Ep 178: Dan Landis from Boomerang RC Jets

[00:00:05] Hello everyone and welcome to the rc plane lab podcast i'm ron i'm tom i'm dave and i'm dan it's a and i'm dan this time not and i'm dave yeah i already had to work not to say and i know i was waiting to see if you're gonna do it so today we're joined by dan landis of boomerang rc jets we are actually recording on site in his impressive doesn't go far that doesn't that doesn't cover it but we'll leave it with impressive shop yeah thank you for the

[00:00:43] Invite my pleasure thanks for letting us crash your one man airplane party for lack of a like this i'm like i'm still in awe like everywhere you look there's something cool to see i know yeah i've

[00:00:56] Looked around and i still haven't seen everything because your your eyes can't like yeah it's too much to take in there's probably a few times we'll be talking and i'll forget what i'm talking about probably sensory over my eye yes oh absolutely and everything's got a story that i love the and that's the best part i think so thanks dan yeah absolutely speaking of stories start tell us your

[00:01:18] Story my story who is dan yeah aviation's been in my blood forever and i just passionate about airplanes flying everything to do with it started i guess we'll start at the beginning story that some have heard but when i was born the first question that my father asked the doctor not how is my son how old until he can go in the front seat of our family airplane that was the first question that was the first question when can i stick my kid in the airplane

[00:01:50] And at six months old my baby seat was in the co-pilot seat of our 182 that's awesome and off we went and never looked back having an airplane for me and in my family was a normal thing like i just growing up we had an airplane and we either went and flew models during the weekend or we'd fly the full scale all the way up through and you guys will like this story kindergarten my parents get a phone call and when they call dad it's going to be bad i'm sent to the office and and they call my parents and dad has to come in and

[00:02:24] Not like well what what's going on well your son was caught lying lying well what's he lying about well he's telling all his friends that we can go fly in in the airplane and go places and well his imagination is great but you can't go around and that was the wrong thing to to go and tell because i was at no point lying about going and flying in the airplane and the rule was as long as my friends parents were okay with it anybody was welcome to go that's awesome and so we so naturally they thought you were lying yeah because who owns an airplane like that's just not a normal thing

[00:02:58] It's not common yeah what kindergartner is going to be offering airplane rides all of his buddies yeah

[00:03:02] He's got to be lying would have been my best friend in kindergarten well yeah but it was i mean so we got an apology and on our way and continued flying and did the models and we flew my grandfather flew in world war ii so models were on the weekend he got out of full scale after the war but models all three of us would do on the weekends and we'd go and have a great time and we'd go fly the full scale airplane and as i started getting older i took lessons with dad's airplane and and went all the way through and on my 16th birthday on the day went and soloed that same airplane that i flew at six months old with dad and the following year 17th the youngest you can

[00:03:38] Be to get your license i took my check ride passed it and got the license in that same airplane nice so continued on and in high school got called to the office again this time it wasn't wasn't me being in trouble maker no no no this was not me being in trouble but of course you're like well what did i get caught for sort of thing but no i wasn't in trouble this was because for senior video they wanted to have video of all the seniors out from the the air on the the field at school yeah so i'm like well that's great but that's

[00:04:10] Before we had cell phones with cameras that were super light and i could do this so i'm like well i need to ask my friend and i have to have a friend go with me so that they can take video and yeah and so we went and the two of us went down and picked up the airplane called the school ahead of time we'll be there in half an hour and off we went and the entire high school got to look up and go hey there's dan that's circling overhead and we got the the video and it turned

[00:04:35] Out pretty cool yeah so you weren't in the video though that's i was not in the video but what can

[00:04:39] You do that's before photoshop so they couldn't like photoshop his face into cutting the face i

[00:04:44] Mean we were still at 1500 feet so i'm not sure that you were going to see faces so you can just

[00:04:48] Go with i was there yeah you were not to interrupt but which did you have first your flying your

[00:04:54] Pilot license or your driver's license well so in in new york you well in new york you can't get your you can get your license at 16 and a half or something so technically i guess i had my driver's license first yeah but not long after but not on the as soon as i could get my pilot's license but i had been flying at that point forever and probably soloing oh yeah i soloed at 16 and so yeah i was constantly flying that was never a problem and there was kind of that little

[00:05:25] Bit of well we live in new york the airplane is in jersey my junior license is really for new york but you're going to fly the airplane and if you can fly the airplane safely i'm not going to give you a hard time but don't get caught or you will lose all privileges so yeah so dad was very good with that and i could drive to the airplane so that i could go and fly yeah that's so cool i mean it would

[00:05:49] Be cool to say i had my pilot license before i had my driver's license you were pretty close

[00:05:54] As close as you could get i mean senior year we could we'd fly out to the beach and go and hang out and do all go to montauk point with everybody and we did it as a family too but i could take my friends at that point and we could go and do whatever that's cool so new york then born and raised born and raised in new york grew up basically my whole life till i moved out to illinois well so but we're jumping ahead a little bit here but so we do that following from from the whole high school and everything my my mind was that i wanted to be at that point an airline pilot so

[00:06:27] Started heading towards flight school and and school to do all that and did it did all the the stuff to do that and i'm a full-scale cfi flight instructor commercial rated seaplane multi-engine all all of the stuff that that you needed but got a phone call to go and fly large-scale uavs so i ended up with a turn in the career path and deployed to afghanistan and iraq flying a 35 foot wingspan 1500 pound airplane uav and do the launches and recoveries off of an

