Ep 107: Tony Lewis

[00:00:03] Hello everyone and welcome to the rc plane lab podcast i’m ron and i’m tom today we are sitting down and talking to tony lewis tony how you doing oh i’m doing all right tell us a little

[00:00:20] Bit about yourself i am i live up in wisconsin okay i’m about an hour away from oshkosh just

[00:00:27] North of milwaukee oh nice so how many times have you been to the oshkosh show my whole

[00:00:33] Life excellent so i i grew up just about 20 minutes south and across from the fondue lac airport so we had a front row seat every night that’s so awesome that would be awesome that’s

[00:00:47] Been a life a lifetime of aviation there so so what took you from growing up watching full-size airplanes at oshkosh to i want to fly rc airplanes well the rc actually came first

[00:01:04] I kind of grew up in the hobby my i have a brother that’s quite a few years older than me and my dad got into the rc hobby with him when i was about two years old so i was just always around it as they came up through and and grew into the hobby and then once i became old enough i had an opportunity to start flying as well so i i soloed at nine i built my first airplane

[00:01:38] That that winter and never looked back oh that’s awesome you’ve been at quite a while then because

[00:01:44] I started a lot later than that i didn’t have anybody around me when i was a kid doing it which is unfortunate but that’s awesome that you were you were surrounded by it ever since you

[00:01:55] Can remember that’s so cool yeah so just so i have a sense of like what what the market kind of looked like when you when you soloed at nine what year was that if you don’t mind me asking 92 92 okay yeah

[00:02:08] Okay so you okay you were born in 83 then he was in the he was in the gold label era yeah a couple years younger than me so you remember the gold stickers right yes i still have one that works i do too

[00:02:21] Yeah and what we’re talking about for anybody that’s listening that might be new to it like back in 91 yeah the the fcc mandated that we had to go narrow band on our frequencies so every transmitter had to have a little gold sticker on the back of it that said it was compliant with that new fcc regulation so yeah i remember those days got it so does tony yep yeah my like i said my dad

[00:02:44] My brother started flying around 84 85 so they would have been wideband then yep and yeah they they had to send the radios back in and get them updated and stickers and all that yeah yeah i still have a couple of the original radios from my from my dad and i still even have a matching receiver and and that’s i have one one functioning set yet that’s awesome so do you have an airplane you ever fly those

[00:03:14] In just for old time’s sake not yet is that something you’ve thought about doing then if you say not

[00:03:21] Yet yes yes i have i have a couple plans that way actually because so we grew up flying airtronics that was just what the club that we were part of had so i was able to find a airtronics sr that looked looks nearly brand new still in the box about a year ago so i picked that up and i was able to find a 2.4 module that you can wire into it and convert it to 2.4 oh that’s awesome so i i’m gonna

[00:03:58] Have one that is going to be 2.4 and then i still have the original one that’s on 72 megahertz and i’d like to do something with with each of them that’s period correct i just haven’t decided what that

[00:04:14] Is yet yeah well luckily there’s there’s lots of options i mean there were a lot of airplanes around back then so and good airplanes good airplanes i mean still nothing wrong with them right so yeah that’s awesome i wish i could say i still have my old my original radio but i’m sure somewhere along the line it got traded or sold or well see it’s so difficult because it

[00:04:38] Goes from okay this is what i want to use to okay now this is old and not worth anything to me for the longest time and then after a while it becomes okay this is cool because it’s so because it’s so so you have to keep it in that little band of this is garbage to me and not actually throw it away before you get to the this is old and cool yeah true i i can’t do that yeah i i move on too fast from things i don’t like yeah or don’t need i still have an airplane from that era as well

[00:05:08] A glider that my brother built actually but as much as i’d like to restore that and fly it and do plan to do so i don’t want to fly the old equipment in it because i don’t want to trust something that’s got that much sentimental value to right 30 year old equipment that’s too much risk yeah

[00:05:29] You don’t you don’t ever want to fly something you don’t want to lose because that’s the one that’s going to have a problem and you’re going to right yeah you can’t fall in love with an airplane if you’re ever going to fly it no that’s absolutely true yeah so you said you built your first airplane then after you were nine or ten years old what was that yep it was a top flight sierra trainer oh okay yeah that’s before my time i’m not familiar with what that is it’s essentially

[00:05:57] Top flight’s version of the great planes pt trainers oh okay yeah good flying airplane i remember those

[00:06:03] Yeah so did you get a lot of flights on that or what happened to that airplane

[00:06:06] Oh yeah flew it for three four years quite heavily before i moved down to other planes and then it sat on the shelf for a number of years until i dug it out and refurbished it and flew it a little bit more so eventually it did go somewhere in the ground i don’t know i don’t remember

[00:06:29] That’s the ending to most of these airplanes unfortunately yeah

[00:06:34] When you’re 12 13 14 years old and you have the ability to fly and lack the maturity a lot of planes can disappear and you don’t remember how

[00:06:48] Yeah they they do and they can so do tony there do you belong to a club

[00:06:56] Yes i do and how long have you been a member of that club well i moved to this area at the end of 2018 so i’ve been a member of that club for the last three years now okay awesome what’s what’s the name of it the sheboygan area rc sheboygan area radio control society for the sharks ah sharks okay

