Ep 136: Spektrum SkyID announced, Ron’s 2 maidens, and Dave crashes!

[00:00:12] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. And I'm Dave. So I want to start off just by mentioning the fact that my dad died last weekend. Really, just so people that I know know. They're aware. Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of make that announcement. And then we can, I guess, move on to happier things. Absolutely. So what's been going on, Dave? It's been hot. It's been very hot. And I noticed today was very windy.

[00:00:44] It started picking up. I saw the tree at work start moving around a lot.

[00:00:48] Yeah. We got some rain. And it seemed like after the rain, the wind about tripled in speed.

[00:00:53] Yeah. Quite a bit.

[00:00:54] But I've been looking anticipatorily, if that's even a word, anxiously watching the weather for up in Wisconsin. In a couple of days here, because we're recording a little bit early, this is Wednesday night. Friday night, when this comes out, we will be in Oshkosh, Crystal Piper and I. So I will be extremely excited to see all the goings on at Oshkosh.

[00:01:17] I really hope it's cooler up there for you.

[00:01:18] Supposed to be. Okay. Like, I was, Springfield, I think, is supposed to be 97 on Friday. Last I saw was 99. 99. Okay. So in Oshkosh, as long as it doesn't change, Friday is supposed to be 83 and Saturday is supposed to be 78.

[00:01:36] Wow. That's a heck of a difference.

[00:01:38] It's possible rain Friday, but I think Saturday is supposed to be just a nice, nice day.

[00:01:44] I think they had a big storm go through today, I think.

[00:01:46] I think I saw something about that. I think there was a storm that went through Monday, maybe? Sunday or Monday, too, they were talking about.

[00:01:52] They had a couple, yeah.

[00:01:53] So I don't know what to expect, but I've seen a lot of stuff on Facebook, and I am very much excited.

[00:02:02] Sorry I can't go with you.

[00:02:03] Maybe next year.

[00:02:04] Yeah. We will see. I've been trying to go since 1983 and just haven't got it done.

[00:02:08] Really? Yeah. Well, it's got to happen one of these times then. Yeah. I was supposed to go up when the Concorde was up there. I was supposed to go up to that one. That's been a long time ago. That's been a long time ago. That's been retired for many, many years. Yes, it is. So I've seen some of the airplanes. Like, I honestly, I've not really followed Oshkosh before. I knew it was a big, like, air show type thing with a bunch, like, a fly-in.

[00:02:30] But I've been following, like, the EAA stuff on Facebook. They've got a lot of cool videos of airplanes that are coming in and being on display and stuff. Is it the Super Guppy or whatever it's called? NASA's airplane is going to be there. There's a new Boeing airplane I'm not familiar with that kind of has that same shape. Like, it looks like a big transport airplane that's up there. A10s I've seen. I have only seen A10s fly in person a few times, not very often.

[00:02:59] They're fabulous. Love them.

[00:03:01] That's probably my favorite airplane right behind the original F-18 Hornet.

[00:03:08] Legacy, man.

[00:03:10] That's, the new ones are ugly. I just cannot, like, I, they've changed enough to where I have no draw to them whatsoever.

[00:03:19] And it's only a couple changes. Like, not a- Square intakes and bigger.

[00:03:23] Well, the intakes don't, it's the strakes or whatever Tommy called them. I never remember the leading edge things that used to have that-

[00:03:30] Oh, the leading edge extensions.

[00:03:31] Yeah. That's what did it for me. Because I remember, like, obviously when I was growing up, that was the Blue Angels airplane. That, ever since I was a kid, that's what I remember them flying. And I still remember in grade school just sitting and drawing those airplanes and just, I love the curvature on whatever you call that part in front of the wing. And that's, that's really what drew me to it. It's amazing.

[00:03:53] It ages me so bad. I remember with F-4s. Those are cool. Then the T-38s.

[00:03:59] Oh, that was way before my time. I never saw them with F-4s. Like, what year would that have been, do when they switched out?

[00:04:04] It was in the 70s.

[00:04:06] Oh, yeah. I was nowhere near even thought of then. Dang. Start calling you Tommy Jr. for your age.

[00:04:15] Yeah, I'm actually older than Tommy.

