. Because you can’t buy just one. You got to get an entire tree. Well, and that’s okay because if you need another one. Actually, one of them was looking a little strained. how the plastic gets that light color where it gets strained.

[00:06:37] Where it gets weak. Yeah. Or where it’s been like bent a little bit, you mean? Yeah.

[00:06:40] So it’s probably not bad to have a sparrow on hand anyway. I agree. So waiting on that. And then I found the dog bones were bent in it. So I went in. I straightened the dog bones. But what? For the money. And I was having to order parts anyway because I put stuff down the sink. I went in and just ordered a new set of dog bones for it.

[00:06:57] And you’re talking about the drive axles on the back.

[00:07:00] Yeah. Little drive shafts. So once I get those two parts, it’s back together. Good to go.

[00:07:06] Those metal or those?

[00:07:08] Those are metal metal. Okay. How does that wear then? Surprisingly well. the cups will usually, with the drive against, will usually get a little P-shape in them. where the cross shaft bangs into the cup.

[00:07:23] Yeah.

[00:07:23] But that takes quite a while. Okay. They hold up reasonably well. Especially if you keep the dirt out of them.

[00:07:30] I was gonna say, I’ve had a couple like that, a couple of my cars. And I’ve never really had an issue with.

[00:07:36] I had one car develop a deep P. I mean, it was halfway through the cup. Wow. which caused some running issues. It started getting cogging and things like that.

[00:07:47] Yeah.

[00:07:48] Yep. That was a lot of run time though.

[00:07:50] It had to have been.

[00:07:51] Yeah. Well, cool. So anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing. Oh, and, I worked on the Yak.

[00:08:00] Your?

[00:08:00] Or my, dancing wing profile Yak, Yak 55.

[00:08:07] Do you want to get into that now? Or do you want to wait for a little bit? Do you want to go over new stuff first?

[00:08:11] Yeah.

[00:08:11] Let’s go over new stuff first. We’ll get back to the Yak.

[00:08:13] Cause I might Yak.

[00:08:16] So we’ve got, we’ll get to a couple of new planes here. sure. There’s a lot more out there we’ve missed, but. I’ve not seen it if there is, so, and then we can talk about, actually we’ll probably, do you think we’ll go into our, when we went flying that kind of, yeah, that

[00:08:38] That kind of lead into it.

[00:08:39] Yeah. That that’s why you did what you did. anyway, you want to start off with, the one you have. Sure. I was handed the, new, e-flight.

[00:08:48] I was handed. I was told to read this. It was sitting at my desk when I pulled up here. It was actually. You’re welcome, by the way. No problem. Thank you. somebody’s got to do show prep. Give me the one I don’t like.

[00:09:00] What do you want this one? You can talk about this one if you want, if you think that’s more up your alley. No, that’s fine.

[00:09:04] I’ve already read this one. I am looking at the e-flight Habu SS 50 millimeter, bind and fly or, plug and play your choice. 50 millimeter jet electric pusher, not pusher. Oh my goodness. I’ve had a stroke.

[00:09:21] EDF.

[00:09:22] EDF. Yes. It’s been a long week and it’s just early in the week. we’re looking at the bind and fly at one 99 99 and the plug and play at one 49 99. The only difference is no receiver. they’ve updated the paint scheme on it. It’s actually a fairly attractive blue and silver or silver gray and white, paint scheme. It looks pretty slick in my book.

[00:09:46] Of course you like that color.

[00:09:48] Yeah. Cause it’s hard to see. It blends in. and it’s also now designed to take a forest, pack. So that’s going to really bump up the performance.

[00:09:58] That’s important. Yes. The one I had was the old version. Actually, if I just sold or sold it, at Toledo and it was three S only. It flew great, but for takeoffs and stuff, I think the little extra pep of a forest. That forest, I think it’s going to make a huge difference. Yeah. So I bet they probably had to strengthen the body just a little bit too.

[00:10:17] Yeah. They said they’ve made some airframe changes, although can’t really see what the changes may have been, but, I’m sure they’ve had to do some stuff to accommodate the higher output power.

[00:10:27] Yeah.

[00:10:28] It’s set up to use the three S 11.1 Or four S 14.8 Volt in the 1300 to 2200 milliamp range using EC3 or IC3 connectors or whatever you put on it when you lop them off. So yeah I. I think the four set, four S with the new paint scheme is a lot nicer.

[00:10:51] Yeah.

[00:10:52] Good solid jet. Seeing a lot more of these 50 millimeter jets. It’s a good size, not intimidating, small enough to throw around and cheap enough to you don’t worry about them too much. Right.

[00:11:04] Cheap enough to not necessarily care if something happens.

[00:11:06] Yeah. So good to see more 50 millimeter stuff and an update on the Haboo. I wasn’t a real fan of the orange, so.

[00:11:13] Yeah. I mean, I, I like, I like the anhed, or the anhedral tails.

[00:11:19] Yeah.

[00:11:19] I think they look pretty good.

[00:11:20] Like they have four phantom style.

[00:11:21] Mm-hmm. I think that’s why I like it to be honest.

[00:11:25] Okay.

[00:11:27] So you ready for the next one? You got something else. So the, the next new airplane that came out is the, hangar nine Viper. so it’s a, a turbine jet and it, a hundred Newton size. It comes in, what is that? One, two, three, four different styles. The, the ARF is $1,300. If you get the ARF with Retrax, it goes up to $1,600. If you get the ARF with the Retrax and the turbine, it’s $3,500.

[00:12:02] Or if you go all the way up and get the, ARF, Retrax, turbine, eight servo, or yeah, eight servos, AR-2410T with power safe and the AS3X plus module, $4,700. But that’s pretty much everything you need. I don’t, I don’t know if that comes with the UAT. I don’t know if that comes with the ancillary little, fuel lines and all that kind of stuff. Little odds and ends. Right. It doesn’t come with the batteries. but that’s almost.

[00:12:34] It’ll get you most of the way there.

[00:12:35] Yeah. You’ll probably be out for less than $5,000.

[00:12:39] Five to, five to 5,500, depending on.

[00:12:42] Yeah. Depending on what all you have to buy extra. But just for that jet, I think you could do it for under five. cool thing that I like about this one. It’s a good size. we all know Vipers fly wonderful. So I’m sure if this flies.

[00:12:58] Every size is exactly the same.

[00:12:59] Right. If, if this flies is as good as the 90 size, as good as the, what’s the smaller one? The 64 millimeter. That’s going to be a good flying jet. what’s cool about this one though, is there, they’re bringing over the, LED navigation and landing lights, which I think is neat. It’s one thing I wish my jet had with some lights on it, but you can add them, but they’re very pricey.

