Ep 119: Ali Machinchy – Horizon Hobby Product Developer and Marketing Manager

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In this episode

Ali Machinchy joins RC Plane Lab to talk about his work as a Horizon Hobby product developer and marketing manager and his experience as a world-renowned RC pilot.

Not only is Ali Machinchy a world-renowned pilot, but he’s genuinely one of the nicest guys we’ve met in the hobby. Tune in to hear our conversation!

Complete Transcript

Read the complete episode transcript

[0:05] Speaker 5: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave. Today, we're excited to sit down and talk with Ali Macinchy. Ali is the marketing manager and a product developer for Horizon Hobby. Ali, thanks for being on. And why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[0:25] Speaker 2: Hi, guys. Firstly, thank you for having me on. Yeah, about myself. Lifelong RC enthusiast, hobbyist, whatever you want to call it. Got into the hobby at a very early age, like a lot of us, I guess. My dad got me into it. It was his hobby before mine. So grew up in the UK, pretty much all around the UK, starting on the South Coast and then finishing up in rural Northamptonshire. Did a marketing degree at North London University.

[0:59] Speaker 2: And towards the end of that, decided that I really didn't want to work for a living. So I opened up a hobby shop for my father, which in a few short years became six hobby shops called Al's Hobbies. During that period, I became a Horizon Hobby team pilot. They approached me when they set up a Horizon Hobby base in the UK. Never been a sponsored pilot before. These guys came along and said, you know, we like what you do. We'd like you to wear a blue shirt.

[1:30] Speaker 2: It's actually a red shirt at the time. I think it was still JR. But anyway, we'd like you to fly for Horizon, which I did for a number of years. And the then field marketing manager, Pete Goldsmith, about seven, many eight years ago in a lighthearted conversation offered me a job. And to condense it, seven years ago, I ended up moving myself and my young family to Champaign, Illinois, to work for Horizon Hobby. The primary role was as field marketing manager.

[2:01] Speaker 2: So just a quick overview on that. That's running the display team of Horizon air pilots that we have around the globe. I run the U.S. wing of that. It's about 100 pilots on just the air side of things. But then very soon after joining the company, they asked me if I'd like to be involved with the product development side, in particular Hangar 9. And I jumped at the chance. It's something I would dip my toe in before when I was at Al's Hobbies.

[2:29] Speaker 2: I'd freelance work for a couple of RC jet companies and an ARF company making some aerobatic freestyle designs. So yeah, when Horizon offered me the job to work for a brand, you know, as prestigious as Hangar 9, I jumped at it. And yeah, that led me to seven years as a H9, HH product developer, which I've enjoyed very much. I have a wife and two kids, 18 and 19-year-old, boy and a girl. Millie, my 19-year-old, is at college. Zavi, my 18-year-old, is just wrapping up high school.

[3:06] Speaker 2: Millie dabbled in RC for about three months, I think, in her very young years. Zavi, my son, has, yeah, very much taken to the hobby. I mean, I often joke that if I'm a, if I have a rating of 10, how much I love this hobby, that kid's probably on about 12 or 13. So yeah, he's very keen at the moment as an 18-year-old. And yeah, you know, we live in rural Illinois, Champaign. I live about 25 miles outside of Champaign in the countryside.

[3:39] Speaker 2: It's something we always wanted, a rural life. It gives us the ability to have a bit of land. And more importantly, it gives us the ability to fly from our back garden. So I don't make use of it that much anymore, simply because we have Eli Field about two and a half miles from our front door. But my boy, Zavi, flies in the summer pretty much every day in the backyard. So yeah, it's a family that's driven by RC.

[4:05] Speaker 2: It always has been, you know, from when I met my wife at a very young age. I was 18 at the time. I was headlong into RC. I'd never really taken a sabbatical like many kids do. You know, I'd never gone through that whole cars and girls thing. I sort of waited until I was in my 20s for the cars thing. And yeah, I just stuck with it all along. And in terms of RC, I try and take advantage of the very fortunate position I'm in and play with as much as I can.

[4:34] Speaker 2: You know, as much variety, as much diversity, as much variation. So yeah, I'm not going to even be as presumptuous to say I've done it all, but I've done a fair few facets and enjoyed nearly all of them. So yeah, that's where I'm at now, running a team of about 100 guys that represent Horizon Hobby around the US, have a little bit of a hand in what goes on in Europe, Horizon Hobby wise there.

[5:01] Speaker 2: But primary focus is the team and development of RC Air stuff, not just Hangar 9, but E-Flight help out in as well.

[5:11] Speaker 5: So that's me. That's awesome. So you said E-Flight. So one of the airplanes that I admit I did not like at first until I saw it fly. And then after I saw somebody else flying it, I had to go buy one of my own is the Ultrix. Did you did you have any hand in designing that one?

[5:27] Speaker 2: No, I didn't. Well, in the design of it, I was actually I was almost anti that project, believe it or not, Ron, when I first saw it come across the table at Horizon, it was a basic core design was something that we saw at another vendor and it didn't have any electronics in it. It had like it was meant for just to receive a unit to go in, no stability, no AS3X. And I got to play with it and I hated it.

[5:59] Speaker 2: I thought it was absolute junk and yeah, I was quite anti it until we put first round of code in and then they asked me to play with it again. And I remember that was one of the last planes we developed at the old Horizon facility before we moved into what was Hobbico. But we had a ability to fly in the parking lot there. We had fields out the back of it. And I remember being absolutely blown away with how much fun that was.

[6:27] Speaker 2: And I've had a lot of fun with the small one and the large one. And yeah, I was very fortunate to do the video of the large one with my son. It's the one video that we've done together and had a real blast that day.

[6:40] Speaker 5: Yeah, because that's that was kind of our takeaway, too. When we first saw the, you know, just the design of it, it's like, I don't know what to expect from this. But once you fly that airplane. Oh, yeah. It has quickly become one of my favorites. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[6:53] Speaker 3: It was one of my favorites also. Yeah, they just fly so well. Yeah, they nailed it.

[6:58] Speaker 2: I'm surprised it hasn't become more popular. It's a good price point. It's very durable. It's got a massive flight diverse flight regime, if you like. It handles slow and fast. Well, it does well in small spaces. Yeah, I'm surprised that more people haven't taken to it.

[7:20] Speaker 5: And it does that really fun, fast, spinny pancake thing. I don't know what you call that, but I love that.

[7:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun.

[7:27] Speaker 5: So you brought up your son, Xavi. He is actually a Horizon team pilot now, correct?

[7:32] Speaker 2: Yeah. Funny story on that one. He was, I think, probably around about June, July-ish, he was offered the opportunity to fly for Horizon. And yeah, I've been manager, the official role of team manager since December last year. And I think a lot of people just assumed I'd rolled him in as a team pilot. And it was a mid-year, and my boss came to me and said, oh, why is your kid not wearing a blue shirt? And I'm like, well, he's not a team member.

[8:07] Speaker 2: And yeah, a startled look from my boss was like, what's going on there? And I said to him, look, I think it's a conflict of interest. I don't feel at ease putting my kid on. You know, if somebody tells me to put him on, I, you know, I'll do it. And he's like, do you think he deserves to be a pilot? And I said, yeah, he needs some work. You know, stick-wise, he's incredible. He helps a lot of people out. I watch him at the field and stuff.

[8:30] Speaker 2: And so, yeah, you know, I couldn't argue that he had some merit on the team. So, yeah, effectively, my boss made me put him on.

[8:40] Speaker 3: Well, I've seen him fly, and for sure, he belongs on the team. No, no question.

[8:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I said, thumb-wise, he's good. He's a lot better than I was at that age. I mean, a lot, lot better. I tell him that quite often. And yeah, certainly stickability-wise. But as team manager, I'm looking for a lot more than that now. You know, we have a team of 100 guys, and there's a lot of really well-known names in there, well-accomplished pilots, some world champions, some Top Gun champions, and so forth. So we're not wanting for really good pilots.