[00:06:59] Active runway with f-16s and c5s and apaches and all sorts of stuff so q9s nope those were they were in theater but not on the same base that we were on cool so i did that for quite a few years and i had already been flying models my whole life and flying pattern and was sponsored by multiple different companies and towards the end towards this point now i was flying for fataba and had been speaking to frank and don anderson and oh i'd love to come back and not have to

[00:07:33] Be deploying to the the sandbox and on one of my return trips home they offered me a position out at habico so came back interviewed talked with everybody and time frame about when was that would you say roughly 07 08 2007 2008 time interviewed with them moved on out here worked there until they sort of went out of business and were bought by horizon worked there for a little bit and did some other uav jobs and some training and some stuff like that for some companies and then

[00:08:07] Ended up here at boomerang and having a great time when did you for my own edification when did

[00:08:13] You start with boomerang roughly about two years ago okay so it's yeah well we were having a discussion on the way here and i couldn't remember i know we've talked before about your involvement with boomerang and but i had it in my head that it's been six or seven years and ron so prior prior to

[00:08:28] Working for them directly i've always been good friends with greg greg alderman and and done a lot of flight videos and i had been doing some builds for them on the side okay and that's worked so i did do that for a couple years ahead of time but actually working for them about two

[00:08:45] Years yeah and what would you say your position would be called would it be a product development

[00:08:52] I mean i guess product development a little bit of tech support for the customer service in my case

[00:08:58] Yeah a little bit of that helping out with what with stuff when i can and helping

[00:09:03] All the all the guys i mean like any of you guys and and whoever and it doesn't whatever time day night shoot me an email and give me a phone call and usually i'll get back to you if it's not the same day it'll be within 24 hours my experience has been pretty

[00:09:16] Quick and i've a lot of experience just a couple questions i've yeah i've bent dan's ear on

[00:09:24] Multiple occasions but anyway never never a problem cool so he says he looks at fun he's like oh tommy again come on no no no not that number yeah i'm dan's reggie oh you should never compare

[00:09:41] Yourself to him reggie is one of our friends and you'll meet reggie eventually i'm sure so gotcha and

[00:09:47] He will ask you a ton of questions and that's okay but then never follow through well i mean

[00:09:54] They're those guys and that's fine yeah you can't do anything about it so i've got another buddy who's a good customer but a very good friend as well and he's got me in his phone as drug dealer because every time he calls i get that he's getting a whole nother airplane i get that and he's an

[00:10:11] Awesome dude yeah in fact my wife lori when i told her what we're doing today she's like oh you're gonna go talk to your dealer that's what we're doing i mean that's true that's yeah it could be worse it could be so much totally could be yeah we could be like i don't know not to offend anybody out there but like a bass fisherman right how much are their boats 80 grand whatever it is i'm not asking for 80 000 for a boat right now but airplane i mean we're working up to it yeah i mean my other hobby still is the full-scale stuff yeah which are not cheap

[00:10:46] By the way yeah i long long long time ago i had my private okay and yeah i haven't flown in probably 20 plus years it's expensive hobby so i get it it is it is but dan was gracious enough to to look over my boomerang ranger before we started recording and these are his words it's not mine he said it was perfect so i don't recall that at all as a matter of fact i think

[00:11:11] He gave you a laundry list but it looks very nice thank you you should have seen his face when he's

[00:11:18] Looking at he's like why did you hear that i don't know he said very good job he just said that those words right for a toddler for a toddler oh you did good enough right right so let's talk i want to go back to hobbyco sure so what did you do for hobbyco or great planes so the the technical

[00:11:41] Term the the name that they gave the position was the outreach marketing manager which so i did a lot of events and i traveled around and i did demos and talks and went to some schools and did that whole sort of thing and that was great but in the office stuff unfortunately i was working on the car side of things which didn't really have a whole lot of interest but bringing in some of the thunder tiger stuff so i did some of their helis and stuff but it just wasn't necessarily what was my peaked interest but it was overall still in the hobby and

[00:12:14] Doing all that sort of stuff and going to all the flying events and i'd work with fataba on some stuff

[00:12:20] So all that was good maybe not quite as fulfilling as it not not quite what i had been

[00:12:26] Looking for or what i was told originally and kept being told oh you're gonna move to the airplane team you're gonna move to the airplane team and that never quite happened but i mean it wasn't bad i still went to all the airplane events and did all that so it was it was okay more fun working for boomerang a lot more fun working for boomerang the end of the time though with hobbyco the last year or so i actually did get to be the the manager of team fataba so that was fun getting getting to work with all the guys and do all that so it was it was actually very good they were not bad guys at all it was easy to work with them cool

[00:13:01] Yeah i was sorry to see hobbyco go go under or cease operations however you

[00:13:08] Want to put it upper management had zero modeling wouldn't take any advice from the modelers on what new products new ideas new things i mean i came to them with the idea of well let's do something with jets six or seven years ago no no no nobody's going to get into that and now look the jet market is the growing market yeah yeah i don't know yeah so that's one thing i was i was wondering too you've

[00:13:35] Been in rc we'll kind of keep this question to that since you were yeah the picture of you holding

[00:13:43] Was that an old craft radio that is an old craft radio and it looks like my shirt is from the los

[00:13:48] Angeles olympics in 90 in 84 84 is what that shirt says 1980 that's before ron was born no it's not