[00:13:27] So the, the covering though on this one is, it’s kind of like their, it’s kind of like the military scheme of the MB339. Is it that pre-printed? It’s the pre-printed stuff. Yeah. this one is shiny though. So it’s not the, the matte finish like the other two they’ve done. what was the other one? My mind just went blank on the big white one.

[00:13:50] Oh, the, T34?

[00:13:53] No, that doesn’t sound right. Was that it? I don’t think that’s right. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Let’s move on. yeah, but anyway, so it comes with, pretty much everything you need on that 82.6 inch wingspan, and 30.8 to 32.6 pounds, is what the weight’s going to be when it’s ready to fly.

[00:14:18] It’s a good size aircraft. Yeah.

[00:14:21] The, I was trying, I was trying to look up here really quick, but I can’t pull it up fast. I’m sorry. Oh, that’s right. Because I don’t remember the other one that’s killing me at this point.

[00:14:37] This is the goshawk, right? Yeah.

[00:14:40] That sounds better. Yeah. T45 threw me off. Yeah. anyway, so yeah, that’s the, the newest turbine that they announced and brought out for Jonal this year that we’re not there to see. I’m so sorry. Me too. yeah. Yeah. So I remember last time I talked to Tommy, it’s been quite a while. but he made mention of, like I told him I was wanting to get one of the small Vipers, the 30 millimeter Viper. And he said that he was thinking about getting that one too.

[00:15:16] And then he said, if he does that, he ought to just get the 64 millimeters since he has the 70 and 90 already. So just have the entire, so we’ll have the entire lineup. I wonder if that’s going to include this one now though.

[00:15:27] Cause I think that just probably blew his budget for Vipers anyway.

[00:15:32] I mean, how cool would that be if he had every, every Viper that they make?

[00:15:36] Yeah.

[00:15:36] Cause before this came out, I told him you’re in a good position cause you have the two more expensive ones already.

[00:15:41] So the 64 millimeter is not as bad.

[00:15:44] And the, the 30 is cheap really for what it is.

[00:15:48] We’ll see. We’ll see.

[00:15:51] Okay. Shall we go on to our adventures last week? We went flying. We don’t get to say that very often. No. Cause the weather’s just sucked.

[00:16:01] I don’t like to complain.

[00:16:04] But I have no problem with that. Oh, that’s, that’s your middle name. but the weather, like the wind has been terrible. Like we’re finally getting some warmer weather, which is nice, but we cannot get weather that’s warm without wind. Wind or torrential rain. The rain has kind of gone away. Like we had some couple of weeks there where it was ridiculous.

[00:16:26] Like every other day we were getting a massive dump.

[00:16:29] Yeah. Rain just. And then like the last couple of days we’ve had the blowing dust warnings and, what’s it called? The, the blinding. Oh, the dust storm. Yeah. Things. It’s ridiculous. Like the other day we had 75 mile an hour gusts here. We just can’t get out of it. Yeah.

[00:16:48] I mean, today it doesn’t seem that windy and I ain’t getting blown off the road on my way out of here.

[00:16:52] Yeah. Well, you can, you always need to look at the top of the trees because that’s what I do coming home. I’m like, how much of the trees blowing? Oh, they’re bending in half. So no flying tonight. yeah, but no, we actually got a good day. It was a little chilly. but I would. It was mid 60s.

[00:17:08] It was all right. Yeah. But it was a little chilly when we got there.

[00:17:11] It warmed up. Okay. but it was much better than having a lot of wind and a lot of rain.

[00:17:20] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, our first option to be able to do this in a long time.

[00:17:25] Mm-hmm. So I, I flew some stuff, out of the four planes I took, three were maidens. Yeah. Same. Nice. So four planes and three maidens? No, I will say that all of mine, well, no, I won’t say that. So nevermind. I was going to say I was, well, we’ll start. So, the UMX Viper was one that I took that I wanted to maiden. Vipers fly great. This one also flies amazing. Only problem, landing. Yeah. probably not a problem if you have a nice manicured field, but,.

[00:18:08] Ours is in the, early in the year. Got a lot of holes in it. A lot of holes, a lot of patchy grass. And not even, like the grass is cut nicely, but. You just hadn’t filled in yet from. 25% of it is six inch, eight inch, one foot square patches of just nothing. Right. So, unfortunately, with that being in the center of the runway, excuse me, when I was landing the, the first time with that after the maiden, came in nice and just normal landing, hit the grass.

[00:18:40] Like we always do. Apparently the, one of the wings went into one of those little holes and twisted. Spun it. And when it spun it, it took off the nose cone, which is not removable. Just the last half inch, three quarters. Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, well, it’s a small plane, so that much of it is actually a decent amount. so I put it away and I was thinking, okay, I still have another fully charged battery for it.

[00:19:10] I’ll probably fly it later without a nose on it. And no real damage. It came off clean. Right. Yeah, it was a, you could tell it just smacked something to the side and just knocked it right off. Would have been nice, by the way, if they would have made that magnetic like they do on the other ones. Or a hard plastic, at least.

[00:19:24] Yeah.

[00:19:25] What I found interesting, though, is the strikes or whatever you call them that are on the very bottom of it. Yeah. Those are magnetic. Yeah, somebody was thinking. And so those come off and they just magnetize right back on. And I thought I broke that, too, but when I realized that it came off easily, it’s like, that’s a good design. Wish they would have done that with the nose. but anyway, so it has lights. It has all that kind of stuff. It’s a, it’s a cool airplane.

[00:19:50] Like I said, I put that away and was thinking about flying it later without the nose. And then you’ll have to tell this story because I don’t remember exactly what happened. But I saw you out with your battery operated, heat gun or not heat gun, your battery operated, glue gun, glue gun, hot glue gun. And so I was like, oh, leave that plugged in. So I went and got that and you come to the field prepared for anything.

[00:20:17] And you were able to just give me a couple small dabs of glue and put that back on and flew it again. And I mean, it flew fine. if you’re not looking for it, you can’t see what happened, but unfortunately it’s mine and I know. Yeah, it is what it is.

[00:20:29] It already got that dent in it. Now you don’t have to worry about it. True.

[00:20:33] That’s a good way to tell it apart from others when other people have it. What I like about this airplane, though, that I thought was kind of cool. It’s not a one piece airplane. So when you put it away, you have to take the wing off. It sounds a lot harder than it is because they have it set now to where it’s a 90 degree lock on the bolt that goes on. So you’re not screwing it in. You don’t need tools or anything like that.