[00:07:22] -huh they had to get that in there yeah cool because there’s usually there’s usually always a cool acronym yeah unlike ours ours are just svf it’s not really a cool acronym

[00:07:34] Like shark sharks svrcf no what it’s the same valley rc flyers yeah yeah it’s boring we should rename it

[00:07:42] We should we should totally do that my former club is the faa because they were the fondue

[00:07:50] Like girl modelers really oh that’s funny that’s actually really good that’s better than yeah it’s better than ours also so that’s wonderful so the club that you’re a member of do they have a pretty good a pretty good membership like do they have an active membership or like numbers they do they

[00:08:10] Do we’ve i think we’re in the mid 30s for membership and i would say 70 to 80 percent active oh wow that’s very high yeah that’s yeah we don’t we don’t have i i think right before i came to the club they ended up having some membership that aged out so the membership is actually fairly young compared to

[00:08:42] A lot of the other clubs that i’ve been a part of yeah yeah that’s good to see and that certainly helps yeah yeah our club is we also have a rock crawling track and an off-road track and a dirt oval at our facility so we’ve got yeah that’s all new as of two years ago but that’s brought in some

[00:09:07] Some other guys as well yeah i can imagine that would bring in some new faces and stuff so how many like of the members actually are there just to fly then just fly yeah i would say

[00:09:22] Probably about 20 to 25 we only have i would say we’ve got five or six that do both

[00:09:31] We’ve only got maybe four that are car only okay does does your club own the field or do they lease it or is there some other arrangement for the field i believe we own it oh okay that’s good because it gives you a certain as a club it gives you a certain amount of freedom to to build rc tracks or

[00:09:52] Helicopter pads or whatever that’s cool if we i don’t know the details entirely but if we do not own it we have some sort of very long-term agreement because we have paved runways that are in and we

[00:10:07] Have permanent buildings up oh wow see that’s not that far away ron we’re gonna go up there

[00:10:13] And visit actually i don’t know what are you from springfield are you like four hours or so then

[00:10:19] Well if he’s north of milwaukee that sounds about right yeah so that’s yeah four four and a half

[00:10:23] And we always said we could be through chicago but in three hours remember that when we travel

[00:10:31] Oh we’re three hours from chicago here so huh okay yeah when i used to when i used to way back in the

[00:10:38] Day when i used to raise up at trackside in milwaukee it was it was right at four hours and 20 minutes or so that’s to trackside yeah so then that’s in that’s in milwaukee so yeah we’re both 45 minutes north north okay okay so five hours that’s a day drive yeah that’s a day drive day trip

[00:10:55] So you said you since you belong to a field and stuff and used to fly with your your family do you have a group of guys you fly with now or how does that work no we have a group that kind of

[00:11:08] Gathers and flies at the club but they do so during the day when i have to work yeah i don’t know that they’re retired and unfortunately i’m quite a ways away from that yeah me too so i i haven’t really fallen into a group here yet when i started flying we had a very very active club and there was

[00:11:41] Was bad we would still congregate at the field talk shop and go grab a burger yeah that’s nice it’s nice

[00:11:49] To have a group of guys like that yeah hopefully you’ll hopefully you’ll find a a group or even if it’s not a big group like our i would say our group is what five maybe yeah i would say five five to six of us well because usually if dave comes he brings daniel oh yeah so five or six sure but it took us a long time really to sort of develop that group and it just so happens we’re all kind of about the same age roughly well reggie’s a lot older than me but what i’m saying is none of us can afford to take a day off from work because we’re all

[00:12:23] Still working so it time wise it just works out to the we all have kind of similar schedules but yeah our club same thing we we have a group of guys that they go out during the mornings when it’s nice all the retired guys yeah and they’re all yeah and they’re all older retired guys and so yeah i think you could probably find that sort of thing at most clubs yeah but hopefully you can because it is it is i think it is fun to share it with other people like i don’t it depends what i’m doing well i don’t particularly care for going out to the field

[00:12:56] Completely by myself unless i’m doing something that i don’t want anybody to see like maidening an airplane or whatever but i i much prefer to go out there and and fly with other my friends and yeah because there’s there’s always the tomfoolery that goes along with that the ribbing each other and making fun of each other and whatever yeah so hopefully hopefully you’re able to find that that sort of dynamic there in your club

[00:13:22] Yeah i hope so in time maybe maybe we’ll get some other people starting to fly up there and and all that too you just you never know i mean that’s i think with the way things have been the last couple years like the amount of people that actually fly and do stuff like it fields has gone down i think there’s probably a lot more hobby work that goes on inside of of houses and stuff but actually going out and flying with a group of people i just think oh for sure yeah kind of like we’ve noticed

[00:13:53] Put the put the kibosh on a lot of that stuff doing stuff with other people and so yeah our membership i don’t think went down any but the the participation certainly did yeah i mean there’s

[00:14:05] A lot of times where we go out there and it’s just us and it used to be there’d always be maybe three or four other people out there depending on the time we go but it doesn’t seem to be that way anymore yeah which is okay in my opinion for that one actually yeah but we’ve had an interesting