[00:04:18] I knew that, but I don't think I realized that. That's weird. So, a couple other things I want to talk about really quick that I thought was kind of interesting. So, Spectrum has announced they're coming out with their Sky ID Remote Identification Module. So, figured they would be. Didn't know exactly how it was going to be. And their press release honestly doesn't tell you much. but I will read it now. All right. So, according to Spectrum. Breaking news.

[00:04:48] Horizon and Spectrum are proud to announce the Sky ID Remote Identification Module. This module will be available closer to the Remote ID compliance date of September 16th, 2023. Sky ID will be under $100 and provide GPS features through Spectrum telemetry, but is also compatible with non-Spectrum radio systems as a standalone device. Horizon Hobby and Spectrum are committed to ensuring that all our customers have the information needed to be in compliance with the new rule.

[00:05:17] Additionally, we will be providing educational materials and introductory pricing on Sky ID. So, that really didn't tell you much there, but hopefully closer to September we will know. $99.99.

[00:05:30] Yeah.

[00:05:30] Introductory $98.99. No, I don't know. But most customers who fly in an AMA-sanctioned field have no need to worry about adding Remote ID equipment if the field isn't approved for you. However, it is up to the user to determine if they are in compliance and whether or not they need to install an RID module in their aircraft.

[00:05:50] Understandable.

[00:05:51] So, I still don't, like, with all the stuff going on, I don't understand it. Like, I get the basis of what they're trying to do, but I don't know enough to have an opinion. And honestly, if what this stuff is coming at, like, the Sky ID, and there's going to be other, I mean, there's going to be a ton of other brands.

[00:06:15] Yeah, I'm waiting for a much, much cheaper version to come out. And the only time I'd ever use it is, like, using a float plane flying off of the boat.

[00:06:25] Off the lake or something like that.

[00:06:26] Other than that, I don't need it.

[00:06:27] Well, and see, so I listened to the RC Roundtable podcast also, and Lee, who works for the AMA, actually said that free approvals are actually coming in. So, a long time, it was denials that they were getting when they were – because I guess the AMA, for every sanctioned field, I don't know if you have to ask them to or not, but they're taking care of the paperwork.

[00:06:50] Yeah, they're doing paperwork for us, yeah.

[00:06:53] But he said that they are starting to get actual approvals for those now. So, I don't know where we stand with our field. It's kind of unusual, because ours is a recognized airport. An actual airport. So, I'm not sure how that's going to work out. But no tower.

[00:07:13] It's an uncontrolled airport, and I don't know what our controlled airspace actually is.

[00:07:19] Controlled airspace, from what I've looked at a while ago, like for Capital Airport, does not reach out to where we are.

[00:07:26] We are just outside of that, as far as I know.

[00:07:28] Yes. So, hopefully, since we are in uncontrolled airspace, we will not have to worry about anything. Hopefully not. I mean, I don't know. I guess we'll have to see. Because, I mean, like, honestly, there are full-size – not big – but full-size airplanes that fly out of there.

[00:07:45] And there's a commercial that flies out of there, the medevac helicopter.

[00:07:49] That might be problematic. I forgot about that.

[00:07:52] Everything else is private, but we do have that commercial life flight.

[00:07:56] That might be something that bites us. I mean, I don't know. We'll see. I'm hoping everything goes well.

[00:08:04] And we are a recognized emergency field for Capital Airport as well.

[00:08:08] Really? Yeah.

[00:08:10] I didn't know that. So, what does that mean?

[00:08:12] Here I am learning.

[00:08:14] So, if you take off from Capital Airport and your engine starts sputtering, that's a divert field.

[00:08:19] Oh. Well, shoot. Really, though? That surprises me. Because you could not get a big plane in there. There's no way. No, you're not going to get, 737 in and out of there.

[00:08:30] But your bonanza or whatever starts sputtering on you.

[00:08:34] That's going to be about the limits. Yeah. I mean, because, really, that's not all that wide.

[00:08:40] So, I mean, emergency, emergency, you put it down where you can.

[00:08:44] I guess that's true.

[00:08:47] It's either that or the lake. Your wingtips will take out the corn, but I guess that could be better than something else.

[00:08:54] Yeah.