[00:20:58] And then all of the electrical connections are push pin connections that when you push them on, they make connection, obviously. And when you take them off, you’re not unplugging anything. You’re not doing anything.

[00:21:08] It’s connectulous.

[00:21:09] No tools. Right. It is so easy. It’s not like the 70 millimeter to where when we put that one together, you are not taking it apart because there is no room inside of that.

[00:21:21] My 80 millimeter F-86. I hate taking that thing apart because the cables are too short and then trying to get them to the spot where they’re not going to get ate by the fan, even though they’re really short. It’s just a total pain in the butt to take apart. So I rarely take the wings off the 80 millimeter F-86.

[00:21:37] Yeah, I get it. that’s why the 70 millimeter Viper is a one piece airplane that doesn’t get taken apart. but anyway, so yeah, it’s, it’s a very well-designed, inexpensive little airplane. It flies good. It flies great. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s two batteries that are for that airplane only.

[00:21:58] Yeah.

[00:21:59] So maybe they’ll come out with some other airplanes that there’ll be more that use that 4S, whatever that is. I don’t remember 300 or 400, something like that. I was going to say it’s around four, something in it.

[00:22:08] Yeah, but. Didn’t you decide you could use that on your little profile? No. No.

[00:22:14] No, that’s the, 850s. 3S. Those are 850s. Okay. But, and 3S, not 4S.

[00:22:22] That would be fun on four. Probably wouldn’t last very long on four.

[00:22:26] Okay. So that was my first one. Let’s, let’s go back and forth, shall we? Sure. What did you have?

[00:22:32] I tried to do a test flight on my rebuilt Hobby King F-16. everything looked good. Everything was checking out. I got a nice toss off of it and I just couldn’t get it to climb. so it looked like it, when we got it back, it looked like I had a little bit of down trim in it. It’s hard to say. It’s a symmetrical tail and it’s hard to see. I don’t know. So I’m guessing it had some down in it.

[00:23:00] It looks straight to me, but it just, I couldn’t get enough climb out of it. ended up just bellying it in and, pop some paint off the nose. So I did a little touch up on that. but I also lost an elevator. One of the elevator servos, I quit working. it turned to come to find out it was actually the servo has a junction block in the middle of the fuselage and it had just gotten loose in that junction block and it had become intermittent.

[00:23:27] So seemingly then, cause you said you did your pre-flights. Yeah. Everything was fine. I’m guessing it was probably that very first quick jolt. Cause I had not actually thrown it hard or it had not been moved hard since I rebuilt it. So it was just so loose in there or whatever that that’s what made it come undone.

[00:23:46] Cause when I, I wasn’t by you when, when that happened, but I was working on something and I heard the commotion looked over and saw the plane, like going into the ground. I’m like, Oh, I’m so glad I’m not the one that threw that, but it was a good toss. Well, I mean, I didn’t see the actual toss. I just saw the aftermath of it. But then when I walked down to you and was, was asking you what happened and stuff. And you told me that you had no elevator control.

[00:24:11] My first thought was, Oh my God, Dave didn’t do a pre-flight. Oh yeah. They were working before, but then you told me that.

[00:24:19] And I was like, okay, that, that sounds more like Dave. Well, they’re fixed now. all the, that junction block is now hot glued together though. They are not coming apart.

[00:24:27] Well, I mean, that’s a one piece airplane. Again, you’re not going to be taking it apart.

[00:24:30] So no, yeah, I had to access it. I had to pull the cheater hole screening off the bottom of the airplane to access it.

[00:24:37] So it was way up in there. Yeah. Well, at least it’ll be ready for, another maiden soon.

[00:24:45] Yep. I’ll get it made in as soon as we get a weather, break. And, once I get it up and flying good, I will do a better patch job on the paint job. Right now I’ve just brush painted some matching paint in the, so you’re not seeing white foam. but yeah, I’ll get it sanded smooth and repainted with the airbrush.

[00:25:03] Yeah. It’s, it’s good to try and fly it. See if you can, or even like how it flies before you spend a lot more time and effort in it. So that was the F-16 escapades. So that was my, my first thing I was going to say was I had four successful airplane, maidens and flights and stuff. But then I, I realized that I didn’t. So I was going to try and pull one of those. I had four good ones.

[00:25:32] What did you have? I had a 50%.

[00:25:36] 50?

[00:25:37] Yeah. The yak was the next issue.

[00:25:40] Oh, well, let’s go back to me then just really quick. And then we’ll talk about your yak. So you and I went at the beginning part of this year to Eli for, our friends that came up from, South America. Right. And the, well, the plane I took down to fly, was one I had just bought then the e-flight Sportix. And it was cold, cold, windy, and the plane did not fly how I thought the plane should fly.

[00:26:13] Not as advertised.

[00:26:14] Right. Felt very tail heavy. Just didn’t look.

[00:26:17] It just acted weird.

[00:26:18] Yeah. not uncontrollable, but just not right. Yeah. I mean, there were no crashes, nothing like that, but it was not an enjoyable airplane to fly. Like, if, for an airplane that was designed not to be a scale of something, for an airplane that was designed solely on flight capabilities, I was disappointed. But I thought I need to give it some time to, figure out what’s going on, because I saw all these videos online of the plane flying Wonderfly.

[00:26:47] And I was like, there’s something obviously wrong. Well, it was a very simple thing that I figured out. I don’t remember if I was running a 3S or a 4S battery at that time, but I knew I was running a 2200 size. It was a smaller cell. like I said, felt tail heavy when I was flying and stuff. So this time I thought, well, I’m going to try, I have a 4S 3200. I’m going to try that. So I shoved that up in the nose and stuff. And, oh, what a difference.

[00:27:13] I mean, that plane really flies well. hands off, straight and level flight. Still can do some acrobatics, still has, good size throws, good, good authority. and it’s fun to fly. Lands great, takes off quick. it’s one.

[00:27:33] Look good.

[00:27:33] Yeah. And I really like the lights on it. I like lights for some reason. There’s, there’s just something about them. This has one of the lights in the tail, kind of like the, decathlon did. I really like those. Cool. So adding a little mass and moving the center of gravity forward made all the difference in the world. Cool. Nice flyer. Yeah. So I’ll, I’m excited to get out and spend some more time with that once we get better weather.

[00:28:02] And then I moved on to my, dancing wing Yak 55, which I test flew back in January and thought I was having troubles with it because the servos were being sluggish because it was because of the cold and they’re cheap servos is whatever the bundled package came with. they’re not, they don’t even have a label on them. They’re just black plastic servos. overall the plane flew decently, but I couldn’t get it trimmed. the ailerons especially were really, really bad.