[00:14:21] Dynamic in this area too and again this goes back to my hometown and and my one of my former clubs the fond lat club when they relocated back in right at either at the end of the 90s or early 2000s they built just this amazing facility and there’s a lot of guys especially guys definitely giant scale

[00:14:49] That decided i’d rather drive the extra half hour 40 minutes and go there than to go to my home field because the field there is just beautiful that club is well over a hundred members at this point and membership stretches throughout the whole area of the state i mean it’s it’s it’s an immaculate facility and they host a big event there every year too they they have a giant scale warbird and the

[00:15:23] Classics event there that’s very well attended oh that’s awesome yeah so are you are you members of more than or are you a member of more than one club not currently but in the past i was yeah yeah so that’s that’s kind of a kind of a neat thing like if you have enough clubs locally that you can you can join more than one i mean it gets to be it can be kind of expensive but it’s nice because you’re not seeing the same folks maybe every time or maybe one club has an advantage

[00:15:55] Over another like maybe the run better runway yeah one club or better than the other but you like flying at your other club because it’s closer to home or whatever here we kind of just

[00:16:05] Have one one club one runway yeah we don’t get to choose on the yeah it’s not that it’s bad or

[00:16:12] Anything like that but sometimes it would be nice to have an option or another like i said another runway

[00:16:16] That goes perpendicular to the wind as opposed to yeah well i guess i said that wrong parallel to the wind as opposed to perpendicular that we deal with all the time i know what you were trying to say yeah

[00:16:26] That was a mouthful but you got it well my dad worked out of town so the company he worked for had a lot of active pilots and we became and this is where i learned to fly we became a member of the club local to them but then we also were members of the hometown club in fond du lac because going out on the weekend or wanting to run out for a quick flight we didn’t want to have to drive all the way down to the other club was in beaver dam only a 40 minute drive but

[00:17:03] You can drive five minutes and fly why would you want to drive for it yeah yeah it’s extra hour wasted

[00:17:10] Time right exactly that’s understandable so of all of your flights in your past all you all the years you’ve flown any any good crash stories it’s a loaded question i know everybody’s like i don’t want to

[00:17:27] Admit to any of them to relive them but boy do we love to hear about them i was gonna say there’s

[00:17:34] There’s been some good ones more than i can remember even but the one that i’m

[00:17:42] The one that seems to come up quite a bit with people that i used to fly with is i managed to fly into a barn into a barn okay i hit a barn okay so the whole story of this is it was the maiden flight of a quarter scale space walker oh a big airplane we had been fighting this is back in the fm days we had been fighting an interference issue every time we’d start the engine we would have all this interference through the airplane couldn’t figure out why gas or nitro nitro okay nitro two

[00:18:19] Cycle no onboard glow no nothings i mean we just we couldn’t figure it out and i honestly don’t even remember what we found was the solution but in doing so we were swapping servos we were stopping swapping receivers we were swapping batteries and disconnecting and reconnecting everything a dozen times finally got it working took off leveled off started trimming

[00:18:52] And i went to pull the throttle back and the throttle stuck it wide open oh no okay like well this is a problem so i yelled back to my dad who was videotaping at the time which yes i do have this all on videotape ton of vhs somewhere i said hey i i throttle stuck wide open he’s like we’ll climb up to altitude we’ll have to run it out of fuel so i pulled back on the elevator air planked up flying straight and level oh dear so oh

[00:19:33] I’m like yeah i don’t have elevator either so for five minutes to this thing every time we’d turn it would start to descend we’d level the wings and it would come back up to altitude five minutes we fought this thing trying to figure out what to do with it and in one of the turns the engine saved so i quick leveled off the wings thinking it’s going to go down in a farm field and i don’t know it couldn’t have been more than 15 20 feet off the ground

[00:20:09] The engine picked back up and it flew back behind the pits and our pits were kind of up on a hill i managed to fly down the driveway between two barns and somebody yelled look out the barns or look out for the building so i turned and managed to turn directly into the side of the barn

[00:20:34] So you had what rudder and ailerons but no elevator or throttle correct oh boy that’s hard to fly that’s yeah well it’s definitely hard to maintain altitude absolutely

[00:20:46] It punched a 10 inch by 10 inch hole in the side of the there was a more like a pole building wow so it actually went through it actually went through oh dear the airframe laid outside the the barn all just destroyed completely destroyed mangled the engine battery pack firewall assembly went through the barn all the way across the building and rolled underneath their

[00:21:16] Brand new confine oh my gosh holy smokes that’s some force there was a crew of four guys working in the barn on the opposite side of the driveway i bet that was shocking so yeah had i turned the other way i would have hit the barn they were all in wow they got a good laugh out of it and we got to own a piece of sheet metal on a barn

[00:21:47] That should be hanging up somewhere no kidding yeah the piece that you replaced with the whole yeah that’s

[00:21:52] Got to be hanging up in somebody’s wall i actually think i have a picture of a shop somewhere there was a chunk of airplanes stuck in the the side of the the barn for a good couple weeks before the