[00:13:57] Wait no it's not that's sad hold on no so obviously with that and and other things you've seen changes throughout the years you've seen just one or two what what do you think of like where the hobby is going as opposed to where it's been what do you think of how much things have progressed like jets now or i mean i i'd say it but it's more of a common thing than oh it is absolutely i mean it has been any time in the history of the hobby it's the same with radios radios are a lot different

[00:14:27] Than the craft radio from 1984. 100 i mean it's it's been phenomenal the improvements are just incredible the the new models what we can do what we can make fly it just stuff that we couldn't do years and years and years ago it's it's awesome i mean we're at the leading edge of all of it and it's it's super exciting to see the the jets are are the new thing but they're price wise it's not that they're inexpensive but everybody's now done 40 percenters 35 percenters and

[00:14:58] You can get into a jet for the same price as that so instead of getting your third 40 percenter and people are looking at oh well let's go and try this next part of the hobby and it's no more expensive than what you've already been what you've been used to yeah so would you say costs have come down oh certainly costs have come down the the amount of equipment that you need for a jet has come down i mean back in the day you needed a scuba tank to get it started and all sorts of other stuff right i mean now they're as easy basically as an electric

[00:15:32] Yeah i mean it's not wrong clicks on my throttle trim and move the stick up and down and it starts itself if it doesn't start it's a problem and you send it back to the manufacturer yeah it's like you're electric if it doesn't go there's something wrong yeah you're not sitting there with needles and getting is it the plugs is it the needles is it my fuel is there a block here is the diaphragm bad it's that simple go and play yeah yeah it's impressive and ease of

[00:16:00] Access yeah and and something that we as outsiders modelers not involved in the development of the hobby that in the day by day yeah that i think we take for granted sometimes is the amount of work it has taken to get to where we're at now like it has like how long did they develop brushless motors like brushless motors revolutionized the hobby and lipos and lipos and all that stuff we don't think about like the years of development and work it took to get to that point so like the exponential growth that we've seen in the hobby industry has been due to guys like you dan and

[00:16:36] And everyone else that has done the work and put in the years of r&d to make that happen and for that i'm thankful i mean could you imagine where we'd be if we were still rebuilding

[00:16:48] Brushed electric motors or or doing nitro stuff still and oh actually that might be kind of cool

[00:16:54] Every once in a while nitro is fun keyword is once in a while yeah kind of as a nod to the past

[00:17:01] But not a daily thing you want to do right here we exactly in the snow i don't miss nitro at all yeah even in the warm weather i don't miss nitro you can't miss what you never had

[00:17:15] Oh that's true you didn't have much nitro ron i did though not a lot but i've had enough to know i didn't like it

[00:17:25] So okay the the newest thing is boomerang you were with boomerang you're working with them you're doing a bunch of exciting airplanes and stuff oh absolutely can you tell us the history boomerang how did it come to be how did you come to be a part of it and what's what's next for you

[00:17:42] Guys sure so boomerang was started in the uk rough numbers about 20 years ago a gentleman that wanted a sport jet that was simple to fly and started with basically a twin boom like the elan and the sprints that you see currently which i like the elan by the way a lot absolutely great flying airplane and and that's where it started was something those designs over there and he took the company as about as far as he could go with it for about 15 or 16 years a gentleman in the united

[00:18:16] States was very interested in the airplanes and liked them but it was hard to get them over here so he started talking with them and figuring out things and next thing larry went and bought the company and moved it over here and he was still a one-man operation so it was still he grew it as best he could for a one-person job as a part-time job yeah that was a side gig correct and he he did a phenomenal job and he would go and visit the factories and and did everything right but it was still one person was hard to do everything that you need to do so he

[00:18:49] Took it where he could and we found out that it was for sale or sam the owner of heli direct found out that it was for sale and they started talking and worked out a good number and lo and behold sam bought boomerang and now it's one of the companies that heli direct owns and and that's the portion of heli direct that i work for and so we're doing all sorts of new designs and we're still keeping with the twin boom we still have the elan and the sprint and they fly phenomenal yeah i'm so happy those are still part of the product catalog oh absolutely and they're not going anywhere i forgot how good they

[00:19:23] Really do fly i've been working on a new motor or a new turbine and testing that out and put it in a sprint because it was an easy airframe to put together and fly it everywhere and fly a lot

[00:19:35] It's just a blast absolutely a great flying airplane not just a a trainer but truly a sport airplane and you guys can go and i posted some videos of playing with it down to my parents house over thanksgiving and and christmas and i i truly forgot how much fun that airframe could be so it's it's just a great airplane not going anywhere but playing with that stuff and so that's kind of where boomerang had had gone to and and now we're getting into the high-end composite airplanes that are all

[00:20:05] The fancy painting in the live skin hinges and just you name it it's gonna have it we've got lights and stuff we've got the gear doors now on the f16 and working with ftl we're the u.s distributor for the ftl models any of the custom paint jobs that you want and reach out to us directly and we can do what you want and figure out how to get it to you and and how quickly you need it yeah so how

[00:20:27] Did that not to interrupt i do that a lot by the way because i i have to say things if i don't write them down i forget them but how did that collaboration with ftl well what is ftl ftl is a manufacturer

[00:20:40] And they're overseas do phenomenal work and it was a sam and the owner of ftl were friends and they said hey you want to check out one of our airplanes and they sent over the original atom and a j10 last last year late december and got them saw the quality immediately was just incredible and something that we definitely wanted to pursue and work with them and it just blew up from there and we did phenomenal with atoms and j10s over the summer and and couldn't couldn't keep them in