[00:28:34] I thought, okay, it’s warmer. It should be fine. And I took it out and no, the ailerons especially are really, really bad. I could not get it trimmed. I would get it trimmed. It would roll off to the right. So I’d roll it back to the left and get it trimmed back to the left. And all of a sudden then it’s moving to the left. So I’d trim it back to the right. And it was just a constant trim vest back and forth, back and forth. Elevator and rudder seem to be okay.

[00:28:57] Although I was fighting the ailerons so much, I really don’t know. and they’re aggressive, large ailerons, 3D setup. So it, it was quite the handful. and I almost lost it a couple of times cause it got way out while I was trying to fight it. And then it was just a completely unenjoyable flight. It was like, I finally got it back, landed it and threw it in the back of the truck. It was like, okay, it’s going home. I got it back. That’s all I could ask. Right.

[00:29:29] I’m not ready to give up on it yet. I got home and I’m thinking, okay, these servos just probably are not strong enough for these large surfaces. and I don’t think they’re centering right. Cause it just, they don’t, it doesn’t feel right. Even if they were weak, it should be fine at the low speeds. It’s this little flat foamy flies at, they, they shouldn’t be overpowering the servos, but they’re just not centering right. Apparently.

[00:29:56] So I just said, did a quick Google searches like what’s recommended for flat 3d foamy servos. and, the Google AI generator came up with several different options for me. one of which was stupid expensive, but they said it was the best. And it was MKS DS 95. And I thought, okay, they say they’re pricey. Let’s see how pricey they are. And I looked them up and they were 90 and $95 a piece.

[00:30:22] That is pricey for a foamy.

[00:30:23] Considering I bought the entire package for 90 bucks.

[00:30:27] Yeah.

[00:30:27] So it’s like, yeah, that’s not happening. But then I got digging around and I just happened to see an eBay listing for MKS DS 95 servos for $20 a piece. It’s like in their aluminum metal gear, coreless, pretty decent servos. And I’m thinking, okay, this is just too good to be true, but what? I’m going to give it a shot. So I ended up spending $80 on eBay buying these. I hope they work servos and, by golly, I got them and they are absolutely wonderful.

[00:31:05] They’re fast. they seem to center. They center. they’re 40 ounce servos. So, I mean, that’s like I had a standard servo in this little flat foamy. That’s plenty of, plenty of oomph.

[00:31:17] Yeah.

[00:31:17] Like I said, I haven’t been able to fly it yet because it’s been blown like crazy. But I’m hoping this fixes the issues with the yak. If not, yak will be going away.

[00:31:29] Yeah. That’s a very heavy airplane though for the size of it and what it is. Yeah.

[00:31:34] It’s, it’s a, it’s a heavier, pretty flat foamy.

[00:31:38] Like it’s, I don’t even know if I call that a flat foamy or not. Cause I, that’s a profile plane, but it does have an airfoil. It’s airfoil. Yeah. The wing. The wing is, the tail’s flat. Everything else is flat. Been thick, but. Thick and heavy duty.

[00:31:54] Yeah.

[00:31:54] Looks like it’ll take a good bounce. It looks like it would. but heavy. Yeah. I mean, it’s heavy. I’d be curious to know what the difference is. Cause that’s pretty close to the same size. it’s a little bigger than your yak. That’s what I mean. A little, it was close to the same size, but I would be curious to know what the, the weight difference is because. About a ton and a half. It feels, it feels very heavy..

[00:32:20] So I’m thinking it’s going to fly better in a heavier winds. Yeah, I guess, but. We’ll see. I don’t know. It’s so far hasn’t flown all that great, but I’m going to blame it on the servers right now. So I don’t know if these servos, if I got conned into buying clones or.

[00:32:38] I’m going to be honest. If they’re clones and knockoffs, if they’re working for what that is. Yeah. That’s the biggest thing. Like I’m, I’m. I just don’t like supporting that type of activity, but. Well, okay. Understood. I get that. and they came with no packaging. So they’re bulk. And maybe that’s what it was too. Then there is bulk. Who knows?

[00:32:58] Anyway, it is what it is. If so, if I supported the nefarious activities of others, I’m sorry, but I came out on top on this one. So.

[00:33:07] Yeah.

[00:33:08] I really liked them. In fact, I’m so impressed I really want to order another set of them, just to have another set for this type of airplane.

[00:33:15] Yeah. That’s. So getting into the next one I flew then. So, I flew the, the RA Corps Yak 55. It was the maiden flight. and so that was one you had put together for me. Right. We did all the CG stuff and all that, and it was perfect. Wasn’t sure what battery to use. I talked to Tommy. He has, same airplane, different color. he said he flies his with a 3S 1300, which I have one of those. And that’s the batteries in my Yak.

[00:33:48] Okay, so I have one of those, but then I also have, from when I had the, the Erratix, four of the 3S850 size batteries. and so I thought, let’s see if we can get to balance with that because I have more of them and lighter batteries for those are normally better because of a lighter airplane.

[00:34:11] And the unlike the two tons of fun that yours is. I still can’t believe heavy that is, but anyway. So ended up flying it with that battery and the throws, just it flew fine, but not really like a 3D airplane that I was expecting.

[00:34:30] And those were pure speculation when I set that up because I could not find any information as to what throws to put in it.

[00:34:36] No, understood. And so with that I landed. I think you flew it once, and then, before I was going to go up again, you came over and you were just going to make the, the throws.

[00:34:50] Yeah. I was going to max them out, max out as far as we could. And it flew fine on those throws. It just wasn’t spectacular.

[00:34:56] Right. It, not a 3D airplane.

[00:34:59] No, it was just a good flying sport airplane with the throws that I guessed at.

[00:35:03] And so then we went to the, up the throws by changing the geometry and stuff and where it all mounted, obviously. And I didn’t really check. I don’t think the throws before we, flew it again. but so I, I flew it, took off and stuff and same thing, just not, not very responsive roll rate, all that stuff. So came in, landed, come to find out the, the servos that came with it are not strong enough to move it past, what do you think?

[00:35:37] 20 Degrees or so on the, on the aileron.

[00:35:40] They looked good kind of on the ground, but, air load on them. They just weren’t pushing.

[00:35:44] Yeah. And so you could manually turn it and get the, the full deflection, but it was a lot of force that it took and those little servos didn’t have it. so I think having you have done the exact same thing, I’m going to do some servo research too, and probably order four new servos for this one. Not sure what I’ll get yet. actually I need to look. I might even have some mini ones like spectrum ones sitting over there and then just kind of see what I can get out of it.

[00:36:17] Yeah. And that should make all the difference in the world because it’s not a really a 3d airplane at this point. No.