[00:22:05] Wind finally blew it down that’s awesome i can honestly say i’ve never heard of anyone flying through through a wall that’s that’s a first that’s yeah usually they just stop and bounce off never underestimate the power of a super tiger 75 yeah right well and they’re they’re kind of heavy anyway super tiger 75 so yeah that’s a lot of inertia that’s awesome well i don’t know if i’d say it’s awesome i mean well it’s still a crash but from a long time ago so it’s okay it’s a pretty

[00:22:37] Awesome crash it’s okay to relive the memories as long as we’ve learned from them right is that how we i guess so what we try to say i guess so any other ones tony that that club we celebrated

[00:22:48] Crashes so there you go when it hit that building yeah i can imagine see if we did that reggie would

[00:22:56] Be king oh my gosh yeah reggie well but i mean reggie’s crashes are crashes but they’re really not spectacular they’re usually because he’s done something say it stupid he forgets to do something and and something and it’s usually foam right so it’s it’s it’s not really

[00:23:18] That’s true i guess if we’re going by numbers numbers yes for sure he wins yeah so any any other ones

[00:23:25] Tony you got any other stories off the top of my head something about maybe a telemaster i’m reading our

[00:23:36] Notes here ah yes that’s the fame telemaster car pickup telemaster telemaster car pickup okay i’ve got it i’ve got to hear this one okay so my friend and i had this bright idea that just like they do at an air show where they swing down and land on top of a car with like a cub or something yeah okay we could probably do something similar except hook the car and take it airborne

[00:24:10] Yeah because a telemaster could do that for sure no no problem at all certainly has the capacity

[00:24:18] So and that was why we chose columnist which for the record was my dad’s plane it makes it all that much better yeah this gets better yeah he had a senior telemaster with i think it had a sato 91 on it at that point and the car of choice because it was the only one we had to choose from was a one ace scale four-wheel drive nitro boogie oh geez

[00:24:48] Which is a big car yeah which is a heavy kind of heavy and a lot of power yeah so yeah we we fashioned about a two foot long metal hook that hung underneath the landing gear of the telemaster and we put a big hoop of wire on the rc car that we set out to do this once again this exists on a vhs somewhere in my collection but we managed to swing down and pick up the car we and get it airborne

[00:25:25] And immediately fly it out of range of the the car radio which meant the servos started going crazy including including the throttle kept revving and stopping -huh and those four large wheels spinning and stopping spinning and stopping oh yeah started a pendulum effect underneath the airplane i can picture this in my head it’s funny yeah it didn’t take long that a swinging a scale buggy underneath the senior telemaster started to affect the flight path

[00:26:06] And eventually managed to swing up and hook the tail oh i didn’t see that and drag the whole assembly into the soybean field tail first oh wow with the telemaster at full throttle trying to fly out

[00:26:23] Of trying to yeah get away from it oh man how bad was the damage the car was fine

[00:26:32] Of course actually it wasn’t too bad the telemaster comes to a pretty small cross section back by the tail mm-hmm it broke the fuselage at that point it broke the tail off and i it did some damage to the covering poked a couple holes in the wing cracked a couple pieces but for the most part the only major

[00:26:55] Damage was that it knocked the tail off oh that’s not bad at all then yeah really no well it went down tail

[00:27:01] First so that’s not so and then soybeans so it was a nice yeah something to land on airplanes don’t

[00:27:08] Normally crash tail first so that’s that’s good yeah yeah so let’s talk about some airplanes you have

[00:27:16] Quite a few in your hangar yeah what let’s move on to what’s your number so what’s your number

[00:27:23] My current number would be 31 31. very nice and he’s got pictures that he sent to us that i’ve been i’ve been drooling over certain certain airframes i love that tiger cat by the way i know it’s foam but it’s still beautiful so you want to read the you want to read the list tom oh sure yeah i can read the list you’re good at that let me take my glasses off so i can so i can see this i know it’s it’s an old person thing all right so tony i’m going to get started here with

[00:27:53] I just want to say that tony’s list that he sent us is color coded and i just wanted to say that i love that because my list also i keep color coded so kudos for that so we’ll start with the finished ones which are 12 we have an aerotech phoenix i’m not familiar with what that is tony can you

[00:28:18] Tell me what that is the aerotech phoenix is a it’s a rocket propelled glider what yeah i was wondering

[00:28:29] Because the word aerotech they’re the ones that make the motors right yes okay yes so this is a plane

[00:28:36] From it was actually owned by one of the guys that taught me to fly and he flew it for a number of years and when he got out of the hobby he passed it on to me which i was very excited about until i looked at the price of those motors yeah so i cut the nose apart and converted it to a electric nice so that i had it’s kind of like having a warm liner but i i did leave the the rocket mount intact so if

[00:29:16] I ever wanted to i can always do some sort of motor in there either for effect or actually try to launch

[00:29:22] Yeah that’d be cool i’ve never actually seen one of those stand and everything yeah i’ve never actually seen one fly but i always thought they’d look cool i think i know exactly what you’re talking about now aerotech made a few different we had three in the club back okay cool all right so next we have a crossfire who makes that that is my own design oh okay looks like that one’s set up electric three cell 2200 and then i have a what’s the wingspan on that one