[00:21:14] Stock so come october we had some some big meetings and became the u.s distributor for that product and they're just for their products and that's where it's where it's gone and cool they've got some incredible stuff on the on the market now that we have more coming they're also doing design work for us we've got airplanes that we've designed and that they're they're putting together or doing all the molds and and that stuff in the future so it's it's not a short-term thing

[00:21:45] We've got a whole long-term plan here oh that's awesome so more cool stuff oh yes yes things things that you've never seen before exciting exciting i don't know i just i just think it's really exciting i

[00:21:57] Know i know you do i mean that what they can do the custom painting it's just whatever you can think of we can do it seems like as a modeler right now as a modeler like if you want a certain jet and a certain color in a certain size you can just call up boomerang say yeah i want this and like we're not far away from being able to make stuff like that just happen it's crazy to me yeah it's i don't know it's so awesome to be in the hobby right now and not just with jets by the

[00:22:32] Way i mean there's like a whole everything yeah everything everything speaking oh go ahead no go on no i was gonna say speaking of everything is there anything in the hobby that you haven't done

[00:22:42] Dan i've flown control line i've flown helicopters i've raced cars on road i've raced cars off road i've done pattern i've done imac i haven't pylon raced that would be kind of fun to do

[00:22:56] Okay i don't know i've done a lot yeah flown lots of different things right so so i met dan well i met you not joe noll last year but the noll previous for the first time and in that first meeting i was like oh this guy's pretty cool nice he seems like a cool dude yeah he's in a jets who had no idea that you were an accomplished pattern competitor like placed like in some very very high profile events multiple times top 10 national finalist i had no clue who i was talking

[00:23:31] To i mean you're quite an accomplished pilot i'm just gonna say thank you and i and you don't come across that that way like that was not my impression when i first met you but i first met you you're like hey he's a jet salesman okay cool but there's so much more and so the first time you

[00:23:49] Met tommy what your impression of him was like i don't want to know god don't tell me i don't know

[00:23:53] Not at all not at all this guy no yeah i i really do enjoy i mean part of the cool thing at boomerang is we have a lot of the new the new jet guys do come to us and you see the excitement and the wanting to learn and it's a hobby right this isn't schoolwork you're here because you want to get into a jet you want to have the the fun of flying a jet you want to ask the questions you want to learn i love to share i mean that's part of why i keep my full-scale flight instructor rating current is so that i can go and share that experience of flying with people like i i enjoy that

[00:24:27] That's super cool to me yeah ron you should get your license you've talked about i would love to but

[00:24:34] I don't have the money now somebody who instructs there you go right across the table from you i know ron this is dan dan this is you've taken my thoughts away yeah because i've said it once now apparently that's what i have to do well yeah i mean it's fun i bet it would be like i i can

[00:24:55] Only imagine oh there's all sorts of cool airplanes to fly i know yeah i know that's for sure no it's not

[00:25:01] Going to work so speaking of flying full size since you're experienced in both full size and model would you say that experiences from one benefit the other oh absolutely how so please elaborate

[00:25:17] Just initially either one in enables you to understand what the parts are of the airplane and how they work and what they're supposed to do so you've got just the simple understanding of the parts on the airplane but then you understand how they work so all of that and if you have more more times you have failures in the model but it kind of does sort of carry over i mean not not exactly but if something goes wrong here you can troubleshoot back and forth between full scale and what in your mind

[00:25:47] From how you would do things one way to another but even the flying you understand sort of the lefts and the rights and up and down now full scale pilots always do get confused when the airplane's now coming at you because that's the biggest change right like when it's going away it's just like you're in the airplane but when it's coming at you and you've got 100 hours of actual pilot time you're like wait what do i do now which which way do i roll and

[00:26:13] Yeah so would you say that's more difficult to overcome if you are also yes if you're if you're a full

[00:26:18] Scale pilot starting into models it's a little bit more difficult not bad but it just you have

[00:26:23] To think about it to overcome that yeah yeah and you mentioned like learning what each part of the airplane does like i don't know if it's still that way but in ground school prior to getting my license they teach you a base kind of a basic understanding of aerodynamics absolutely this is how a wing generates lift and how a flap works and what it does so you have that understanding i can definitely see how that would benefit moving into models but i didn't know if models benefited going the other way well for aerobatics for example you

[00:26:53] Understand how the aerobatics work in the model it's definitely different full scale but you understand the concept of what you're doing i mean take a roll a roll is more than just aileron as you go through a roll you're adding a throttle you're adding a rudder there's down elevator there's opposite rudder coming back to upright and just adjusting everything it's not just bang the stick over and then you go and do it full scale it's it's a lot more work because you're physically there and you you're you're fighting all the forces actually with your arm and going upside down and having zero g depending

[00:27:26] On what you're doing and and all of that you're but you understand the concept of what the maneuver should look like and and roughly how to do it yeah cool what why are you staring at me i was just

[00:27:38] Looking because i thought you're going on to something else i don't i didn't know no i was just asking

[00:27:42] If the two benefited each other it sounds like they do absolutely in my experience full-scale

[00:27:46] Pilots are my hardest students yeah well i agree but but they understand the concepts yes they

[00:27:52] Understand how it worked but they're not getting that seat of the pants feedback and they just get they're not feeling those g's through the yeah through the seat of their pants yeah i get it

[00:27:59] Yep sweet so switching back to rc okay sponsored pilot by jr correct and so