[9:16] Speaker 2: We're not wanting for superstars. What I'm wanting for is people to engage and help and promote and grow the hobby. You know, that's my primary focus when somebody says to me what's involved in being on the team. I'm like, grow the hobby. If you grow the hobby, Horizon will grow with it. You know, it's a simple, basic factor of how the business is nowadays. So yeah, you know, for Zav, that was one of my worries, was he's young.

[9:41] Speaker 2: And sometimes it's just all about the flying, which is great. I'm all for that as an individual, as a privateer, then go for it. But you put on the blue shirt, and as team manager, I'm looking for more than that. So yeah, it was part of the big chat that him and I had. And he's been good so far, really good. I've watched him help a lot more than I ever expected. He's very active, especially locally.

[10:10] Speaker 2: I think the last couple of weeks, he's helped two people, two young lads actually, get involved. He's come and said, look, Dad, do you mind if I take some airplanes we've got that aren't doing much work in the basement and give them to these guys? And I'm like, go for it. And I didn't set any parameters on it. And he's gone, and he's not just giving them to him. He spent probably about two evenings out there flying at Eli with him.

[10:31] Speaker 2: And he's got one of them, I think it's Tanner, Tanner or Tyler. He's got him to take off stage in a very short time. So I'm super happy about that.

[10:41] Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's one of our goals also, is to kind of get more people involved in the hobby, because it is so much fun. And it's just, it's something that's fun to share with your friends, to share with family. And it just, it's really engaging. Like, I think there's a lot to be learned, a lot of life skills to be learned in the hobby. And yeah, just getting more people involved. I think that's also one of our core thoughts also.

[11:01] Speaker 4: Just being an ambassador for the hobby. Yeah. It's much more involved than just going out there with the airplanes. You've got to be almost a salesman.

[11:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, true. Absolutely. It benefits everyone. You know, it's a social hobby. I don't ever want to be alive on that day where it's the last day where I'm the last guy at the flying field sort of thing. You know, I go to fields, I go to events, I go to shows. The flying is, I'm not going to lie, it's a very big part of it.

[11:27] Speaker 2: But, you know, if we break it down time-wise, how long out of a 12-hour day you spend flying versus how long you spend socializing, then, you know, the numbers speak for themselves. So, yeah, the more people we can have doing it, the better it is for everyone.

[11:43] Speaker 5: Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself. I agree completely. You actually, you said you travel around quite a bit. You just came back from Germany, didn't you?

[11:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. A big part of the change in life when I moved to the U.S. with Horizon was how little I travel now compared to what I used to. In my old job as Al's Hobbies, well, as running Al's Hobbies, I used to travel anywhere up to 18 events per year, of which probably 12, 14 of those would be internationals. Now, in the last seven years, I think I've done three internationals in seven years.

[12:25] Speaker 2: So, yeah, I just come back from Germany in September, my first time back anywhere in Europe since I moved here. So it was a lot of fun to go back, catch up with a lot of people. My parents flew out to the show and saw me there, which was great. So, yeah, I had a real blast.

[12:41] Speaker 5: Well, that's cool. You also had another trip. I just saw you posted some videos online. You were flying a 30-foot glider somewhere. And I tell you what, the sound, not only is that a nice-looking airplane, but the sound that thing makes when it flies is probably my favorite part about it.

[12:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, those videos would have been filmed last weekend, and the weekend before last, at a place called High Point Aviation in Cumberland, Maryland. And, yeah, it's possibly my favorite place to fly in the U.S. Beautiful facility on the mountainside, about 1,500 feet up. And, yeah, the plane in question was a half-scale DG600 from a German company called Airworld. And it was a project that I started, I ordered it two years ago.

[13:28] Speaker 2: The first time I went to that flying site, I realized I needed a special plane to fly at this special place. And, yeah, I ordered this giant glider, you know, like I said, half-scale, 30-foot span. And I had a vision in my head of what I wanted to do. I wanted to come back and fall. I wanted to work with, at the time, it was one of our videographers, Pete Holy, who I worked with extensively.

[13:50] Speaker 2: I wanted to do some air-to-air shots with him, capture the topography, the beautiful layout, you know, the autumnal foliage there. And it all just fell into place. It was, like, the most bizarre thing that everything just – and it wasn't, like, really meticulous planning. It just all fell into place. And I spent four days on the mountain flying possibly one of my favorite toys. So, yeah, it was great.

[14:15] Speaker 3: Yeah, not a bad week of work.

[14:18] Speaker 2: That was my vacation. Well, I didn't thank you, that one. I had to pay for that one myself. Dang.

[14:24] Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it was some beautiful footage, though. It really did. It did. I enjoyed it. I know the videos you're talking about, Ron. And, yeah, it's quite beautiful.

[14:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, and the sound. The sound is really cool. I mean, you've got to remember, the sound you're hearing is from, you know, the best mic in the world. It's an iPhone mic. So, yeah, if you imagine in real life, it sounded even more – the pitch was higher, and you've got more subtle air noises coming off the airframe. So, yeah, it was a lot of fun to do that.

[14:51] Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't – I'm hoping one of these days when we're out of D-Life Field, you'll have that one out there, too, and I can actually hear it in real life because I can't imagine the difference between, like you said, an iPhone video and actually hearing it. I bet that's awesome. Yeah. So, is that your biggest airplane?

[15:05] Speaker 2: Have this discussion quite a bit in terms of biggest. What's biggest? Span, weight, size, scale? It's the biggest wingspan airplane I think I've owned. I had a C-17 some years ago, which was about 24, 26-foot wingspan, which just in mass alone was a lot larger, but wingspan was obviously a little bit less. So, yeah, the DG is the longest plane I own, or the widest, sorry.

[15:35] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a discussion Ron and I have all the time. Like, what does biggest mean? Yeah, is it wingspan? Is it weight? Is it overall surface area? Yeah, it's hard to judge, but hard to beat a half-scale glider. I mean, that's pretty impressive.

[15:50] Speaker 5: 30 feet, that's pretty good. Yeah. Whatever happened to the Airbus that you had out of the JetMate?

[15:57] Speaker 2: That went to a local guy in the next big town to the west, Decatur. Turbine Bill is his name. He bought it as a display piece, as a static thing that he eventually wants to hang it from one of his car, showrooms, dealerships, whatever he does. But recently, he's just been trailering it around to small local events and sitting on it and taking pictures with it. So, yeah, that moved on.

[16:26] Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a big airplane.

[16:28] Speaker 2: That was a big airplane.

[16:29] Speaker 3: And it still is a big airplane. Well, that's true. I mean, I'm assuming no one's crashed it.

[16:34] Speaker 5: So, well, if it's not been flown, yeah.

[16:37] Speaker 2: No, it wasn't flyable. I personally don't think it ever will be flyable. And I told Bill that it was built for a very famous collector. And there's a few things on it that would make getting it flyable a pretty big challenge, primarily that it's fundamentally illegal in the USA. It's above the 100-pound weight limit that we have for turbine-operated airplanes in the US or RC airplanes.

[17:05] Speaker 2: So, yeah, other than that, I think structurally it's got some issues with withstanding flight loads. My basic understanding of design and aero and load-bearing structures or surfaces leads me to believe that won't survive a flight.

[17:24] Speaker 5: Yeah, I can see that. It was built to look pretty and be impressive, which it very much was.

[17:28] Speaker 3: Yeah. Didn't I see a picture somewhere of somebody actually sitting on it? Yeah, that was Ali.

[17:32] Speaker 5: That was the one I took when we were over there. That's Ali was sitting on it. Okay.

[17:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, a bit of a party trick of mine. It's getting a bit more difficult as I get older and less light. But, yeah, I took the opportunity to sit on it, and it creeps and groaned a bit.

[17:46] Speaker 3: The struggle is real, older and heavier. I feel that every day.

[17:50] Speaker 2: Very much so.

[17:53] Speaker 5: Okay. And you work for Horizon. We have regular jobs to where we don't get to play with the cool toys all day. So, most of our hobby time comes on weekends and evenings. With working for a company like Horizon all day, do you ever get to the point where you don't feel like doing things on the evenings and weekends? Or is it, like, all-encompassing to where you're all in?

[18:19] Speaker 2: That's much more detailed than I normally get, a version that I normally get asked that question. Normally people say, do you burn out? And I'm like, I've got an easy one to that one. Your question is, as I say, more detailed and, yeah, I think more pertinent. Yes, is the short answer.