[00:36:24] I mean, it’s aerobatic. It flies good. Yeah. But it should have more.

[00:36:32] Yeah. Like, especially after you see some of these other airplanes in that style with 45 degree flaps or not flaps, 45 degree ailerons and all that kind of stuff. There’s no way this one can hit that with those servos. If you turn a servo by hand, you’re getting 45. No problem. You’re getting a no issue, but with servos that are on there, it’s not. Yeah.

[00:36:51] So I highly recommend these little MKS guys.

[00:36:53] Yeah.

[00:36:54] Well, they’re fakes though. So I don’t know if I want to support that. I don’t know if I wanted to either, but they worked in my favor this time.

[00:36:59] Yeah. We’ll see. Like I said, I’ll, I’ll do some more trying to do some figuring stuff and see what I can come up with. And they’re shiny.

[00:37:07] Well, that’s the important thing. Polished aluminum case.

[00:37:10] So, yeah, that was the, that was my yak story.

[00:37:14] So we’ll give it a, flies good, just needs to fly better.

[00:37:18] Yeah. And we’ll get there. That’s kind of cool. that’ll be a fun one for around here.

[00:37:24] Honestly.

[00:37:24] Knife dead. It’s really nice. Mm-hmm. It just doesn’t, like even the elevators doesn’t have as much throw as it should. Yeah. And it feels sluggish.

[00:37:31] It doesn’t feel like it’s snappy.

[00:37:33] Yeah. And I honestly think that’s all because of the, the speed and the throw on the servos. Yeah.

[00:37:38] I think a good servo upgrade will go a long way to making that, way more enjoyable.

[00:37:43] Mm-hmm.

[00:37:44] I had fun getting the servos out, by the way. I wanted to make sure they weren’t going to come loose.

[00:37:47] Well, at least it’s in foam that cuts.

[00:37:52] I was able to push them right out of my yak. I use hot glue on mine and just put alcohol on them. What’d you use on mine, by the way? foam tack. Okay. So, yeah, the alcohol doesn’t work on that. So you’re going to have to cut those out. That’s fine. but that’s the nice thing about the hot glue is, I use, the other alcohol, not isopropyl, the drinking kind, the non-drinking kind. Oh, okay. So stuff that’ll make you blind if you drink it. denatured.

[00:38:21] Denatured alcohol. Oh. I use that, but the isopropyl works too. You can just dribble a little bit around it, wait a few seconds and stuff pops right loose. I really kind of like using it now. so much so you didn’t use it on mine. Yeah. I followed the directions on yours. Oh, no, that’s fine. yeah, cool. let’s see here. So I then got to fly the, e-flight, 25 size cub that I got from you at Joe and all, not Joe and all. Oh my gosh.

[00:38:55] See, you got it on the brain too.

[00:38:56] You want to be there. Not this year, next year, next year, I’m open to next year.

[00:39:02] Anyway, I got $5 a gallon next year.

[00:39:04] Yeah. That’s the key. If the gas is five bucks a gallon, I ain’t going. anyway, I got it at Toledo from you last year, at a very favorable rate. Thank you.

[00:39:18] Well, let me just say that that airplane, so the, the quick history on that one is I bought it at Toledo the year before, oddly enough, cause it was on floats and I wanted something for the pond at Joe and all. You wanted something quick and ready to go. Right. it flew okay. It was not, it did not have enough power for fun flight. Right. but it was very scale like flying, GWS servos, which took an hour and a half to go 60 degrees.

[00:39:51] Very slow on the servo rate too. but for what it was on, on the, the float line at Jonah, it was a fun, relaxing flyer. It did its job.

[00:40:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:40:01] But then I realized I’m done with it.

[00:40:03] Yeah.

[00:40:04] Because for the next year I ended up getting another one, much higher performance, much better. Yeah. But anyway, I digress.

[00:40:13] The covering on it was in poor condition. It had started delaminating and I get yellow flakes all over my workshop because the yellow just came off the clear backing and it’s everywhere.

[00:40:24] Yeah.

[00:40:25] I had a couple of holes in it. one of the, the top linger-ons was cracked on it. I don’t know if that happened. before you got it, I don’t know. I mean, it’s just cosmetic. It wasn’t affecting anything. I did find some disturbing stuff in this tail once I uncovered it. The, tail was marginally held in place. I think the covering was doing most of the work. Yeah. which you didn’t know and you couldn’t have known.

[00:40:50] Yeah.

[00:40:51] Anyway, got it covered, redid it, in a Marine Corps scheme. totally fictitious, but it looks good. It’s in blue and white. Go figure. Yeah. Go figure.

[00:41:02] Yeah, I thought I momentarily considered gray, but I’m sure you did.

[00:41:09] It’s dark blue. It’s not sky blue. Does that help?

[00:41:13] Yes. Okay. There you go.

[00:41:15] Anyway, I think it looks pretty good. It looks very good. It’s got the red and white tail on it. Striped tail, pre-war looking stuff. It’s a, it’s a good looking little airplane now. And I took that out. I also changed the servos out. I put four brand new servos in that, which like quadrupled the price of what I paid for the airplane. cause you didn’t use the knockoffs on the airplane. I bought real high techs for this.

[00:41:38] And I ended up changing out the speed control so I could use a 4S battery pack in it. I used a 4S, 1800, which balanced it right on the money. I’m sure that livens it up a lot. Yeah, the performance is actually very, very good. I spent most of the time at quarter, between quarter and half throttle. so it’s nice to have the reserve, especially when the floats go on it, it’s going to need the extra power to overcome that drag, but it flies really, really nice.

[00:42:07] It took a little while to get it trimmed out. It, I don’t know, I was bouncing back and forth between rudder and aileron trims just to get it to behave itself, but, seemed to get that figured out. I had too much elevator throw in it, even though it was comfortable to fly. If you go to loop it, it would snap out. So, yeah, I just kept, reducing elevator throw until it quit snapping. and it’s still plenty of elevator throw.

[00:42:32] I could use more, but I don’t want to pull a hard corner and have it snap out on me. Yeah.

[00:42:38] You don’t have an oopsie.

[00:42:39] Yeah. So we got that flies. Great. Ended up losing one of the hub caps. Yeah.

[00:42:46] That was lucky though, that we found it.

[00:42:48] Yeah. Yep. I was doing a bunch of one wheel touch and goes with it and just doing general cub stuff, having a blast with it. Good flyer. never saw the hubcap come off, but once I taxied back up, I saw one of the hubcaps was missing. So went out, looked for it. It was, bright white. I figured it’d be pretty easy to find.

[00:43:09] Yeah.