[00:28:11] You've obviously had experience in in all the different brands of radios right you you understand jr you obviously understand fitaba because you used to fly with them also jr and spectrum were together at one point now they're now they're separate the protocols completely different protocols and all that so drawing from all that experience of all the different radio brands is there is there anything that so if somebody was on the fence they were going to make the plunge and and

[00:28:43] Buy a high-end let's say radio system is there is there certain features that people should look for

[00:28:50] Or is it all marketing it's what's comfortable to be honest with you i mean what feels good in your hands what what do you like the the programming what makes sense to you there there are certain protocols that i like better than others sure there are fields that i like i like to have a little bit of weight in my radio i don't want it to have this toy sort of feeling what can you do with the radios the programming for what your specific need is it's it's hard to to give you one per se but for me being a pattern

[00:29:25] Guy the gimbals on my jr there's nothing on the market that i have felt that has gimbals that are as smooth and crisp and clean as my elite or my matrix okay so and what kind of gimbals are those they're machined aluminum and they're just they're ball bearing they're just

[00:29:41] Smooth they're just right where you want to have a hall effect pickup well the reason i ask is dave is getting ready to switch okay he's he's abandoning the long held spectrum i'm leaving the protocol and he's going to make the jump to fr sky free sky i'm not sure how that's pronounced i don't either i don't know i'm not sure either so he's getting ready to try something different yep and i didn't know if maybe you had some insight as to what sort of things to

[00:30:11] To look for or maybe to i mean the purchase is already made but i i have not used

[00:30:16] That radio so i i couldn't unfortunately be any help i mean most of the others i can i can stumble my way through a spectrum a jetty a fataba jr i can i can help you out i would certainly try i but i

[00:30:29] Have no background in that radio it's going to be a wide open learning experience yeah only thing i

[00:30:35] Know is jr fataba and spectrum so i'm excited for you like you've had your issues with spectrum and all of your spectrum stuff is dated it's not fresh i'm dated so it was it was time i'm i'm more dated than you so i think or we're within a few months whatever but it was time to to refresh anyway so yeah it's time to upgrade and and it's time for a change and let's try something different for a change excellent and it's red and it's red red red okay it's an

[00:31:09] Anodized aluminum red yeah it's got 10 ball bearings it's machined all cnc yeah hall effect so i'm

[00:31:17] Hoping it's going to have some very nice smooth gimbals excellent yeah yours ron on your ix20 there with the aluminum also on the se yeah yeah so i'll be the only one at the table with plastic

[00:31:29] Gimbals sorry i mean you might be able to change that i don't know so having never really flown

[00:31:35] A lot with the aluminum gimbals i don't know what i'm missing so i'm happily it's it's hard to quantify

[00:31:41] But i like them i mean it they feel stronger they feel more precise whatever but at the end of the

[00:31:48] Day it just feels better yeah that they agree totally agree random thought so being sponsored by jr what does that mean like you you buy stuff at cost or they give you stuff or is it all of that

[00:32:02] It all depends i mean it's it depends on what you've done and all or all of that but the biggest thing is that i'm a representative and you got a question you can come and ask me anything and being a jr guy yet jr is my primary radio that i fly but i'm someone that you can come and ask it doesn't necessarily have to be the radio question you look for any of the team guys and across the board pretty much any of them are going to be willing to help you out with whatever you've got brand wise airplane wise we're all just normal guys and i've won a couple

[00:32:36] Of national championships so that helps i'm out in the public and talk to people and go to events so it's it's a phase to go with the company and that you can go to that person or come to me and ask a jr question and if i don't have the answer i will get it for you or we'll figure it out but i'll also help you you need help tuning your gas engine that's somebody that's an outgoing person happy to help you come and i'm happy to help you work on that stuff too so it's not just finite to one spot here so i i don't know much about jr radios

[00:33:09] I so the way it happened for me is the first airplane i bought i mean it's funny how we i guess choose what we go with right first airplane i bought without even a thought came with a dx4 spectrum dx4 you just without constant or without making the the decision in your mind i just stuck with that without knowing there was other things without knowing what else was out there so i'm big into the the spectrum radio thing and all that kind of stuff without knowing jr what like price

[00:33:43] Wise comparable to what you can get with spectrum like you can get entry-level spectrum for

[00:33:50] I want to say four or five hundred bucks all the way up to the nx8 would be would be about that price range which i i consider a full right not just like a full spectrum kind of thing oh yeah all the way up

[00:34:04] To like the ix20 se which is what 1800 bucks yeah 700 bucks something like that so what does jr have

[00:34:10] We've got two different 14 channel radios and pricing depends on which one you go with but you can get the one that's the the four to five hundred is price range you can bump up a little bit more changes some of the internal programming and some of the gimbals and that one's i don't know six to eight hundred again i don't remember all the numbers off the top of my head so please forgive me there then you jump up from there to like the matrix which is a full 20 plus endless number with x bus channel radio and you can do whatever you want and

[00:34:43] I want to say roughly 1800 and from there we can go up to the elite which 25 ish hundred which again is completely open-ended do whatever you can imagine and there's no end to what you can

[00:34:55] Program and what you can do with the radio nice and it comes with a novel for a manual

[00:35:03] Actually it's really thin it's an sd card i was gonna say it should come online with as much

[00:35:09] As much as things change it should just be a link to here's our our newest and most updated my 8103 came and the book was a good three words financial yeah yep yeah yeah but there's no changing on those there's no updates there's no no yeah that was a one and done yeah what you get is what you