[18:36] Speaker 2: There are times where I don't want to go down in the basement and do some wrenching and prep for an event or, you know, do any building of an airplane because I've been doing it all day in the condo workshop at Horizon. So, yeah, there are times. And I think that's a big part of keeping my interest in the hobby. You know, I'm very focused on not burning out.

[19:01] Speaker 2: I've watched a lot of people, some of my heroes, you know, that have quite obviously saturated or, I hate to use the word burnout, but I can't think of a better one, by the hobby when they turned it into a job. And I've been mindful of that for the last 30 years, you know, since I've been working in the trade, is keeping the job side of it separate to the hobby side. And, yeah, I have that. You know, I go back to Cumberland two weekends ago. That was a personal event.

[19:30] Speaker 2: That was Ali Mashinchi going on the hill, enjoying his new toy glider, not a Horizon event. Still ended up doing a bunch of HH stuff, but you know what? I can't help but do that. But, you know, I went there with the mindset of I'm enjoying this for myself. And, you know, and that's what keeps it alive for me.

[19:51] Speaker 5: Yeah, and I can fully understand that because, yeah, burnout is a thing that when you're around it all the time, I can imagine if it's if it feels like work, then you don't want to do it as much.

[20:02] Speaker 3: But they, you know, there's truth in the old adage, you know, if you if you do what you love, then you won't work a day in your life. Right. I wouldn't know.

[20:11] Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't think of anyone that adage applies to better than myself. You know, it's like I could have gone into the marketing sector and I don't know, you know, who knows what would have happened. But I'm pretty sure I would have been in a better financial situation than I am now. But that's not what I value as being super important, you know, to have spent 25 years playing for a living.

[20:37] Speaker 2: I still pinch myself and I still get it, you know, and I'm trying to explain to people what I do for a living. And they're looking at me going, really? And yeah, so super fortunate.

[20:46] Speaker 5: Yeah. From the conversations I've had with you, you're very down to earth and I appreciate that. Because so many people, I think, that would be in a position you are in, I think could let that go to their heads that, you know, this is my craft. This is, you know, this is my life. Whereas when you lose, when you lose, what's the word I'm looking for, connection with the fact that this is a hobby and this is really, you know, people based in what you're doing.

[21:14] Speaker 3: Well, yeah, not to mention the fact that we need new people in. And so you're not going to get new people in by turning them off by being a, you know, whatever.

[21:23] Speaker 5: Yeah. So it's nice to be around people that are inviting to be around.

[21:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. I've grown up. I've been in the hobby all my life. And I've seen so many people do it in different ways. I've seen the one week wonders, you know, the buy everything in the hobby shop when they're weak, they're gone. I've seen the superstar world championship pilots. And I've seen the average Joe that probably does it every third week in a month, if that at most. And like a lot of things, like with flying itself, I study not so much the good, believe it or not.

[22:00] Speaker 2: I study the bad. I study, like, how people do stuff. And I go, oh, that wasn't great. You know, must learn that. And I see that in conduct a lot. I watch people that, you know, fortunately let it go to their head, maybe overestimate, overvalue what it really means. You know, being a world championship RC pilot, you're not saving lives, you know, you're not curing diseases. It's a cool thing, don't get me wrong. And I'm all for sharing it, growing it.

[22:29] Speaker 2: But, yeah, don't let it go to your head and make you like a rock star or anything or important like a doctor or anything. It is at the end of the day, just toy planes.

[22:38] Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. But I will say, no matter what the, no matter what you're talking about, watching somebody do something well is always fun to watch. Like watching you fly, you know, I mean, like, I'm amazed. The one thing that you do over at the field that I've seen is you fly upside down. You fly very low over the corn. And I don't know why. The low, slow passes, always just like, I love watching that.

[23:06] Speaker 5: But that's more impressive to me than a high-speed pass right down the center of the runway.

[23:09] Speaker 2: There's a lot to the hobby. That's what I love about it. What floats one person's boat completely turns another guy off or another girl off and says, you know, that's not for me. And that's what I really like about it. Some people go into the precision. Some people go into the speed of things. It's always offering more as well. And that's, to me, is where I'm always going at.

[23:28] Speaker 2: I mean, I keep going back to the kid, but the kid's like, my son's like a major incentivizer for me at the moment because he does stuff. And I go, that's really cool. I want to do that. And so, yeah, there's a lot of that going on where I'm sort of pushing myself to do things differently and not fall into one style of flying. And I try and make that – someone was asking me the other day about planning a flight or what – I did a flight in Germany at this jet event.

[23:59] Speaker 2: And someone was like, oh, how many times have you rehearsed that? And I said, never. I don't have a schedule. I don't have a routine. And they're like, okay, how do you plan it? And I go, I don't. I just try and make it as diverse and think about, you know, I'm just a Muppet entertainer for six minutes with a toy airplane. How can I entertain as many people as possible?

[24:21] Speaker 2: You know, I could go round and round in circles at 200 mile an hour for six minutes, but that only satisfies those that are there to watch fast-flying airplanes. So try and keep a little bit – well, a lot of diversity in and do a bit of everything.

[24:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's like the great thing about this hobby is there really is something for everybody, you know? Yeah, I agree. So many other hobbies like off the top of my head, collecting coins or trading cards or whatever. I mean, that's pretty one-sided, you know, only a certain individual is going to get into that. I mean, this hobby has so much to offer, and it's so diverse, you know? It really is. Yeah, and that's the great thing about it.

[24:58] Speaker 3: That's what's kept me coming back for many, many years, yeah.

[25:02] Speaker 5: So do you have a favorite style of flying that you like to go back to? No, not really.

[25:08] Speaker 2: Well, yeah, if I have to be brutally honest, if showing off or entertaining is a style, I'll put that. Flying at events, flying in front of people is probably the thing that satisfies me the most. I've never been a competitive pilot, per se. I do a few events in my life, but it's not what drives me. I get a lot of pleasure from interacting with people, particularly after a flight, where people say, okay, you know, I enjoyed that.

[25:42] Speaker 2: Or, yeah, sometimes I'll say, I didn't enjoy that. You know, I'd like to see more of this and that and the other. But, yeah, definitely having that interaction with people saying, you know, that was cool, that was good, that was bad. So that, to me, you know, showing off, to encapsulate it.

[25:59] Speaker 5: No, I get that. So, with showing off, sometimes pushing the envelope might end badly. Do you have any good crash stories?

[26:07] Speaker 2: Oh, loads, loads, loads. Yeah, there's a couple on YouTube that, man, I've had a couple of big crashes, a couple of very near misses. Yeah, I mean, I was only just thinking, it was funny, because we were talking about it at work the other day, about electronics and how good they are now and how few failures we have as a hobby. I'm not talking about a specific brand.

[26:32] Speaker 2: When I go to events now, compared to events of 10, 7, 20 years ago, 20 to 25 years ago, you could go to a jet event anywhere in the world and hold a video camera up and you were going to see multiple crashes. You don't anymore. It's the nature of the hobby, nature of the equipment, nature of the industry. It's brilliant. But it led us to talking down the old rear wheel, what was the worst crash and so forth. And, yeah, there's a few stories, unfortunately.

[27:01] Speaker 2: I'm not, you know, deluded in thinking that you can do this and fly as much as I do without crashing. I'm very happy with how little I crash. But, unfortunately, with the penchant towards loving to show off and going to events, my crashes are usually publicized. So, yeah, there's a few on YouTube.

[27:20] Speaker 5: Yeah, I've seen a couple of them.

[27:22] Speaker 2: Yeah. They're there. They're the unfortunate side of the hobby. I'm not proud of them. Some of them, it's funny, because I was showing my son a couple of bits of really poor airmanship on my behalf that led to two very near incidents that would have been very bad. And I was using those as an example of a famous guy in the jet scene years ago called air show-itis. And it was certainly a younger Ali Mishinji falling into air show-itis mode and nearly getting it wrong.

[27:54] Speaker 5: Well, as long as nearly getting it wrong and not ending badly, that's something you learn from and you can move on to the next day. Right. Yeah.