[00:29:54] 30 32 cool is that like a high wing nope i don’t see it is a it’s a low wing sport kind of pattern

[00:30:09] Is that the blue or pink and white one blue orange and white yes okay there it is bottom left yeah that’s

[00:30:16] Good so in the last year year and a half i’ve kind of started to play around with some of the flight test ideas the flight test planes and the dollar tree foam board okay as i’ve gotten a little more curious about what you can do with foam and i realized that there’s a whole side of this hobby that i wasn’t really familiar with there’s a company over on that that that’s called the hanger rc that did a design contest and this was my entry for that cool okay so it’s it’s built a dollar tree

[00:30:54] Foam board and it’s i did printed skins on it which turned out relatively okay how’d you do in the in the competition don’t know yet still ongoing oh okay okay i didn’t know that so voting voting is still going on right now but yeah it’s inspired heavily by some of the classic pattern airplanes i was just getting ready to say that it looks very patterned to me king cobra a lot of king cobra in it yep

[00:31:26] Chaos played into that the blue angel mk blue angel and that that’s in fact the color scheme was kind

[00:31:36] Of stolen from that yeah okay it does look familiar cool and you designed that’s awesome all right moving on a diana 54 okay what’s that that is a 54 inch version of

[00:31:54] A free flight glider from the 50s so the diana was a tow line free flight tow line glider made by frog which was the england english manufacturer okay and i scaled it up to 54 inches and and made an rc two channel rc version electric well three channels

[00:32:21] Yes is that the purple and white one yep okay yeah good looking airplane also yes it is you do nice work tony thank you all right next we have an e-flight blade mcpx we have an e-flight commander mpd

[00:32:37] Is that the one that just came out i think so yes and no okay so the one that just came out is a re-release for a new version oh i didn’t realize originally yeah it originally came out a couple i’d say in 2016 2017 and i’ve got the older version oh okay yeah i was gonna say i didn’t think the new one had

[00:33:04] Actually been released yet so i was confused when i saw the the pictures and i saw that i was like wait a minute original one’s red the new one’s blue yeah i noticed that too so that’s probably the only thing they changed and just re-releasing it that way you have to buy all new things for it if something

[00:33:19] Happens to the old one that was my and that one was one of the first airplanes i splurged on as far as for a foam airplane i’ve i’ve never been a fan of buying some of these more expensive home ready to fly planes yeah me too but i i was in a place where i knew i wasn’t going to have a lot of building time for a little while and i wanted something quick and easy i could throw in my car to go fly i thought this fit the bill and it’s a good looking airplane yeah yeah i really i really

[00:33:56] Dig the way it looks and i like the blue version too the new one all right next we have excuse me an fms tiger cat which that thing is really sexy even though it’s a foam airplane i love that thing great plane shoestring we have a live wire 80 which is a that’s a the live wire that’s like an old robin hood ish type plane i think that’s the one that looks like it’s in

[00:34:21] In the bones here in your picture with the yellow wing nope the live wire no because you’re reading

[00:34:28] Off the finished list oh okay true well i mean that could have been clear covering oh there you go i guess he’s got one in here with clear covering on it so okay you just hush over there all right

[00:34:40] Which one is that the live wire is a holdable design from the 50s as well in my pictures it’s the one that’s blue and cream with a black lightning bolt and that’s another one where i took the original design i scaled it up to 80 inches and that’s a good looking airplane design some of it to be built a little lighter and so forth it looks like it flies nice it’s actually my go-to airplane as basic as it seems it is very mildly aerobatic but it seems to be

[00:35:21] One of the planes have the most fun flying i think i think everybody has that one airplane right i know mine is a is a stick we always that’s one of our questions so usually but cool the sig and i’m gonna pronounce this the way i pronounce it i don’t know if it’s right or wrong

[00:35:40] But demazelle that’s the way i pronounce it good so what do you think of that one like i i would like to have one of those someday how do they fly very slow that’s what i like i mean that just that looks like it would be a very relaxing airplane to just go out of an evening and fly

[00:35:59] Yeah it made a very good indoor flyer okay really even at that size yeah well we had a fairly good size gym to fly in okay and it took all of it but yeah it it flew very well indoors it’s very light and it’s got that under cambered air foil it won’t handle wind very well

[00:36:29] I like the color combination what’d you cover that with i don’t know i didn’t it almost looks like i mean i know i know it’s not but it almost looks like tissue

[00:36:41] It feels like tissue it to me it feels like i don’t know if you guys ever use cover light

[00:36:49] No i can’t say that i have huh cover cover right for a short time was selling a synthetic

[00:36:56] Heat shrinkable tissue that was called cover light ah okay and that’s what that feels like yeah but reading the manual for the airplane it came with some kind of covering so i think it might have actually come come with the kit but it does look like tissue i like that i like i like that color combo all right it’s it’s not one you can fly a lot and that’s why it actually is currently hanging

[00:37:25] In my office at work that’s cool that you can that you can hang airplanes at your office is awesome i have an airplane well half of an airplane at my work it’s an old tail off the edge of the viewers that i crashed a long time ago yeah i remember that one all right next we have a tiny twister and then a