[00:35:26] Get is what you get and you don't throw a fit some people do well i loved my 8103 i still have my 8103 i still have mine too i haven't turned i flew an airplane with it a year ago yeah i have one

[00:35:39] Of my original 10x's haven't turned it on in forever right that's that's how long ago yeah man

[00:35:45] That was a in its day that was a awesome radio it was i had the predecessor to that i had the x347 which in its day was pretty amazing it's crazy what day would that have been i mean like 90s 90s that didn't seem that long ago yeah it's 25 years ago i mean i get it but plus when you're

[00:36:08] Talking about these huge changes oh yeah radios and all that kind of stuff it's no time at all it

[00:36:12] Doesn't seem like it's just a blank and it went from 72 megahertz to mm-hmm yeah yeah seemed like it happened overnight it was quick yeah i still got a wideband am fataba you let me know when you're

[00:36:26] Going to fly that and i won't be in the field yeah i will be watching from the safety of my

[00:36:31] Vehicle from afar yeah yeah i can't imagine in today's radio environment what that thing's going to act like yeah exactly it's in a goldberg it's in my goldberg electric which i never fly yeah the amount of oh no i take that back i narrow-banded the receiver so it's a wideband transmitter but so

[00:36:47] It's a gold sticker then nice you remember those days gold stickers yeah vaguely that was a little

[00:36:52] But before i was old enough to remember dang it there i go showing my age again yeah that's what

[00:36:59] We do that's funny make fun of you because he's really young i'm not really young but comparatively oh so one thing you said earlier that i wanted to kind of circle back to was the custom color schemes how exactly does that work because like if somebody draws like did somebody just draw something up and say i want it to look like this and then you have to so you make it fit you reach out to no yeah yeah

[00:37:26] Like there's curves and stuff you reach out to us or to me and you give me your rough design or ask for a three view and i'll get you a three view of whatever the model that you if you want to do an atom i'll get you a three view of an atom you sketch what you want on there i'll send it over to my team you're sketching and we'll put it onto an actual computer unless you did it all computer generated we'll we'll play with that and and get that right and we'll get your approval once we get your approval on our rendering then we'll go ahead and have it painted and we'll send you

[00:37:56] Pictures from the factory and make sure it's what you were wanting and hoping and then we'll get it

[00:38:00] Sent over nice that is crazy that is it is nuts anymore that you can just yeah oh it's like i was

[00:38:06] Saying earlier like you can almost we're almost to the point where you can call dan say dan i want an f18 in this scale at this particular power level and i want it to look like this one go make it and then six months later you've got one it's it's crazy like we're getting we're like almost there pretty much nuts oh yeah to me it's it's just what like i said earlier what a great time to be in the

[00:38:33] Hobby i mean all it takes is money that's it that's the hard part that's it absolutely so boomerang most popular model right now what are you guys seeing right now it's the atom hands down and the

[00:38:47] Atom is just flying out the shelves and when would that have been released by the way so we we released it we showed it at jonah was the the initial show of the airplane and then just before jets over kentucky we got them in so we had them at jets over kentucky for sale sorry jonah 23 or

[00:39:04] Four four 24 okay last year i couldn't remember which one it was i knew that's where we saw it in person first but i couldn't remember where that was it last year the yellow one that i had

[00:39:14] There was the original prototype which has now been sold to a buddy of mine i built the pink one that was flew for most of the year yep love the pink one and it was great loved it we were at georgia jets a buddy of ours saw it our customer and was like i have to have that airplane i have to have it right now and off it went so now we've got the red white and blue one sitting behind me here that i put together and this one we did the the more i look at that that grows on me too and this one was cool though because i went the complete opposite end of the spectrum the the pink

[00:39:46] One we did with a 180 and thrust vectoring and all the cool stuff like that i wanted to see what i could do light wise and built it stock but as light as i could with no thrust vectoring and a 102 in there and it's 21 pounds add fuel lighter than my ranger yep yeah which for the size is amazing

[00:40:02] It's awesome yeah what's the wingspan difference between the two i don't remember the numbers off

[00:40:08] The top of my head but it's probably about 10 inches it's a good size wing area yeah especially

[00:40:15] For three or four pounds lighter yeah you sorry you talked about thrust vectoring and this was something i wanted to ask you but i'll go ahead and ask you on the podcast so so the thrust the nozzle right it's it's mounted to the pipe to the pipe is there any worry with the lengthening of the pipe when it gets hot changing the trim no nothing that nothing that i've seen no okay do you have to set it up hot or you just set it up on the bench cold and i set it up here in the workshop went and

[00:40:43] Flew and didn't have any problems never thought twice about it i don't know it was a random thought i

[00:40:48] Had because you're overthinking things yeah i tend to do that he does that a lot yeah can't help it detail oriented that's what i prefer there you go i like it that way there you go yeah that sounds all right so boomerang new stuff you've already touched on what's new that you can talk about so we've got the f-16 that that we've shown it's on the website which is sitting right over

[00:41:13] There yep there's the one sitting right here that was their prototype and flies phenomenal really enjoying that one really sets it off yeah i like that yeah and then we've got the two color schemes that we're actually going to carry in stock so you'll be able to get them and parts whenever you want them we can certainly again like we said do custom but we chose two color schemes that are going to be a stock scheme and one of them is your the 2024 viper demo team so the red white and blue demo team scheme which is super sharp and the other is a i don't want to say standard gray