[00:43:09] Well, I forgot. I didn’t paint the backside. It was yellow. So still not too hard to find, but. At least it wasn’t green. Yeah. Which it could have been. that was an alternate scheme. Oh, wandered around for what? 10 minutes. I don’t even think it was that long to be honest. Yeah. We were able to find.

[00:43:28] Well, because you, you made the comment of, I’m sure it came off when I was on the runway.

[00:43:35] It had to.

[00:43:36] Because that’s what’s getting jolted. That’s when you’re having. Side loads put on the wheel. Right. Especially since I was doing the one wheel thing. And especially with the runway, the way it is. and so. I don’t, I think Crystal came out to help look. I was going up and down the runway and so were you. Reggie was out in the field. For some reason. Like he just decided to go out and like way out in the field. He was like a couple hundred yards out.

[00:44:02] And it’s just like, what? I even asked you, I was like, what is Reggie doing?

[00:44:05] You’re like, I have no idea. I don’t know. You’re never going to find it out there first off.. And then I’m pretty sure it’s within a hundred feet of me.

[00:44:13] And it was. I mean, you were pretty much like, okay, from what I was doing, it should be like in this area.

[00:44:18] And you pretty much walked right to it.

[00:44:20] Yeah.

[00:44:21] . I was looking for white. It just happened to be yellow side up because I forgot I didn’t paint the backside of it.

[00:44:25] Yeah.

[00:44:26] But other than looking for the wrong color. It stood out like a sore thumb.

[00:44:31] Yeah. So,. Yeah. I mean, no harm, no foul. And it was funny though, because when you, when you got to the field, you got the wing out and you’re like, do you recognize this? I’m like, no, it looks huge. Like for some reason that wing, when it was off, looked terribly big compared to what I remember. Looked 40 size, didn’t it? Yeah, it really did. but then as you got the, the wing put on the airplane, then the size kind of looked right.

[00:45:00] And yeah, then I could tell it was the, the older one that I had. and I’m, I’m going to be honest. I’m very glad you ended up getting it because I like seeing that airplane still fly. And I’m glad that it’s been well taken care of at this point. And a lot of time went into it that I would not have done.

[00:45:18] Yeah. It was a complete rebuild. Yeah. And, I, I am glad I completely stripped it instead of trying to fly it with the tail situation. Cause throwing it around the way it’s going to get thrown around, I would have snapped the tail off of it. Yeah. Without knowing. I mean. Yeah. With the 4S set up, it’s going to pull a lot harder. Right.

[00:45:36] And then I think too about that. I really am impressed. And I don’t like the fact that my bigger cub doesn’t have the, fiberglass floats. Like the small floats that you have with fiberglass.

[00:45:52] Yeah. They’re fiberglass.

[00:45:53] I love those. Those floats were awesome.

[00:45:55] They seem overkill for this airplane.

[00:45:56] I just like, it really needs foam floats, but here we are. So that’s the same size floats.

[00:46:02] If you get the old version of the E-Flight stick, those floats go on there. Not the new version.

[00:46:09] Cause the mounts are different. And that’s why I was originally wanting to keep it. but I have no use for anything that size cause I don’t have the old stick. But having said that, those are very nice floats that I like.

[00:46:21] Yeah. I’m glad that it’s going to look good. I haven’t mounted on the floats yet, but.

[00:46:25] Next year, Joe and I, you will.

[00:46:26] Yeah, I needed. I need to figure out the rudder cable situation. I can’t I can’t figure out exactly how that’s supposed to go, but I get it mounted up to it, I’ll figure it out.

[00:46:35] I think there was something. There was just a cable, right?

[00:46:38] It’s just a Bowden cable with a steel liner in it.

[00:46:42] And I think that just went to the, was it the control horn?

[00:46:47] The cable needs to be secured to something. Otherwise it’s just going to flex the cable.

[00:46:51] So it, it, if I remember right, it, it was tied onto the floats themselves. Like it just came like a big U and worked itself around. It was tied on either side of the, right.

[00:47:02] But the top of the flex cable needs to be attached to something. Otherwise when the rudder moves it, it’s just going to move back and forth instead of pushing against the rudder on the airplane. So I, it’s got to mount to a bracket or something. I’ll figure it out. It’s not rocket science.

[00:47:17] No, but I guess I don’t remember how it was then because it would have been that way when you took it off.

[00:47:23] Right. And I wasn’t interested in the floats at the time when I took off because I didn’t have the floats. I told you to just keep them.

[00:47:29] Yeah.

[00:47:30] Cause I didn’t want them.

[00:47:31] Yeah.

[00:47:32] So I just ripped all that stuff off and didn’t take any pictures. So, well, you’ll figure it out. It’s not that difficult.

[00:47:39] But that’s a very nice looking airplane now. I’m jealous. I like it. Went back. No, I mean, not really. Okay. I mean, if you’re ever getting rid of it, maybe, but not like, I have too many at this

[00:47:50] Point. Seriously. It almost went to Toledo this year.

[00:47:54] You hadn’t even flown it. I know.

[00:47:56] I, that’s how I got rid of my Emmy one. I hadn’t really. But you flew that one though. I flew it once. and it was just in the way when I was packing stuff up and then it got tossed in the trailer.

[00:48:07] Yeah. Yeah. Reggie said, by the way, for Toledo next year, he’s loading up and getting her to punch stuff.

[00:48:15] Okay.

[00:48:15] I don’t believe it. Well. But we’ll see.

[00:48:18] We’ll see what happens.

[00:48:18] Now that he’s been one year. Now he knows the lay of the land. He might. He might. We’ll see.

[00:48:25] I’m really surprised that he didn’t bring it home with him.

[00:48:27] I, nah, we got to do that better for next year. We’ll, we’ll get him.

[00:48:31] We’ll lean on him.

[00:48:32] Yeah. We’ll have Tommy back. He can convince him. Tommy’s really good at leaning on Reggie. Yeah. that’s a lot of the fun. before I get to the last airplane I flew that day too. So I ended up bringing the trailer with me, because I needed some way to charge batteries at the field and I wanted to kind of test the setup. I said, I got that new spectrum charger and stuff. That’s 12 volt and all that stuff. Worked great.

[00:48:57] Like I was very happy with how well it was able to charge there. Didn’t have to worry about running a generator. Didn’t have to worry about any of that stuff since, we don’t have any power available at the field. it’s nice to be able to bring your own with you, but crystal and Piper ended up coming with me. actually they did it separately, but that doesn’t matter. So they decided to come and, blow up an air mattress in the trailer.