[28:02] Speaker 3: I would be interested in a ballpark figure of how many airplanes you would say that you've re-kitted.

[28:09] UNKNOWN: Oh, God.

[28:10] Speaker 3: Ooh. I mean, ballpark, I mean, you know, we're not… Yeah, too many to count. …tie you down to a specific number. But I would be interested in knowing just off the top of your head about how many you think.

[28:20] Speaker 5: That's an embarrassing question to ask.

[28:23] Speaker 2: See, here's a difficult one, because part of my job is re-kitting airplanes. Oh, well, that's true.

[28:28] Speaker 3: Okay.

[28:29] Speaker 2: I have this habit of when an airplane needs stress testing, stress testers to destruction. They tend to call upon me. Nobody wants to use me in the development of a process when they are at the peer review stage, which is when things can… We're too far committed, if you like. But, yeah, certainly when it comes to somebody to fly to a point of destruction, I think my name's pretty high on the list.

[28:57] Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've re-kitted a lot of airplanes, most of them in the last seven years. In fact, nearly all of them in the last seven years on purpose. Okay. Yeah.

[29:10] Speaker 3: That's a good way to test that. So, let me rephrase the question. Airplanes that you have cared about, that you have crashed, how many would you say that was?

[29:19] Speaker 2: I care about all of them. That is true. I do, I'm a very strong believer, firm believer in caring about every one of them, whether it's, you know, sample number one or a priceless jet. But, yeah, if I had to put a number on it, it's been so long, I could have just forgotten so many. And in the last year, if we explored the work ones, probably three.

[29:51] Speaker 3: Oh, that's a lot smaller than I would have anticipated.

[29:56] Speaker 2: Honestly, it is a bizarre stage in the hobby we're at. Whether I have lined up my maturity, getting on in age, and my better decision-making with much better equipment, I don't know. But, yeah, the crash count now. It's just, say, the conversation we had at work the other day, the lifelong RC guys sitting around just chewing the fat. And we're like, who knows how little we crash nowadays? And it's true.

[30:25] Speaker 2: You know, I think combined the things with being young, being, you know, can I say, hot-headed, not the best decision-makers, coupled with not the best equipment, 72 megahertz stuff, poor range, not great structurally built airplanes, and the desire to show off more than we should. We used to crash a lot more.

[30:51] Speaker 4: That's all I've noticed over the last few years is mechanical issues have been very few and far between anymore. Equipment failures, radios that, you know, pick up stray signals, and, you know, it's almost nonexistent failures. Those seem to be almost nonexistent anymore.

[31:07] Speaker 3: The crashes I see at our field, by and large, have been pilot error. I mean, not a fault of the airplane, normally.

[31:15] Speaker 5: Pilot error, but blamed on something else.

[31:20] Speaker 2: That's the irony, I find, is that nowadays we crash a lot less due to mechanical error, but we attribute it a lot more to mechanical error. It's like, it's an odd curve.

[31:33] Speaker 5: Yeah, that bell curve kind of gets up there where there's a lot of lying going on. Yeah.

[31:37] Speaker 2: And that's always been the case. We always, I remember, we always had a guy, you know, the club when I was young that would nail it in the ground, but they would just go, okay, you know, it's what it is, and you pick it up and go away. Nowadays, it's like, every time I see a plane take off with a full-up elevator and flick in the ground, still with a full-up elevator, and the guy's like, had no control.

[31:56] Speaker 2: It turns into a crash scene investigation, which turns into a SAD video, which turns into a Facebook post of 300 people saying he should get his money back from Horizon or Motion or whatever, because the plane was obviously at fault, and I'm like, dude, the plane was perfect. The only thing that was at fault was your right thumb was buried.

[32:18] Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we've all seen those. Oh, yeah. That's funny. So you, okay, you deal with the best of the best all the time. I mean, you have top-of-the-line equipment and all that. Do you enjoy going back to your roots at all and, like, going to swap meets or anything like that, or do you just stick pretty much with all new stuff?

[32:37] Speaker 2: I love the idea of it. I love the retro, the nostalgia of it, but every time I do it, I regret it. I've done a lot of retro RC-ing in the last 10 years, and I don't think much of it I've really enjoyed when I've done it, you know, and the same with swap meets. I love the idea of swap meets.

[33:00] Speaker 2: I remember the excitement of going with my dad to a swap meet and not knowing what was going to be there and, you know, rushing around the hall and buying a small free-flight plane that was already assembled. I remember all of that, and I don't know whether I've changed or swap meets have changed. I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of the two, a combination of the two, but, yeah, nowadays I just don't get that same buzz from when I get there.

[33:27] Speaker 2: The lead-up to it's great, but, you know, the actual, when I get there and I see, oh, great, it's, you know, it's another hall full of ARFs that somebody's battered around and smashed to bits or left in a corner for five years, and, yeah, so that side of things, not so much. And the same with the RC side. I've got a whole stack around the corner of retro vintage aerobatic aeroplanes, which I love to pieces. I absolutely adore them.

[33:56] Speaker 2: They are built by an absolute craftsman in the UK, Stuart Foster, and I'm very fortunate that he probably once a year will sell me one of his aeroplanes, and I'll buy one every time. I'll buy all of them, if you would let me, and I just don't enjoy the operation of them. I don't, they're not up to today's standards.

[34:14] Speaker 2: They really aren't, and my father is a massive collector of RC, vintage RC, like crazy amounts, and a little bit's rubbed off on me, so I started recently collecting a range of aeroplanes that I had and aspired to own when I was a kid, which was a Japanese company called EZ. And it started about five, six years ago, where I got my dream vintage aeroplane, and I threw it the once, and that's when I coined the phrase, retro RC, best left in the past, best left as a memory.

[34:50] Speaker 2: Because, you know, it just don't work as well as the modern stuff, and I hung that one up, and now whenever I get an EZ aeroplane, I'll either assemble it and hang it from the ceiling in my workshop, or leave it in a box and now and again lift up the box, enjoy that bit, but then close it again and put that desire to operate it long, long aside. So, yeah, it's something I played with a lot, and it left me torn.

[35:15] Speaker 2: I really would like it to work better, because I have much fonder memories of the old school stuff, but the brutal truth of the matter, it doesn't hold a candle to what we've got now.

[35:27] Speaker 3: No, I agree with what you're saying, but for me, personally, I like to fly old designs with modern equipment, if that makes sense. You know, like, we built the dualist from plans, and my dualist doesn't fly like I remember my dualist from the 80s. You know what I mean?

[35:44] Speaker 5: Yeah.

[35:44] Speaker 3: With the modern engines and the modern radios, I don't have any of the issues that I had when it was. So, I find that flying the older equipment with, or the older airplanes with new equipment is, for me, pretty satisfying. Best of both worlds. Yeah.

[35:58] Speaker 4: Yeah, so you do the automotive equipment of a restomod. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

[36:02] Speaker 2: That makes sense. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[36:07] Speaker 5: So, do you prefer building or flying?

[36:11] Speaker 2: Oh, I like 98% flying.

[36:15] Speaker 5: Oh, okay, okay.

[36:17] Speaker 2: I tolerate building. I do a lot of it. I do a lot of assembly. I hate to call it building. I have this discussion quite often with people, what quantifies as building, and I quantify myself as an assembler. I work on, at any one time, four airplanes a week, and they can be from the stage of designing it for Hangar 9 right through to getting a sample and nailing it together.

[36:44] Speaker 2: But the simple fact is, every week of every month of every year, I am assembling and building, or whatever you want to call it, working on an RC airplane. So, I'm not adverse to building. I just don't enjoy it. It doesn't give me a sense of satisfaction. It doesn't give me a sense of achievement, of enjoyment, and I know that that's a personal thing. I know that I'm the odd one out. I made mention to Pete Goldsmith. He's a very famous scale builder, modeler, designer.

[37:14] Speaker 2: He lives about a mile and a half from my front door, and he's tried many a times to get me into the passion of his of building, and to me, it's just a means to an end. I just want to get to the flying field and play.

[37:27] Speaker 5: Okay. So, with winter coming up, I mean, obviously, we're in central Illinois, so we have different seasons where we don't get out to fly as much during the wintertime. Do you have a place like you might do indoor flying, or do you still make it out to the field year-round?