[00:41:45] Because it's your gray military but it's not your standard we've never seen another f-16 like this kind of very bright with a bright vertical fin bright yellow vertical fin and a neat little character on there but then the horizontal stabs are black with yellow diamonds on them as well something that we had never seen that sort of color scheme done or even a custom one of that done anywhere so we went with something a little bit different there they both look really really

[00:42:09] Good some high viz yes yes very important when you're and they've got all the lights and the gear

[00:42:14] Doors and all the fun stuff and you've got some time on the f-16 and how would you describe the way

[00:42:20] It flies i think it flies great it's it's a point and shoot and it goes where you want it it's easy it i have yet to find bad characteristics for it and it just it goes it'll fly anything from an 85 to a 190 so i mean if you want to do vectoring we will have the kit for a kit available to add on to your pipe for that but i've got a 130 it's a monster on a 130 a 100 would probably be the ideal engine for if you're just wanting to fly the airplane and whatnot a 100 would be great also keep it light

[00:42:51] All right so that's the f-16 what else got the new mini viper it's a little bit bigger than the 90 size e-flight red viper and i love the color on this one and that's one of the production colors so it's it's a neon bright pink black and yellow trim it's all composite composite live skin hinged it's going to come with the edf setup and when i say that so it'll have a composite thrust tube we will have the turbine conversion which will have your aluminum thrust tube and your fuel tank available

[00:43:24] You buy everything together you save a couple bucks that way great airplane nice airplane small size yeah it's a great which is great so it can fit in the back of your car even in one piece i do have to take it apart but it'll fit in the back of the corvette so i can take the little car to the field too sometimes nice and actually fly a little car i say fun car but yeah

[00:43:44] Little car fun car all the same thing here yeah exactly no it's a great size and i love the the

[00:43:49] Fluorescent pink like it stands out i i knew i liked it i wasn't sure i flew it and and was like that's pretty cool it looks really sharp in the sky yeah when the sun hits that i can imagine yeah and i've flown that one on everything from a 35 to a 70 and it's phenomenal i went back to a 55 as just an average normal size turbine and five minute flight time and i still have probably two

[00:44:13] Minutes left in the tank nice real nice thank you yeah i think yeah i like that one all right anything else any other ones that you can talk about i know there's stuff you can't talk about

[00:44:25] That that's kind of what the main stuff we are going to be doing the atom is a plug and play we will be cool so it'll be the four color schemes that we've got but it'll have all of our torque servos in it landing gear in pipe will be in yeah basically add your batteries your gyro

[00:44:42] And your turbine similar similar setup to the f16 plug and play yep kind of the same idea same

[00:44:48] Exact concept as that so that that'll be your end of february with the f16s cool yeah and then there's a bunch more stuff that's on the bench that we can't quite talk about i'm excited like i'm

[00:45:00] Excited the next six to eight months to a year are going to be awesome yeah there's lots of stuff the custom painting really stands out to me like now i'm really starting to think about

[00:45:14] Yeah i'm envisioning getting a crayon drawing here aren't i it won't look much nicer this is what i

[00:45:21] Want i know i know my weaknesses we'll make it work so tommy obviously is in the market for a second jet because he rushes into things and just isn't finished with this first one yet but it's okay coming upon a second one i mean it's finished what you haven't flown it so well but it's finished it's not finished you haven't you haven't ran the motor so nothing stuff's not hooked up no plus you have a list of things to do to it that you messed up from dan that he pointed out

[00:45:47] But what would you push him to for a second turbine within the boomerang catalog assuming

[00:45:53] Honestly i would i would yeah i would go right for an atom yeah assuming i'm able to fly the ranger i would go to the atom and in realistically the atom is just a true the ranger is a great airplane too but the atom for for a sport jet all composite and everything yeah it's just it'll cover and do everything that you want it to do and you can stay with it for a while your 100 will be great you want more power a 130 will just make it a missile you want to do vectoring you can keep going bigger there's lots of stuff that that one airframe can really do and you can stick with

[00:46:26] The one airframe yep yeah so if you don't need a trailer right it will fit in the average

[00:46:31] Suv yeah without a problem and that will fit no problem it's not that much longer honestly than the if it's a little bit longer but it's not it's not much yeah so yeah but the plan would be to build it light first kind of like what you've done with your last one and then yeah if i want to try something a little more power and thrust vectoring you can add it later absolutely so that's i think that's yeah i'm just thinking about custom colors now i really like that fluorescent pink down there oh i

[00:47:00] Was thinking you're going like 70s mauve no no i've done that and i know i got enough flack for it i don't think i'll do that again we hope so dan you've been involved in a lot of different obviously plane types do you have a favorite that has always just kind of been like i need to relax this is not necessarily my go-to plane but my go-to type of plane or does it change throughout it changes but

[00:47:28] I mean it there's not just one time i mean last year i did not fly one of my gasoline airplanes at all not and it wasn't even that i didn't want to i just had all the jets and was flying the jets and that was just but i found them as relaxing as the other stuff and you were doing a lot of development also well absolutely but i mean i fly other people's airplanes and like and i've got the world war one airplanes and i've got all this and that and flown this and help this guy out and

[00:47:58] Flying is just fun it doesn't matter what you're flying i mean and even when i fly a full scale and i've been lucky enough to fly everything from piper cubs to l39s they're all fun it's whatever one i'm flying right now is the fun airplane it doesn't matter