[00:37:45] A willy-nilly speedster right is that what that is yep that one as they hosted a design contest where you had to use one of their wing kits and the speedster was my design for that contest awesome

[00:38:06] Cool is that the green and white one yep with the gullwing yeah that is really a sharp airplane i think that would be awesome scaled up to about 65 inches or so with like a

[00:38:19] Old kmb 60 on it that’d be that’d be a sweet combo well there is an old design called the pacific ace

[00:38:27] Sweepster or pacific ace sportster that has the gullwing like that and it spans about 70 72. perfect and

[00:38:38] I saw one in toledo years ago and this has stayed with me i’ve i’ve wanted to do one for a while now so i pulled a lot of inspiration from that when i designed this it looks really sharp i really like that one okay unfortunately it looks a whole lot better than it flies oh i hate to hear that because it looks it’s a little squirrely and i don’t know if it’s a servo issue because i’m

[00:39:08] Using the equipment out of a e-flight umx so it’s got those little linear servos yep and those can be a little bit finicky yeah but it it just seems to have kind of some quirky tendencies well that’s

[00:39:32] Unfortunate control all right and then last one on the finish list you have a hanger 9 cessna 182. that’s a good flying airplane that one’s gas it’s got a 20 cc rcgf on it okay that one i

[00:39:46] Refinished after it is painted in the colors of the cesna that my father and my sister got their pilot’s license oh really oh that’s awesome yeah is that a brown or is that black it is orange and brown

[00:40:01] Orange and brown yeah that’s really really sharp actually that was that was a swap meet fine that

[00:40:06] I the guy had kind of cracked up the the belly of it and it needed a little work and i had been wanting to build a model of that airplane for a while and yeah i think it picked it up for a hundred bucks with the servos and everything in it that’s good that picture if you didn’t know that that was a

[00:40:23] Model you would that picture you would think that it was yeah that’s a real airplane or a full-size airplane yeah that’s a really that’s my wife and her photography skills okay yeah well she’s really

[00:40:34] Really good at it you can let her know i said that that’s that was that’s her expertise that’s what she went to college for oh okay i have a lot of really good airplane pictures thanks to her

[00:40:46] That’s awesome so you have you brought up a couple words that have have hit me you said toledo and then you also said swap meets do you do swap meets often or how does that like where what’s around you

[00:40:59] Swap meet wise there is a big one down in the walkie area every january and that one’s probably one of the best ones in our area unfortunately it always falls right around new year’s it’s like that first saturday of the year so i’m not always available to go down to it that might be one worth a drive from here i’ve been to that one yeah i mean they would get vendors and things like radical rc usually showed

[00:41:34] Up and remember the other one but or batteries america i think was usually there okay so that one was pretty good we had a i lived further north for about 10 years and there were a couple up in that area not quite as big if they’re if i can make it i try to make them they’re kind of they’re fun to go to and walk around i don’t really like going to them if i’m going with the purpose of selling things

[00:42:11] Oh that’s because you don’t sell things

[00:42:14] I hate sitting at a table and bartering back and forth with someone that’s when you’re especially when you’re trying to sell something that you built in

[00:42:28] Yeah and they’re often they’re offering you pennies on the dollar yeah that’s yeah yeah so back to the list back to the list sorry didn’t mean to take us off topic looks like you have four

[00:42:40] Under construction you have a cadet junior that you’re turning into a night flyer i presume

[00:42:46] Yeah it’s that’s a foam build somebody on the ft forums threw up some patterns for a foam board cadet junior and i just happen to have a roll of leds around from a previous project and i thought this would be fun

[00:43:03] Yeah there you go all right so next we have a proctor antic parasol i was admiring the wheels on that one because i have a pair of those wheels and so does ron and he’s going to put his on an elder right no

[00:43:18] That’s gonna go on the top yeah top and i didn’t know you had a pair of those i have a pair for my

[00:43:23] Elder biplane when i build it someday now that you say that i knew you had a pair of those a sig mr mulligan that’s a really fun airplane and then okay so i you’re gonna have to help me

[00:43:35] With this one a spawns wonder yeah so dan spawns hole or spawn holes he does all the cad work and design work for flight test and he’s got a couple designs that he’s put out himself and he’s local to me he is doing a with bruce tharp’s permission he is doing a foam board version

[00:44:13] Prototype or a test build from these designs oh well that’s kind of cool all right so that’s four under construction then you have which the this is the bigger part of his list and usually the big part of most of ours that have been in the hobby for a long time the not started list yes so i’ll quickly go through this one a quarter scale aronca a balsa usa spad bridey trainer domiko livewire

[00:44:44] Kitten domiko sonic cruiser a fisler storage i make a good one yeah i do fly line mega coop hanger 9 toledo special joy products oh another aronca okay park scale models mini drake a royal mock mini oh that’s a good flying airplane i used to have one of those scientific commodore if it’s what i think it was anyway sig customer toc acromaster and a top flight and terry’s cool

[00:45:12] So going back to the oh the the mock mini is that is that the one that was used to be a half a powered yes okay yeah that that is a great flying even with a with a cox td i think i had an o51 on mine with a throttle if you remember way back when but yeah what an awesome flying airplane that was