[37:42] Speaker 2: Year-round. We never stop. Unless it's over 20 mile an hour winds, yeah, we will be in the field year-round. We were flying today, so it was 16 gusting to 30 today. Temperature just above freezing, yeah, it's part of the job. It can't stop. The way the product development works, if we miss a week behind schedule of a product, that puts us a month behind ETR, the launch date, on average.

[38:14] Speaker 2: So, yeah, if we took off four months, yeah, the average development stage of a process would be stretching to three, maybe four years. So, yeah, we're non-stop out there flying continually, and yeah, and same working in the workshop.

[38:33] Speaker 3: How do you keep your hands warm when you're flying and weather that cold?

[38:39] Speaker 2: The guys have different means methods. A couple of the guys are using transmitter mitts in the real extremes of cold. I can, I do use one very, very infrequently. I used to use one when I went slope-soaring in the UK because of the constant winds and the long flights that you do slope-soaring.

[39:00] Speaker 2: But in a PD role, I just do the hit-and-run method. So, I will literally fly out of the hangar, get my flight in, and then straight rush back in and start using hand warmers, gloves, and so forth. I can't fly with gloves, but yeah, it's a case of limiting the exposure for me.

[39:21] Speaker 3: It's a personal question. Are you a thumb flyer, or do you use the pinch method?

[39:25] Speaker 2: Thumbs for me. It's the way I was taught, and I'm a firm believer in whatever system you were taught to fly on, whether it's mode one, two, four, pinching it with your toes, you know, a lip with it. So, whatever works for you, stick to it. It's the best system.

[39:43] Speaker 3: Yeah, because I've tried to teach myself the pinch method, and I can't, I just can't do it.

[39:48] Speaker 2: Yeah. I have to, part of the job of flying a lot of different stuff is people have different transmitter layouts, switches, and so forth, different modes, through mode one and two, and so forth. But just recently, at a jet event in California, I had to fly a quite expensive airplane on pinch mode because the customer had put his retract switch on a little switch on the end of the stick. So, yeah, if I put my thumb on the end of the stick, it would put his gear away.

[40:21] Speaker 2: So, yeah, there was nothing more to focus your mind than thinking, all right, this guy's $20,000, $30,000 jet. If I hit his gear whilst I'm going down the runway, I'm going to wipe out the underneath of it. So, I had to fly pinch a lot there, and it wasn't nice. I didn't enjoy it, but it's doable.

[40:38] Speaker 4: So, being from Europe, you've learned on mode one. Is that correct?

[40:44] Speaker 2: No. Everyone, it's amazing how many Americans believe that. So, we used to have a hobby business in the UK, and we computerized everything, and we could track how many mode one radios sold versus mode two radios. And we were a pretty big dealer in the UK, six stores, you know, not the only dealer, but we had a pretty good share of the marketplace. And our system showed that it was at the peak, the peak, the peak was 90% mode two, 10% mode one.

[41:18] Speaker 3: Wow. Really? That's surprising.

[41:20] Speaker 2: But the conception here is that everyone flies mode one in England. I don't know where that came from.

[41:24] Speaker 4: That is the perception here, that's for sure. Yeah, that's what I always assume. What we've always been told is Europeans fly mode one. Yeah, that's so funny.

[41:32] Speaker 5: So, okay, so I was going to ask, you answer the question for year-round flying as a product developer. What about on a personal note? Do you actually go out on the weekends on your own or evenings or anything like that? Well, I guess not evenings because it's dark at five o'clock now, but do you try and get out and enjoy it like as a hobby still in the winter, or does that kind of go away because of the cold?

[41:53] Speaker 2: It goes away a little bit because of the job. So, whatever itch I've got gets scratched by having to go out there and do flying work, which is a lot. So, there's that. But I will say my single most favorite flight of the last three or four years has consistently been the flights that I've done in the snow here. I love it. I love snow. I don't love winter. I enjoy aspects of winter. I enjoy the seasons.

[42:27] Speaker 2: But what I really do love is that Illinois day, blue sky, no wind, white powder everywhere, absolutely still air, quiet. It's just the best time to fly. I did a Draco video a couple of years ago when that came out. I did a on the fly in the snow. I did another one in the snow, kind of what the product was now. But, yeah, I love it. I love, love, love that time of year flying. Give me that over 100 degree temperature with 100% humidity any day.

[43:01] Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll agree with that. I was out in the garage the other day trying to find my skis for my Tundra.

[43:09] Speaker 5: So, obviously, you work for Spectrum, so you, I'm sure, fly Spectrum. What is your radio that you use right now? And can I take a guess?

[43:21] Speaker 2: Go for it.

[43:21] Speaker 5: I'm guessing an IX-20.

[43:23] Speaker 2: Nailed it.

[43:24] Speaker 5: Ah, okay. Both of these guys are sitting here shaking their heads at me like, no.

[43:28] Speaker 2: Best radio feelings I've had.

[43:30] Speaker 5: We have, like, Tommy and I fly IX-12, and we really like that one. But, yeah, I've thought about one of these days upgrading to an IX-20, and I've heard a lot of good things about them.

[43:41] Speaker 2: Like I say, you know, it's so difficult to take it as what it is. But, you know, yes, Horizon Hobby pay my salary. They do pay my way in terms of my wages. They don't buy my model airplanes. My model airplanes are my model airplanes. I pay for every single part of them. I have a Horizon Hobby team deal, which gives me an allowance on the servos and the receiver and the batteries and the extension leads. But the planes are mine.

[44:14] Speaker 2: You know, my boss isn't going to sign off on that half-scale glider. I wish he would. He's not going to sign off on that. So what I'm trying to get at is the planes that they fly are all on my dime. And if I didn't have faith in the radio system, then I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't fly it. I've got way too much at stake, you know. I had to work it out one day of what's invested in the airplanes versus what I get as my team deal. And, yeah, it's so far one-sided.

[44:44] Speaker 2: And then it's incredible. So, yeah, I've never had – and I'm jinxing it now. I'm touching wood as best as I can. But I've never had such an extended period of trouble-free flying as where I'm at now for the last four years. And I do attribute that to the transmitter. Of course, the RF side of things has improved a hell of a lot. The receivers have improved. Batteries have improved and so forth. But just singularly, that transmitter has given me so much use.

[45:17] Speaker 2: You know, my primary iX20, my non-SE, is a four-and-a-half-year-old radio which started off as a beta test unit that they gave me long before the radio was available. And the screen was all sort of misfitted because it wasn't actually a production unit. And the timer on it was showing something like 600 hours at one point. And that's a hell of a lot of flying. That is. Without any trouble, without any grief, you know.

[45:44] Speaker 2: So it certainly, for me, has been the most loveliest part of flying the last few years is that peace of mind, that not worrying. You know, again, we go back to that conversation we had at a recent Chinwag with the guys of, do you remember going downwind and thinking, you know, how far can I go?

[46:05] Speaker 2: Or do you remember the early days of EDF with 72 meg and you'd get that little glitch where the fan unit would be running its guts out and you'd have that RF emitting ESC and battery and you'd get that little glitch and that little PCM hold. It just doesn't happen anymore. You just fly.

[46:25] Speaker 3: So with all the hours of flying you do, you mentioned that you prefer flying 98% over building. In the past few years, what percentage of time would you say you actually get to spend flying, which is 98% of your favorite, if that makes sense?

[46:44] Speaker 2: Tough one, really, because I do a lot of the building and assembly during the day, you know, whilst you guys are doing real work, I'm there mailing a sample together, getting it ready to fly. So, yeah, probably about 60-40, if I'm, without, you know, really analyzing it, spitballing it, 60-40, 60% workshop time, 40% flying time.

[47:14] Speaker 2: I do spend a lot of time flying and I talk about this quite often and I attribute what I do, the age I'm at and the stage I'm at in terms of my flying career, a lot of it down to the amount that I fly and also the diversity of what I fly. You know, I fly some really, really amazing, beautiful airplanes, but I also fly some not some amazing ones. And there's as much to be learned from those as there is, you know, the incredible airplanes.