[00:49:27] So as we’re flying and doing all that stuff, they were sitting in bed and reading books and eating and playing on her phone. Movie and a show. I know, but I was glad they came out. I, they had fun. It was nice.

[00:49:42] I was curious about that. I heard you run on the generator. Okay. So I was just wondering why the inverter wouldn’t cover the, the blow up thing.

[00:49:49] There was no inverter. Oh, you don’t have the inverter yet. I do now. So since then, the inverter I had was one that I had had sitting around here for probably 15 years, had never used it before, put it in, and it wasn’t one of those pure sign inverter things. so actually when we went down to Booter Park last year, Daniel had a fan.

[00:50:12] Right.

[00:50:13] And since then I bought a fan because that was a great idea. He was able to run it off his generator. That saved us. And so with that, when we went to the fly-in, the vintage fly-in, I tried to use the fan on the inverter and it just, I had just bought the fan, hadn’t ran it yet. It sounded really bad. Like it just sounded, it wasn’t happy. Right. I can’t quite put my finger on what it sounded like. It’s working, but it’s not right.

[00:50:37] It almost sounded like a bearing was going out or something weird like that. And so, ended up coming home and plugging it in normally because I wanted to actually look at it and I wasn’t just going to plug it into the trailer because that was separate and stuff. So I plugged it in normally and it’s like, it sounds just fine. So that got me thinking more, okay, let’s go back to the inverter. And sure enough, it was whatever power that was putting out.

[00:51:04] So when we went to the field, I wasn’t really planning on going to the field that day. Like I didn’t have everything set up for it. Like I had already ripped the other inverter out, and hadn’t ordered the new one yet. But because of that, I had to run the generator just to blow that up. So I have replaced the inverter. I bought a, 2000 watt, what is it? Renogy or Renology or something.

[00:51:32] One of the, the, the one they use for the solar panels or whatever. Yeah.

[00:51:37] So this is a, obviously 120 volt, power inverter. and then it has the automatic transfer switch too. So when I plug into shore power, then it automatically flips over and I’m powered off of that. When I unplug, it automatically flips over and I’m powered off of the inverter. so now if I go out and have to pull or plug that in and blow up the mattress again, I’ll be able to do it without the generator. Okay.

[00:51:59] I wonder what it was that the generator is like, man, I was not that big of a load for your inverter. Well, it was when you don’t have one. Yeah. that makes it, that makes a difference.

[00:52:09] That was sitting in a box out here or out here in the shop and it still is. So, yeah, the weekend’s coming. That’s the, that was the reason for that. but anyway, so the, the last airplane I flew and this was by far the surprise of the day. I will say this is probably going to become one of my favorite planes very quickly. So the 49 inch OMP bighorn, it’s a beautiful airplane.

[00:52:38] It’s wood and the throws on that, the 3d capabilities for a high wing airplane are insane.

[00:52:51] This is one that, yeah, Daniel gave me a call about, he was setting his up and just goes, are these throws right? Cause they’re massive.

[00:53:01] So, okay. So I set mine up the way you’re supposed to with, high rates, medium rates, low rates. and I’m going to be honest with the, with the amount of expo that they say to put in it, you don’t have to worry about low rates, like fly it on high rates. You have full control. You have the, the fine movement control and stuff that you get with the, with expo. I think he’s going to be very happy when he flies.

[00:53:26] I said, yeah, just follow the direction. Ron said it’s fine.

[00:53:29] It’s a amazingly great flyer. my only complaint is the landing gear is stiff and the tires are hard. So I’m going to have to replace the tires on it. just to get some smoother landings. Yeah. Yeah. They look very stiff.

[00:53:49] Yeah. There’s no other word for it. They’re stiff.

[00:53:51] But it’s, like I said, it was, it was, I, I actually expected to like the Sportix more than I did that one. I thought it would be more snappy. I thought it would have more authority and controls and all that stuff. Boy, was I wrong. I mean, the Sportix is a good flying airplane, but the, that big horn is excellent.

[00:54:12] Yeah. I really like that. Yeah. We’re hoping to get Daniel’s out soon. He, he broke it, putting it together. So he had to order some parts. What’d he do? He broke one of the control horns or some, some, some kinds of hardware that came with it.

[00:54:27] He, it was a ball joint. I guess they got ball joints in it. They do. not a huge fan of how those were, to be honest.

[00:54:33] And he ended up breaking one of those ball joints, assembling it. So he had to order replacement parts for it. So that’s what’s kept it from being flown in the last week or so.

[00:54:43] Well, that in the wind at this point. Yeah, in the wind now. Yeah. No, I, I’m, I’m excited for him to fly it because I think he’ll, he’ll get a kick out of it.

[00:54:53] Yeah. He’s going to be down for a little bit because he’s got the surgery again. And hopefully that’s only a week or two of, yeah, but he’s going to be in the cast again. And he flew in the cast before though. Yeah.

[00:55:02] It was a little clunky, but he bought, so he’s having hand surgery again. But he bought the, the thing.

[00:55:11] So he got that. Yeah.

[00:55:13] He should be fine.

[00:55:14] He’s prepared this time. Yeah. Like he knows he’s been through this already. So he knows what to expect. And he also knows how to fly still.

[00:55:22] So this will hopefully be out in about soon.

[00:55:26] Yeah. yeah. So that was our fun. Finally, first trip actually. Since January. Since January 1st to the field. Cause that, I haven’t been out there since.

[00:55:37] Third, sixth. It was a few days after January 1st.

[00:55:40] I’m talking about this field.

[00:55:42] Oh. Cause we were out there.

[00:55:43] We were, went out there for, New Year’s.

[00:55:46] Right.

[00:55:46] But that was the only time I’ve been out this year. Well, that’s like, yeah.

[00:55:49] No, that’s not true. I think I do. No, that is true. That’s my third session out. We went January 1st and then we went to,. Eli. Eli, with, one. I don’t know. and, then the strip.

[00:56:06] Yeah.

[00:56:07] We’ve not made it out very often. It’s not been. Good. We need to fix that. Yeah. Well. And I’m not scared of flying the wind, but it’s just been ridiculous.

[00:56:17] Yeah. Wind is okay. Tornadoes are not fun. No. So, yeah. Jose, by the way. Jose. That’s it. You didn’t get it.

[00:56:26] I had a J.

[00:56:28] Yeah. So that was, that was our last outing. Anything else you want to talk about? Are you good? Cause I think I’m done.

[00:56:36] I’m still working with beginner. He’s very confused about all the new radio technology. That’s old to us, but it’s all new to him. And I’ve just been contemplating how difficult it is now to somebody to get in. And if they didn’t have any help, they would, they, there’s a lot going on with these newer radios. Even a basic radio has got a lot of programming that, you’ve got to figure out how to do and how to link stuff up. And sometimes the instructions are not that great.