[00:45:37] And fast at least mine was oh that’s my hope yeah i have a a line rc outrunner out of one of the t-rex helicopters that’s a really high kv that i’m i’m hoping to put in there and a lot of i’ve seen some videos in that the guys are using this and some of the hotliners and they’re

[00:46:03] They’re well over 100 miles an hour yeah oh yeah and i noticed that it says it’s a balza workbench

[00:46:10] Shortcut rob does great work by the way yeah actually there we in my previous club there was a group of us that we decided to go out and build a bunch of these half a models so we bought a bunch from him and this was one of the designs that he actually didn’t have at the time so i did the cat

[00:46:31] Work and sent over to him cool yeah i was i was fortunate enough to get to build his prototype cloud dancer 10 kit for him which was which was really really enjoyable i like working with rob went together pretty quick for you yeah it really did actually you were fast yeah he does he does great work and honest as a day is long that guy he’ll tell you just just the way it is which i

[00:47:00] Appreciate yeah that’s awesome all right so that’s the list yeah so you said you grew up with obviously balsa airplanes because that that was what was around back then what do you prefer at this point like i’m looking at your list and there’s a mix of both balsa and foam and like dollar tree foam board stuff what what’s your what’s your preference at this point to build with i’m still far more

[00:47:25] Comfortable building with balsa than anything else yeah if i if i had to decide to build a certain airplane and do it quick in an expedite build or whatever that would be my go to yeah i think i understand i’ve done a lot of research on foam and i think there’s a lot of merit to what you can do with foam and right now with balsa the balsa prices and supply being what it is yeah there’s some

[00:48:02] Advantages to being able to build with foam but at the same time i really don’t like all these all foam airplanes yeah they look great out of the box but they get dinged up and dented so

[00:48:17] Easy and then they they just look right yeah yeah i’m shaking my head in total agreement yeah yeah i feel

[00:48:27] The same i think there’s a lot of merit to foam and and this is nothing new i mean back in the 60s and 70s 90 of the pattern planes had foam core wings and foam core tails and things like that and even a lot of hero vests do yeah i think there’s a lot of merit in building with both materials yeah you can save a lot of weight and you can save a lot of time by building with some of the components with foam but i think the outside finish needs to be something sturdier to make it less likely to

[00:49:04] Have hanger ash yeah have some longevity to the finished airplane yeah yeah i agree with that

[00:49:14] Completely like like you said the old built-up foam like cores and stuff for wings they hold up really well i mean they’re strong they’re light yeah it’s it’s a good building technique because you get the best of both worlds so yeah i absolutely agree with one of the big tipping points

[00:49:34] For me i started following some builds online and i i guess i was first made aware of this because years ago i built the curtis helldiver from jerry bates plants probably one of my favorite airplanes ever both model and full scale okay and so i’m always kind of keeping helldiver stuff on the radar because it’s not a very common airplane so i’d like to see what other guys are doing when they build them and on the rc skill builder forum somebody popped in and

[00:50:09] Said i’m building this helldiver from the cherry-based plants same size as mine and he was worried about the weight of his finished airplane and i looked through his build and i saw that he was building it all out of foam instead of doing it on a falsa and he’s fretting over it he was worried it might hit 30

[00:50:42] Mean i flew i had 80 flights on it when i sold it it was a great airplane yeah so i i messaged him and i said hey look you don’t need to worry he said you can get 30 pounds this plane’s still gonna fly just fine yeah but i followed the rest of this build and i was intrigued at how he was able to build this big airplane on a phone he still did a fiberglass skin on the outside like you same as you would do with a wood build right look beautiful weighed 26 pounds or anything to fly oh man i’m like i mean

[00:51:18] He’s almost 20 pounds lighter than mine same exact plans yeah and fully functional on both models bombay diverx a whole bit yeah so then i started following some of his other builds and what he was able to do with foam was incredible he did a lot of giant warbirds 80 to 100 inch warbirds and they were all mid-20s i think there were even some that didn’t even hit 20 pounds

[00:51:50] Were they were they electric or yeah okay yeah i and that’s the caveat to that you can’t i don’t think the foam especially built that light right

[00:52:06] Well not to mention electric not to mention the fact that foam and gasoline don’t get along

[00:52:11] Looked as good as a balsa build and that was the biggest thing they didn’t look like a foam right yeah

[00:52:18] Well if you fiberglass them and paint them i mean they they look as good or better than a wood built airplane for sure so which which actually the discussion brings me to my next question for you is i mean i see a lot of electric airplanes on your list do you do you prefer electric

[00:52:37] At this point yes yeah i don’t blame you of course i i washed literally washed my hands of nitro yeah about 10 years ago i went electric on anything that would have been nitro sized yeah to me once you got up to about a 20 cc size airplane then it was worth it to go gas right with that said i’m starting to go electric even now at that size i still wouldn’t go much bigger

[00:53:11] And try to go electric like i i have no interest in doing a 12 cell to playing with two battery packs or even lower yeah and that whole gamut but i do like the the toc acromaster that’s on my list that’s a 70 some inch wingspan pattern it’s a 1978 design pattern plane and that would be it was designed around a weber 90 and i’m planning to put electric in that but six cell single battery packs so still a not a high voltage setup yeah i am fighting