[47:42] Speaker 2: And I'm in that fortunate position that we'll go out and fly some samples that aren't great. You know, they're really like first-round samples, especially the eFlight stuff, which is CNC machined. They're not injection molded at that stage with just proof of concept. They can be quite a handful to fly sometimes, especially the smaller, higher loaded ones where we're just trying to prove, okay, can we make this thing work? Those samples really keep you on your toes.

[48:12] Speaker 2: And having the opportunity to fly those, I think, is, yeah, a big part of what keeps me going and it keeps my thumbs alive sort of thing. And also the experience of knowing, like reading a situation, going, right, you know, I'm going to lose an elevator here. Okay, it's not the end of the world. I've got another one. It's all part of keeping you current and, yeah, keeping you active.

[48:38] Speaker 3: So I can imagine, like, a recent example would be the new Voodoo Mustang from eFlight. I'm sure that thing was probably not a lot of fun to fly without AS-3X. Would I be correct?

[48:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, AS-3X, we didn't test that without AS-3X. That came because that was effectively an existing airplane. It wasn't a ground-up design. We already had a UMX Mustang, so that was what we call a refresh. I think like a refresh phase two where we didn't just put a new color scheme on it. We put new electronics in it. We put a new motor, new speed controller, and that was that.

[49:22] Speaker 2: But what made that one interesting was the first round sample of Voodoo had an even hotter motor than what it's got in it now. And, yeah, I mean, it's a blast to fly now. But when we first got it, it was, I'm not going to say unflyable, but, my gosh, it was like, it was rapid, really, really rapid. And, yeah, I remember going into that.

[49:45] Speaker 2: And it was a challenge to launch on full power because the thrust angles was, we carried the thrust angles over from the previous UMX Mustang, and they weren't correct for that much power. So, it had this undesirable want to drill itself in the floor on hand launch. So, yeah, that was a challenge.

[50:07] Speaker 3: Well, I enjoy flying mine. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on this hotter motor you're talking about.

[50:13] Speaker 2: No, it will never make it. It will never make it to production. It basically, it was okay with considerate throttle use, but what we call customer mode, it would melt the motor out of the front of the airplane. Okay.

[50:29] Speaker 5: Fair enough. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, okay. So, I was walking through the hobby shop the other day, and I was looking up on the shelf, and there was a picture of you staring back at me on a box for UMX pits. Sorry about that. No, that's okay. It was cool, because it was after I joined out at Eli Field, and I was like, I know that guy. That's kind of cool. But anyway, so, with all the different products you have had your hands in, do you have a favorite one?

[51:01] Speaker 2: Yes. The OV-10 Bronco from Hangar 9. If I had to put a, you know, one airplane being my favorite, and it's not even my favorite, it's been the most rewarding. I've had airplanes that have sold more units than that, but that one for me was the most rewarding because it was completely my project.

[51:24] Speaker 2: In fact, if I'm going to be honest, it was a little bit of hoodwinking going on by me because I just went to my boss at the time and said, I believe we need a giant-scale twin, and literally, I don't know, I caught him in a good day or a bad day. He literally just said, yep, go with it. And so, there's another story there, but I basically, a lot of what we do at Horizon is teamwork. I mean, all of what we do at Horizon is teamwork on the air side of things.

[51:53] Speaker 2: There's always a team that's involved. It's not just one silo developer goes off and does it. But with the OV10, I sort of slipped between the cracks and just, it worked out really well timing-wise. I sort of developed it under the radar. I may have lied a little bit to my bosses on the sizing of it, which wasn't really a lie.

[52:19] Speaker 2: It started off as smaller than it actually worked out, but in a conversation with the vendor, I was trying to call their bluff and asked how much they would charge to build it at the size it is now, which is 108-inch. And they told me the same price as what it was specced at, which was 90-inch. So, I was like, nah, impossible. And I said, okay, stuff it. Let's do it. And held them to it.

[52:40] Speaker 2: So, it grew a fair bit between the original conception and the original what my bosses signed off on to what came as the final thing. So, yeah, that one's been like my baby. And then how it worked out flying-wise and presentation-wise and also the feedback I get. It's been really, really good. I mean, it started off not great because we couldn't get it. We couldn't get it fast enough. And then we couldn't get it at all during COVID. And then we couldn't meet demand.

[53:12] Speaker 2: So, there was a bit of abuse being taken there at one point. And that settled down with supply caught up. And now it's just sitting back and watching people. It was only like two days ago, I randomly, searching YouTube, found a video of one guy in Germany that had fitted four strokes to it. So, I was like, that's pretty cool. I had a look at that and watched it. And it was like, you could see the guy was really enjoying it. And for me, that's like the icing on the cake.

[53:39] Speaker 2: So, yeah, it makes it like, Cementia is my favorite.

[53:42] Speaker 5: Yeah, I saw that you shared that video and I watched that. And those sound really good. That is a very nice flying airplane.

[53:47] Speaker 1: Yep, yep.

[53:48] Speaker 5: So, with having hands in E-Flight and Hangar 9, do you prefer Balsa over Foam or Foam over Balsa or something else?

[53:59] Speaker 2: They have their place. I mean, I love composite. I love, you know, my aspirational airplanes are no Balsa, no covering. They're all fiberglass, Kevlar, carbon and fanciness. But they all have their place. I mean, the foam stuff, I'm looking beside me now at my racking system here. And I've got a diverse range of different construction methods and different airplanes. And I'm looking at the E-Flight Viper and thinking how much enjoyment that's given me.

[54:30] Speaker 2: And there's no other material that plane could be made out of and work as well as it does. You couldn't make that out of Balsa and it'd be as good. You couldn't make it out of composite and it'd be as light. You couldn't make it out of Balsa and have that nice shape to it and the rigidity to it. And again, that weight. So, yeah, that's got its place.

[54:51] Speaker 2: Below it, I've got another Viper jet, which is a slightly larger composite one, which works really well because it's a nylon indestructible jet. I can take that out and throw everything at it and it's not going to break. And then below that, I've got the big Timber 110 from Hangar 9, which, again, I couldn't make that out of foam because it would be heavy. And you couldn't make it out of Balsa, sorry, composite, because it would be too heavy, I believe.

[55:14] Speaker 2: And we couldn't have sold it at that price point. So, yeah, it really depends what plane, what size, what I want out of it.

[55:23] Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's understandable. I mean, I can understand each thing has its place. Since you started naming off some airplanes, I have a question. What is your number?

[55:34] Speaker 2: Tricky one to answer for me because of a number of different reasons. Number one, what is mine and what is the company's? I'm very blunt about acknowledging that a chunk of these airplanes don't belong to me. They're company assets, I call them. So if I look beside me now, I'm going to go back to that. That little phone Viper is mine. I book that out as a team, as part of my team sponsorship thing. I took an eFlight Viper. Below it, the Viperjet composite is all mine.

[56:08] Speaker 2: And then below it is the Timber 110. And the Timber 110 was sample number one. No, sample number two, sorry. So technically, that belongs to Horizon. I'm just a custodian of it. So, yeah, it's a tough one. If we're just going on what belongs to me, again, it gets more complicated because I have models in the UK and in the US. So somebody asked me this recently. In my position right now, in the workshop that I'm in, I have a floating count of between 50 to 75 airplanes.

[56:44] Speaker 2: A mixture of what's mine and what's works will be probably, let's say, 75 is the total number. 50 of those are mine and 25 are works. And then probably the same amount, a little bit less. Let's say 50 total or 30 or 50 total in the UK. So one time when I actually had to itemize it for our accounts, it was 100 pieces in total. And that was UK and US. And they're very wide range, you know, like probably 25 of those are small foamy.

[57:21] Speaker 3: I imagine that would be a very diverse collection of yours.

[57:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, I look around and it's not easy to see a trend in my fleet. It goes from all sorts. I'm a firm believer, though, in, believe it or not, restraint. It may not sound like it, but I believe that you can go. I've watched a number of people, particularly in my situation, working in the trade where stuff can just get away with it, you know. So particularly in Horizon, where we go through development airplanes, where we can't give them away. We can't sell them.