[00:57:03] So that’s really why we highly recommend getting somebody who’s experienced to help you out. He’s running across stuff that to us, we don’t even think about, and it’s a major stumbling block.

[00:57:15] Yeah.

[00:57:16] So I’ve been working with that and it’s give me, new, new eyes on the, on the sport.

[00:57:26] Yeah.

[00:57:26] And that’s, that’s a good thing. Yeah. Cause what he’s running across is like, what are you talking about? That’s an issue. It’s like, this is so simple.

[00:57:34] Yeah. We do take a lot of that for granted. Cause when I started, it was, it was a slow entrance. I mean, like the first airplane had everything with it. So you weren’t worried about piecing together your own materials and electronics and stuff.

[00:57:52] It was all paired up, ready for you to go. You just kind of plugged some stuff together and you were good to go.

[00:57:57] And it was three channels. So it wasn’t even.

[00:57:59] And he’s doing this hard way. He’s not doing, prebuilt electric stuff. He’s actually refurbishing 1980s and nineties wooden built up glow fueled aircraft.

[00:58:11] So.

[00:58:11] Yeah. we’re also dealing with some ancient technology that we’re having to get rid of. He’s got old square drive for top of servos in one of the airplanes with the old three pin setup and people don’t even know what that is probably. But back in the day, Fatala used to have three bare pins sticking out of your servo wire that you plugged into a socket on your receiver instead of the other way around. So what, why, why is he going that way? Is there a reason? I have no idea.

[00:58:39] He just, decided to go that way and that’s what he’s doing. And we’re going to, we’re going to get this done.

[00:58:44] Okay.

[00:58:44] He’s got some really nice engines now. He’s done some swap meet trading and so forth. And he’s got a couple of really nice OS glow engines that are basically new. One of them has barely been ran. The other one does have a little carbon in it, but it’s not bad at all. It’s got great compression. So has he flown before?

[00:59:01] Nope.. We’re getting plenty of simulator time. Okay. That’s good. Have you at all tried to push an actual foamy trainer on him?

[00:59:11] I highly recommended that we would try to find him, either one of the Aero Scouts or, slow ultra stick. Oh yeah. That would be a good one too. Yeah. And we tried to find a slow ultra stick. you can’t. And we, they’re just not out there.

[00:59:28] No.

[00:59:28] Either people are hoarding them or destroying them. I’m not sure which.

[00:59:33] But I can’t believe you’d really be destroying them. Yeah. I think they’re just so simple and such an easy, fun flyer that you don’t want to get rid of it. Yeah.

[00:59:42] I’ve, I think I’ve seen one at, swap meet.

[00:59:45] Yeah.

[00:59:46] I mean, in Toledo, we couldn’t find one and you can find anything there.

[00:59:50] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we saw a couple of the, what was it? The apprentices. And I think we saw a couple of the.

[00:59:56] You can find new ones.

[00:59:57] Oh, right. Yeah. But the, the used stuff, but Aero Scouts, there was a couple of them there too. But yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a used ultra stick, slow ultra stick, just sitting out on a table for sale.

[01:00:12] They are, they’re, they’re a unicorn. If you can find a used one in decent shape. Yeah. They just are fun.

[01:00:20] But anyway, no, good. So when do, when do you guys plan on having the first flights?

[01:00:25] I don’t know. I need to talk to him and see how far he’s gotten this week. I think he’s getting to the point where he’s needing to program a radio and then he’s going to need to drag it over and we can sit down. I can show him how to do it the first time and then unprogram it and tell him to do it himself.

[01:00:37] Yeah. Have you thought about going out with a, like a buddy box thing or something with him?

[01:00:42] And yeah, I was ready to actually take my slow ultra stick out. I don’t have a buddy box anymore because I’ve gone to FreeSky and I don’t have a FreeSky extra transmitter.

[01:00:53] I didn’t even think of that. Do you, well, you could use Daniel’s, right?

[01:00:58] Right. I could use Daniel’s, but just wasn’t available at the time that we were thinking about going out and he wasn’t able to come out. He was going to come out with us that day. That Saturday? Yeah. Oh, okay. So I was going to bring the ultra stick or slow stick out and try to get some flight time with him. But I was just going to do it the old fashioned way and stand next to him and yank the radio out of his hands when he did something stupid. Yeah.

[01:01:18] I mean, you can do that, but. I mean, much rather have a trainer. I might try to find one of the lower end FreeSky radios just to use as a trainer box. That way I’ve got one on hand.

[01:01:28] Can you use, does it have to be that or can you use, because I know you have the box on there for flying spectrum stuff. Does that work in reverse?

[01:01:35] It doesn’t work in reverse. You have to have a FreeSky transmitter to work with FreeSky transmitter. As far as I know, I haven’t delved deeply into the trainer side of it because I haven’t needed to. Yeah. But I’m pretty sure it has to be a FreeSky transmitter.

[01:01:51] Yeah. That’s, so I still have the old iX12 that I use as like a trainer one, but I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t ever think to charge that. So if I ever was at the field and needed to do something, it would be dead in my case and I would not have any use for it. I think we still have an old DXS.

[01:02:11] You got a couple of DXs sitting over there. I’m not sure.

[01:02:14] Well, but I mean like the, whatever one came with Piper’s.

[01:02:16] Oh, the AeroScout. That’s a DX5 probably.

[01:02:20] No, no, no. It’s, it’s, I want to say it’s an X or a DXS. I mean, because it’s a, it’s not a computer or radio or anything like that. But right, still has the switches on the bottom, if I remember right, for reversing and all that. Something like that though, I think would be perfect for, just throwing in my case to have, if the batteries are dead, it takes like four double A’s.

[01:02:43] Right.

[01:02:43] So, I’d always at least have something that’s charged or able to be replaced soon.

[01:02:49] So, I might be on the lookout for just a really cheap base model FreeSky radio. How much are those? I mean, like what? I don’t know. I haven’t really looked. I’m figuring 150, 200 bucks.

[01:03:03] Yeah. Might be worth doing then. That way at least have the, the option for when it comes up.

[01:03:07] Well, I don’t know if we run across another deal like we did with Daniel’s at SpotMate. Yeah. That was a steal.

[01:03:14] Keep your eyes open. We’ll have to start looking again. Anything else? We good? I think I’m good. Okay. Well then, do you want to end it? You started it. You finish it. Okay. Well, thank you everybody for listening. until next time I’m Ron. And I’m Dave. Good night. Good night.

[01:03:34] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle. Bye-bye.