[00:53:55] Buying anything bigger than a four cell like anything over four cell i just want to jump up and go with the gas engine so we’ll see how that goes i’ve got a couple of them that i think i’m going to be getting rid of soon because i don’t want to spend or i don’t want new batteries like i don’t want to have to go buy six cell batteries just for a couple airplanes so just do it just do it

[00:54:16] So that’s i was kind of at the same point ever i had i had not had an electric that was bigger than maybe 30 40 inch wingspan park flyer size when i decided to do my first nitro conversion that nitro conversion was on a gray plains trainer 60 the joe pretty design with the full symmetrical air foil and at that time i went to a five cell setup and that plane on that setup flew so well that i i was hooked on electric for that size

[00:54:59] I just i don’t know like i get it i fully understand like well that’s a road once you go down i mean then it’s if i buy the batteries i don’t have to get rid of the airplanes right so i guess i have to make a decision on exactly is it worth giving up a couple airplanes so i don’t have to buy batteries for them or should i just bite the bullet and not trade them in and get a new airplane

[00:55:23] Yeah i don’t know we’ll have to see so once you have your first set of six cell packs the amount of planes that it opens up to fly at that size yeah i mean i understand i get it like i

[00:55:41] You are making complete sense to me i’m just you’re fighting going up to six cells the way i’m fighting

[00:55:48] Going electric period well and i understand that yeah like it’s perfect for you with nitro you don’t mind nitro no that’s what i’m trying to skip the smaller planes to bigger planes just just like tony did by getting rid of nitro completely right we’ll see yeah i mean i guess my mind’s not completely made up yet well yeah we’ll have to talk about that well i mean even the planes that i

[00:56:12] Fly nitro are these days easily and fairly economically converted to electric but i’m i mean oh yeah 40 sizes i would have to start completely from nothing i mean i i have those two batteries for that jet and that’s really everything else is the 2200 the park flyer type stuff so three cells yeah so i’m i’m fighting it the way you’re fighting i’m just fighting going electric period and you’re just fighting going from one step to the next there’s

[00:56:45] No reason for you to fight electric because you’re not trying to get away from something else like you already have plenty of nitro engines you don’t mind the the tuning and all that kind of stuff right so there’s nothing that says hey i need to get away from this whereas with me i don’t want to deal with all the the nitro and the cost and all that kind of stuff so it’s easier for me

[00:57:07] Just to stick with electric does that make sense no it does okay but i think i think and that was the

[00:57:11] Big thing that pushed me to go electric too i i liked nitro i never had a problem with the engines yes they’re finicky but especially if you run four cycles they they were a lot less trouble and they sounded nice that smell still takes me back to all those memories growing up mm-hmm but i can buy two batteries for the price of three gallons of gas and at the time between the

[00:57:47] Way work and everything else was for me i wasn’t able to fly enough to burn up of maybe more than a gallon and a half a year so you’re throwing out a half gallon every winter and that’s 15 bucks down the drain if you don’t use that up because at 30 at the time it was maybe 30 a gallon it just electric the convenience of electric was so much better than

[00:58:18] Nitro yeah no i i totally get it i really do but for me i mean maybe one other reason i’m i don’t want to say i’m fighting it i’m not really fighting it but it’s it’s another okay so i have all this nitro and i have a couple of these gas airplanes will now throw some electrics and batteries into the mix now i’m maintaining batteries on top of maintaining the nitro engines

[00:58:44] On top of what i mean it’s just more for you it makes sense to stick with nitro so anyway it’s not that i’m fighting it i just you don’t need to even consider it right i mean the way you’re exactly so that makes complete sense but like i said for tony and i know nitro i’m cool with that

[00:59:00] Because i still get the and i don’t think i don’t think any less of you well and you shouldn’t actually

[00:59:05] I mean but like i said i still get the smells i still get the yeah i get to watch you be frustrated with them and all that kind of stuff so it’s like i’m still living it even without owning them so that’s

[00:59:15] That’s one thing and full disclosure as much as i had gotten away from nitro i once again own one yeah i acquired a half dozen airplanes at the end of last year and one of them was that quarter quarter scale aronca that’s got a gemini 160 on the nose and the full scale has that exposed twin cylinder engine on it the the os is a perfect scale copy the model has functional scale exhaust and

[00:59:46] It those engines just sound so nice yeah i can’t fathom pulling that off and putting anything else

[00:59:54] In there yeah well and that’s that’s why we’re doing the the nitro on the the tri motor just because of

[01:00:01] The sound yeah like pretty much and on that airplane too there’s a lot of sentimental value to that it came from the estate of a good friend after he had passed away yeah i feel very honored to be able to get that in you that legacy and keep that airplane airborne in its memory it’s not an airplane i’m going to run

[01:00:18] Out and fly every weekend right no i totally get that i have one of those too yep that completely

[01:00:24] Makes sense so well tony this has been fun is there anything else you want to talk about before we get off here not that i can think of okay all right cool well i appreciate you coming on as a guest it was a lot of fun yeah until next time i am ron i’m tom and you and i am tony goodbye all right we hope you

[01:00:45] 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