[00:08:55] No, I didn't realize that.

[00:08:56] Yeah, there's no trees there or anything for 4,000 feet, so.

[00:09:00] True. See, I forget. Yeah. I don't know why that's kind of surprising me.

[00:09:06] That's why we can't put up a permanent shade shelter or anything on our flight line. It has to be so far away from the runway.

[00:09:13] Really? Yeah. So many questions are getting answered now that I always wondered but never thought to ask a question on why we didn't do anything like that.

[00:09:20] Yeah, that's why we have umbrellas and that's it.

[00:09:23] Because it has to be a certain width? Yeah.

[00:09:25] It has to be a certain number of feet away from the center line of the runway, and I have no idea what those figures are.

[00:09:31] Huh.

[00:09:32] Interesting.

[00:09:33] Okay. Okay.

[00:09:37] So fun. Fun stuff. That's okay.

[00:09:42] Well, like I said, I'm processing and there's a whole bunch of stuff going through my mind that surprises me. So that's also probably why we would never, ever have power out there because you'd have power poles that would have to come back, which would have to be a far enough way to do that. And since it would be going through an actual field, no farmer is going to want to deal with that.

[00:10:01] I'm going to say they could bury it, but they'd have to bury it deep. And that would be expensive. Yeah. Yeah, we'll never have power.

[00:10:07] Okay. Okay. Well, moving on then. That's it. Like I said, I don't know why that's messing with my mind so much. I never realized that that little grass strip.

[00:10:19] It's actually an airport. Yeah.

[00:10:22] Okay. Well, the next thing I want to talk about, if you're ready to move on.

[00:10:26] I'm ready to move on.

[00:10:28] So this I actually just found out today, the Sky ID thing I think I saw yesterday, Spectrum announced. but a main hobbies is going to acquire hobby town.

[00:10:39] Yay.

[00:10:40] So that's a good thing. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. There's no hobby town around here. I've never been to one.

[00:10:45] Yeah. I've been to a couple of hobby towns, but, I don't really know what our closest one is.

[00:10:50] Okay. I think there's some in Chicago. I think the one I was in was in Cincinnati. Well, that's even farther. Yeah. So I'm probably not going to go to that one..

[00:10:59] And I know there's one in Memphis. I was at one in Memphis.

[00:11:02] That's even farther. So I'm probably not going to go to that one. I think there's one in St. Charles, Missouri, which is probably closer.

[00:11:11] Yeah. St. Charles is just Missouri River. Yeah. So that'd be a lot closer in Chicago.

[00:11:15] Yeah.

[00:11:15] It's essentially St. Louis.

[00:11:16] But once again, I've never been to one of those, but let me, I'll read a couple of things here that I saw in the press release and I need to take my glasses off because I am getting old. So it says a main hobbies CEO. Oh, I'm sorry. Kendall Bennett is the CEO of a main hobbies and his quote is, we are honored and excited to bring hobby town into the a main hobbies family with almost 40 years under their belt or belt.

[00:11:40] Hobby town has been the go-to place for countless enthusiasts like myself as in Kendall Bennett to fuel their passion for radio controlled cars, airplanes, specialty toys, and games, as well as STEM toys. Tom Walla and Bob Wilk, Wilkie have developed a proven successful retail model and were stoked to bring, our expertise in e-commerce customer service and fulfillment to the table. Our mission is clear.

[00:12:04] We want to buck the current trend and expand the retail scene across the U S that I like.

[00:12:10] Yeah.

[00:12:11] Cause I'm like, I said, I don't know how Springfield doesn't even have a hobby shop or a hundred miles from glue. Yeah, pretty much. but he says, we want to create a space where enthusiasts can come together, discover new things, learn and connect with others while enjoying their free time. and then a few words from hobby town founder, Tom Walla. we have formed a great partnership with a main hobbies for the past seven years, hobby town founder.

[00:12:36] Oh, that's what he said. we have confidence. Kendall and his team and a main hobbies along with the hobby town team will continue the tradition of bringing an enjoyable one-stop experience to customers across the country. hobby town chain of 106 retail stores fans, 35 States features a wide selection of radio controlled cars and airplanes, models, toys, puzzles, games, and science or a STEM, toys.