[00:48:13] Yeah and judging by the number of airplanes which i'm gonna we're gonna circle back to that and the types here yeah you don't seem to have a preference you like them all i do i mean there was

[00:48:23] A year this is going back is it two years ago i think at the u.s scale nationals i flew my big l39 my foker d7 and in team scale i flew a friend super chipmunk and took first across the board with all three different genres of airplanes so from jet to world war one biplane to super chipmunk and we just it just they're fun airplanes and an airplane's an airplane and just fly it yeah which is

[00:48:53] Something because they don't all fly the same not even different different techniques not even close so to yeah to do something like that that's a testament to pilot skill thank you so something i like to ask our our guests oh yeah and we ask this of our on our surveys too that we send out to our listeners what's your number meaning how many airplanes do you currently

[00:49:22] Have flyable right now can you even count so when we end this podcast i'm gonna let you go through the

[00:49:31] House and count them suffice it to say it's a number that i don't i really don't want to count

[00:49:36] Basically everything in the house with updated batteries is ready to fly nice it's a lot yeah

[00:49:44] Yeah it's a lot cool so yeah we're not gonna try but it's in the hundreds i would say it's triple

[00:49:51] Digits easily and whatever didn't fit here is down at dad's and they've got a whole separate outbuilding that the entire rafter section of the outbuilding is filled from front to back with more airplanes

[00:50:02] Do you ever get to a point where you are in one of these outbuildings you're like i forgot all about that airplane all the time and then it brings back a really good memory of whatever and

[00:50:14] Why you're hanging on to it and that's why we keep and you don't ever get resale value so the memory

[00:50:19] Value to me is more important than trying to sell something like that explain that to ron he doesn't understand that like he gets he gives me a hard time about nostalgia and why i hang on to certain

[00:50:29] Things he he gets it dan gets it i mean if you looked his pulsar right here yeah that was my grandfather's airplane see i have since he passed we've never flown it again but it's a great memory i mean one of the silly memories with that airplane i remember he would take that to the car store when he would go to buy a new car dealer a car dealer when he'd go to buy a car if the airplane didn't fit in the trunk the car was not coming home with him yeah yeah see ron would have sold or thrown away

[00:50:58] That airplane years ago no no if it was his grandpa's absolutely not but i don't have any airplane that goes back far enough oh my history yeah but since i only started yeah but you still have a for your had a first airplane yes but it was let's be honest it was not like an airplane that you'd be like oh that's so cool that was my first it was a piece of foam yep that first airplane though so nostalgia do you keep the first paper airplane you ever made well no well i mean so i get it i

[00:51:31] Mean beer beer coolers don't usually stick around but i mean then their story ones and that millennium master it's a foam airplane up there but you'll notice all the paint off of the leading edge of the wing we played airplane bowling airplane bowling you remember the like little kid bowling pins the the plastic lightweight ones that you put in the house yeah we put them on the center line of the runway you couldn't touch the wheels knock them over and keep flying that's a great idea i'm not gonna lie it was just it was a club like a lot it was just something that the club guys came up with

[00:52:03] And so that's a cool airplane worked out perfectly yeah we need to do more fun fly things like that

[00:52:08] I agree what else what other ideas do you have never heard of that before that's awesome

[00:52:13] Balloons out balloons same thing how time take off loop roll landing yeah we used to do this as many loops as you could do in groups loops climb who could go glide the longest who could do the most rolls non-stop nice those are things spot landing i mean it doesn't have to be

[00:52:33] Anything complicated yeah and those will also develop your skills as a pilot yeah oh absolutely yeah

[00:52:41] See we've never done club things like that before well our club hasn't really done anything like

[00:52:48] That so we haven't had an opportunity yeah that's what i said yeah that was what i was trying to get to oh okay sorry haven't had the opportunity to rise you should do like fun fly kind of thing you should that's anyway too much work anyway yeah so cool too many to count is the bottom line pretty much yeah and that's cool i'm okay with that so that's all i got what do you guys think i'm still looking around and taking it in i know and this is just one room this is like there's a

[00:53:20] There's another room apparently behind us that he hasn't even shown us yet

[00:53:25] It keeps going it does it does it's awesome well thank you yeah dan thank you very very much for sitting down with us and letting us my pleasure invade your space thank you again for looking over anytime anytime when you're ready to fly let me know yeah we'll do you'll probably be the first one to fly so my pleasure you're okay with that absolutely happy to help very small list of things that i don't even need to fix there's a list they were suggestions and i'm going to take them so he looked at it and said why would you do it like that that's that's so dumb not quite that bad

[00:54:00] He thought that i could see it on his face i mean maybe

[00:54:04] Right no no but yeah unless you guys have anything i'm i'm done dan is there anything you

[00:54:10] Would like our five listeners it's been a great time i've enjoyed it and anytime you guys want to chat or whatever you just let me know and we'll we'll make the time we'll make it happen right on

[00:54:18] Perfect all right then you want to take us out then no you can't okay well thank you everybody for listening thank you dan for the invite like i said this has been pretty cool i'm still looking

[00:54:27] Around and taking i know it's hard to yeah makes ron's place look pretty pathetic it really does and ron's place could be impressive too very much so yeah i'm done thanks guys that was nice

[00:54:39] No actually mine is pathetic so now i gotta go sulk stop looking at airplanes and close us out thanks everybody for listening until next time i'm ron i'm tom i'm dave and then good night good

[00:54:54] Night everybody good night if 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 apps until next time may your landing be gentle