[58:04] Speaker 2: They've got to stay internally from a legal point of view. We hate to see them. We don't destroy them. So it's quite easy, our place, to end up taking, I don't know, 25 new airplanes or 25 airplanes a year away from work. You know, you feel like you're saving them sort of thing. And then you end up with a basement just full, full, full. So we have a rule in my house between my son and I. And, yeah, don't forget, there's a bunch of my kids' airplanes in there as well.

[58:33] Speaker 2: But we have a rule, which is as soon as an airplane has to go on the floor, as soon as the wheels have to sit on the floor, it's time to move stuff on.

[58:43] Speaker 5: Oh, that would not fly around here. That's a good rule. I like that. I've got too many stored on the floor. Maybe I need to take that up, though.

[58:51] Speaker 2: That's a good idea. Otherwise, I would be, we would have airplanes just stacked up on top of each other. I'm not a meticulously neat workshop. It's not like a surgical lab, but it's pretty neat by workshop standards. And I'm a firm believer, and this is something I've carried across from the UK, if it has to go on the floor, then you've got too many.

[59:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, and if it sits on the floor, it gets flat spots on the wheels anyway.

[59:16] Speaker 2: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. See?

[59:19] Speaker 5: Cool. A couple more questions. I'm curious with all the different options you have. Do you prefer nitro, gas, electric, or turbine-powered?

[59:34] Speaker 2: Oh, heck no to nitro. I've got no time for it anymore, which I feel so, so much of a sellout because I grew up on it. You know, it got me where I am now. I have amazingly good memories of nitro, glow fuel, we call it in the UK. But, yeah, operations with methanol-based fuels. But having dabbled in it recently, it's one of those things. I'm sure somebody's got great memories of changing the TV set from a little button on the front of it.

[1:00:07] Speaker 2: But, you know, you don't want to be doing that nowadays. So, yeah, not nitro. I am actually finding myself becoming more and more repulsed by gasoline engine noise of late. I just caught myself saying it to the PDs at work. I'm working on a Hangar 9 airplane, and I've got the electric version and the gas version. And I had to fly. Well, I didn't have to. Part of work, part of the development was flying the gas version.

[1:00:36] Speaker 2: And I'm like, if I don't ever fly this gas version ever again, I won't be sad. Just the noise, the non-smoothness of it, yeah, just the electric wins out every time on that stuff. And go back to the OV-10. I built two OV, well, I built three OV-10s, but two OV-10s, which are still alive today. And one was gas, one was electric. The electric one has north of 500 flights on it. The gas one has north of 12 flights on it. So, in the same time span. Did you say 12? 12, yeah, 12.

[1:01:15] Speaker 5: Well, it's just the ease, I see it. I get it.

[1:01:17] Speaker 2: Yeah, ease, convenience, I'm lazy, I just want to fly back to that hole. I don't want to be, you know, anything that gets between me and flying a toy is like, it's not a good day. So, yeah, electric wins on that side of things. And then we have the turbine thing, which, yes, to me is still the ultimate. I still get a rush. I still like the noise. I still like the smell. The performance is incredible.

[1:01:43] Speaker 2: EDF is wonderful, but it hasn't caught up with what I can get out of the turbine system. So, yeah, I'd separate EDF and turbine and say turbine wins. And then nitro, gas and electric, I've got to say, it's electric for me.

[1:01:59] Speaker 5: Good answer. I like that one. Yeah. I'm not a big nitro guy either. So, Tommy loves nitro.

[1:02:03] Speaker 3: Well, that makes sense to me because, you know, Ali likes to fly more than he likes to tinker. And let's be honest, Glow Fuel requires a lot of tinkering. And that's what makes me tick.

[1:02:13] Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of tinkering.

[1:02:14] Speaker 3: Just like, you know, just like he said earlier, there's something for everyone in the hobby.

[1:02:18] Speaker 2: So, yep, definitely.

[1:02:19] Speaker 4: I want to thank Ali for three or four years ago, you let me fly your turbine jet at Eli Field. And I really appreciate that, you know, letting me fly something worth as much as my vehicle that I drove through the field. So, it was great. And I really appreciate it. That thing flies way nicer than I ever expected in an airplane. I don't know. It was some sort of large sport jet. And I, for life, we can't.

[1:02:41] Speaker 2: Bit of havoc. Yeah, my turbine elite aerosports havoc.

[1:02:45] Speaker 4: I believe it probably was. Like I said, it was three or four years ago. And you had several people. You're allowing to fly it on a buddy box. And it was just a great experience. I really appreciate it. And it was just awesome. And now you want a jet.

[1:02:57] Speaker 2: No problem. Pleasure. I mean, it's lovely to hear that. And to me, that's like the massively, massively best part of the hobby is sharing it. You know, whether it's sharing a bit of knowledge, sharing a bit of experience, sharing something that will help somebody do better at the hobby, or sharing a part of the hobby that not necessarily everyone's played with. I mean, I remember my first turbine flight. I'll never forget it. And it was a real struggle getting to that point.

[1:03:24] Speaker 2: It was a different time. It was a different country and not so much knowledge being shared. So, yeah, if I can be a part of somebody's first anything in RC, other than not be their crash. I mean, anything positive in RC, then that's a good day for me.

[1:03:38] Speaker 4: Yeah, you had no idea what my skills were. You'd met me for five minutes at this field. You had no clue if I could fly or not to speak of. You let me loop it, roll it, fly it inverted. It was great. Just super trusting on your part. I know you're on a buddy box, but, you know, it's still, it was just wonderful. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

[1:03:59] Speaker 2: They're so easy. They're so smooth. They're so predictable. I mean, it's really got a war around them. Oh, it's so difficult. And a lot of that has been put by those that partake in it, unfortunately. They want to make it sound more difficult or seem more difficult to maybe elevate their own status. It's not. They're the easiest things to fly, really. I mean, like I say, there's no noisy vibrating thing at the front of them.

[1:04:25] Speaker 2: The airflow is going over the control, so it's silky smooth. It's big. It's lightly loaded. It's easy to see. Yeah, everyone should fly one.

[1:04:33] Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I was out there with my 90mm EDF F-15, and this thing just flew so much easier. It was almost like a trainer compared to my F-15.

[1:04:43] Speaker 2: All day long. Give me a big turbine airplane to fly as opposed to a small, highly loaded EDF any day of the week.

[1:04:50] Speaker 5: Well, that is my, to be honest, in the next two-year goal is to get into turbines. So when that time actually comes to fruition, I might have to hit you up for some help.

[1:04:59] Speaker 2: Yeah. Even before that, if you want to get some stick time and see what it's about, I've got multiple airplanes here that I use for that Buddy Box experience now. We've got the little E-Flight Viper with a small turbine in it, a bigger Viper, another sport jet. So, yeah, I'm not struggling for planes to do Buddy Box experience with.

[1:05:19] Speaker 5: Yeah, I will definitely be taking you up on that probably come next summer. That will be fun. No problem.

[1:05:25] Speaker 3: Yeah, you just made Ron's winter. So something I wanted to talk about is when Ron and I started the podcast, we kind of told each other that if we help just one person get into the hobby and hopefully stay in the hobby, then what we have done will be worth it. Is there anything that you could say or suggest to somebody who's just starting out to encourage them to stay in the hobby?

[1:05:53] Speaker 3: Because like you said, you've seen the guy that comes in the hobby shop and buys everything and then is done in a week. What would you say to that guy to try to keep him in the hobby or girl?

[1:06:03] Speaker 2: Two things, I guess. One would be find like-minded individuals and try and align with those guys or girls as much as possible because it's a social hobby. We touched on it earlier, but I'm a firm believer in the social aspect is what keeps this hobby going and keeps the people within it going. And focus on avoiding the negativity. There is a bunch of negativity, particularly on, hate to use it, social media is an easy target. But yeah, focus on the positive.

[1:06:36] Speaker 2: There's so much more good in this hobby to give. But unfortunately, like everything in life, human nature creeps in and there's good and there's bad. For every one keyboard warrior, there are 50 club saints, club heroes out there willing to share their positive experience, share their positive knowledge and help you grow. So, yeah, find a group. It doesn't necessarily have to be a club. Clubs are great. Don't get me wrong. I do love a good RC club.

[1:07:06] Speaker 2: But I also love a gathering of people that just have a like-minded interest. So if that's in a park, on an industrial estate, and so as long as you're doing it responsibly, just focus on getting people that make the time and it fun. And if people aren't making it fun, accept that and go, okay, they're not for me. Don't judge the hobby on that and give up because there are a load more decent people out there that will make the experience enjoyable.

[1:07:34] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great advice, which is actually a good segue. You know, organizations, we talk about what the current status is of the hobby and the FAA. What is your take on that right now?

[1:07:46] Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed to say it's a bit like politics for me. I try not to get too involved in it. I don't have any influence on what the outcome is. And every time I sort of look into it a bit further, I get a little bit more stressed and a little bit more angst about it. So I try and keep my head focused on enjoying the hobby whilst I can, unless I can do something about it to change, which I don't believe I can right now.

[1:08:15] Speaker 2: So, yeah, obviously with work, we have a little bit of a crossover between organizational changes, say, between FAA, AMA. It hasn't been super positive for me looking in of what's happening in terms of changes from the FAA standpoint, but I can't do anything, you know, other than roll with the rules and try and adapt and be as optimistic and positive as I can. And so, yeah, I just, I keep, keep flying.

[1:08:50] Speaker 5: Okay. Yeah. And that's kind of where we are too. Like, it's good to kind of keep an eye on what's going on, but so far, like, it doesn't seem like it's going to be that big of a deal. Like, I understand they're wanting the Remote ID and all that kind of stuff, but really, I don't think it's going to be anything that affects us all that much.

[1:09:09] Speaker 2: I hope not. I was, like I say, when the whole FAA number thing came into place a few years ago, I got on a bit of a downer about that. I thought, oh, you know, the sky is falling. And look, you know, we're two, three, four years, I can't remember exactly how long it's been, but, you know, it hasn't changed that drastically. Exactly. It's, I'm hoping that is the course of action. I understand why things are being implemented to maybe control airspace better.

[1:09:37] Speaker 2: I get it. It has to be done to a degree. I'm not super pro it, but, you know, at the end of the day, if I can just do what I can to keep flying and keep flying responsibly, then I'm all for that.

[1:09:48] Speaker 3: Yeah, and bottom line is if the way stuff is written now, if you're flying at a designated organized airfield, you're going to be, you're going to be, it's going to be like nothing ever happened.

[1:10:01] Speaker 5: Yeah, like nothing changed.

[1:10:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, nothing changed. So, yeah, I agree. Enjoy flying now and don't worry about the future because it really doesn't look that bad to me.

[1:10:10] Speaker 5: Yeah, me neither.

[1:10:10] Speaker 3: And there's not a darn thing we can do about it. And exactly right. There's nothing we can do about it other than to support the organizations who are going to Congress to fight for that. And that would be the AMA. Ali, how, I know you've been at Horizon for a long time and I'm sure your paths have crossed with Kike at some point.

[1:10:31] Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, he was, well, not on a professional basis. He left, I didn't take it personally, but he left a few months before I joined the company. But, yeah, he took off and do the flex innovation thing. But I had some interaction with him when I was a team member and I was traveling from Europe to the US. So, yeah, massively influential character within the hobby. He has achieved a heck of a lot.

[1:11:00] Speaker 2: One of those very, very well-rounded, well-developed pilots who has an incredible ability to fly a whole bunch of different stuff. So, yeah.

[1:11:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, the reason I mentioned that is something popped up on social media today that he donated his Tournament of Champions. I believe it was an Edge, maybe it was an Extra, that he flew, I believe it was at 94, I think it was, at the Tournament of Champions. And it was the first time that anybody had flown a modern 3D, you know, profile in front of an audience before.

[1:11:36] Speaker 3: And I think it's pretty cool you mentioned the things that were old, you know, they don't fly up to, like, the standards of modern equipment. I feel like that airplane is probably the epitome, at least the beginning of what we would call modern 3D flying. And it's pretty neat that you can actually go to the AMA Museum and see that.

[1:11:56] Speaker 5: Oh, you said he donated it to the museum? Yeah.

[1:11:57] Speaker 3: Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Pretty cool, I think.

[1:12:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen a bunch of his airplanes. One of his F-3A airplanes, I think, is in the museum. I think one of his F-3A airplanes is in the Joe Knoll Welcome Room Museum as well. But I saw also, it was an extra, they donated, I think I saw the guys packing it on Facebook from Argentina to send it here. That's a great example of planes, how things have changed.

[1:12:24] Speaker 2: Because that airplane now, if you gave that airplane to the likes of, say, Jace Duccia, couldn't do half of what he can do with an airplane nowadays. Just the design of it, the control surface size, the servo power, the structural integrity, it just, you know, it couldn't be done with that airplane. It's like, yeah, it's a great example of the evolution of the hobby and then the technical aspects within the hobby.

[1:12:54] Speaker 2: I mean, I remember having a servo back in the day and it was something like 250 ounces of power. And that was the be-all and end-all, that was the most incredible servo. Now we're 1,000 ounces, probably 1250 ounces is what we're aiming for now. So, yeah, it's quite spectacular.

[1:13:15] Speaker 5: That's amazing how far things have come. Yep. Well, Ali, is there anything else you want to say before we get off here or?

[1:13:21] Speaker 2: No, I'm good in terms of subject matter. I'd like to say a big thank you to you guys for having me on. It's, you can probably gather, I have a very strong passion for the hobby and I like to talk. So, one of these things, combining the two is perfect. But, yeah, it's always fun. I can't state enough how fortunate I am to do what I do. So, if I get to share, whether it's physical, out of flying field, or in a podcast-type environment like this, I'm all for it.

[1:13:53] Speaker 2: So, thanks for giving me the platform to share what I do.

[1:13:57] Speaker 5: No, I appreciate it. It's been a long time coming. I'm very excited for that. So, one thing, though, Tommy just showed me a little note about some jets. So, I think one thing, if you're cool with it, I would like to get together, actually, at Eli Field with you sometime and talk nothing but jets. We have a few listeners that have reached out to us that have been talking about getting into jets. And I honestly don't know anything about them.

[1:14:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, we're all, apparently Dave has more jet experience than the two of us combined.

[1:14:28] Speaker 5: And that's just with you, Ali.

[1:14:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I'm all for that. I mean, let's organize a day. I can bring a couple of different ends of the spectrum, starting with a small jet, mid-sized jet, large jet, whatever. We'll get you some stick time. And whilst we're doing that, maybe run through some of the operating systems, some of the misconceptions, some of the taboos, do's and don'ts, and turn it into a jet day. I'm all for that.

[1:14:58] Speaker 5: I will definitely be looking for the weather to warm up, and we will get that set up.

[1:15:03] Speaker 3: Yes, Ryan has something to look forward to for spring now.

[1:15:06] Speaker 5: I can't wait. One thing you mentioned, too, you said something about Joe and all. Do you make it out there ever?

[1:15:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Didn't make it to the full one this year. We did full last year. I did the main line. I did the main show line every year, like their main Joe and all thing with work. And, yeah, that's the only one. Like I said, the one I enjoy the most is the full one, but we didn't make it this year because work didn't sign off on it. But, yeah, great place.

[1:15:36] Speaker 5: Yeah. We have not been yet, and I'm thinking that we're going to try and make it out there this year. We've got a few things on our schedule of things coming up, and that's one thing we want to try and hit. Yeah.

[1:15:46] Speaker 3: Cool. I think it'll be a cool show. Yeah, it should be fun. Okay.

[1:15:49] Speaker 5: All right. Well, Allie, thank you very much for doing this with us. I greatly appreciate it. Pleasure. And like I said, for sure, I will be in touch about some spring flying, and I'm very much looking forward to that.

[1:16:00] Speaker 2: Look forward to it, guys.

[1:16:01] Speaker 5: All right. Well, everybody, thank you for listening. Until next time, I'm Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave.

[1:16:05] Speaker 2: Allie, take care, guys.

[1:16:07] Speaker 1: 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.

[1:16:37] UNKNOWN: Bye. Bye.