[00:13:00] Tom Walla, Merlin Hayes and Mary Hayes founded hobby town unlimited Inc in 1985 and opened the first franchise store in 1986 company quickly grew into a hobby dealer or into a hobby leader and continues to breathe a brick and mortar retail pace setter where many enthusiasts nationwide are first exposed to the wonderful world of RC cars, planes, models, toys, games, and puzzles. what else we have here?

[00:13:26] Several United States markets are targeted for hobby town franchisee growth in 2023 and beyond, current hobby store owners who have considered expansion or were enthusiasts who would like to own their own hobby store can inquire through the hobby town franchise website. And you can look that up if you really want to. So, I mean, that's good news.

[00:13:45] Hopefully I, it's, it's not as good as having an independent brick and mortar store, but a chain is the next best step.

[00:13:56] I don't know how much success and independent store starting up now would have, unfortunately just with the e-commerce side of things. I'm going to be honest, like, since we don't have hobby shops in Springfield, there's a few in the smaller towns around us, but to me it's worth the drive to go to Brian's and the hobby shops that are closer don't tend to have stock on a lot of stuff like that Brian or something like that.

[00:14:31] So, if I just need a couple small things, I'm ordering on Amazon, I'm ordering through Horizon, or if Brian doesn't have it in stock, having him order it and picking it up. Picking it up, yeah. So, it would be nice to have something in Springfield, but I understand, like, the hobby shop we had here actually was amazing, but I think they outdid it. They, they over, overreached, overindulged because they had, I mean. Massive facility.

[00:15:05] They had tons and tons and tons of new airplanes, new cars, and that all comes at a cost that you've got to be able to pay for.

[00:15:13] Right.

[00:15:13] So, they didn't do a lot of the used stuff. Like, there was a few, like, used airplanes and things in there. A few used cars here and there. But it was not nearly what Brian has or what some of the other smaller shops around here have. And I think that's, honestly, that's probably where you're going to make a lot of your money. Being able to flip airplanes and that kind of stuff. Because there's only so much you can get out of new stuff.

[00:15:39] Yeah.

[00:15:39] There's set prices for what you can sell it for, set prices that you buy it for. And they're very low margin. And who knows how long things are going to sit there.

[00:15:47] Yeah, I don't know. So, at least this is something. And, A-Main, I've worked with them in the past. I've ordered stuff from them. Have you, see, I've never ordered anything from them. I've been super, super happy with my experience with A-Main.

[00:15:58] Really?

[00:15:58] They're out on the West Coast. Excuse me. And their shipping was incredibly fast. Oh, that's what I was going to say. For a West Coast shop. I can think of one. We were down in Mount Vernon playing with some stuff and we broke a car part. So, laying in the camper on a Sunday morning, I ordered parts from A-Main off my phone. It was in my mailbox Tuesday. Really? That's impressive. So, I mean, obviously, they've got to be closed on Sunday.

[00:16:26] So, they shipped Monday and they must have overnighted it. And I didn't pay for overnighting because I got it on Tuesday.

[00:16:35] So, you said West Coast, California is what I'm assuming. Yeah. I wonder if they have different distribution centers, maybe.

[00:16:42] I think they're all West Coast.

[00:16:44] Really?

[00:16:45] Okay. Well, that's interesting. I mean, I've ordered stuff from them since then and it hasn't come quite that quick.

[00:16:50] Yeah.

[00:16:51] But it's still less than a normal week.

[00:16:53] That's not bad at all. Yeah. I mean, heck, you go on Amazon now, the stuff that is supposed to be two-day shipping ends up taking a week to get to you. So, it's unfortunate.

[00:17:01] And their prices have been good. I've been really happy with them in my experience. I need to try it, I guess.

[00:17:06] Because, like I said, the stuff I tend to get is either I just need a couple things quick off of Amazon that I can easily find and do it or Horizon or Brian. Yeah. It's always good to have another option. Another option. Another place to go.

[00:17:23] Yeah. And they seem to be in line with everybody else.

[00:17:28] Sorry. I'm taking a drink. So, what else? What do you want to talk about? I've got a couple other things I want to talk about, but you also have had…

[00:17:36] I've been doing a little flying or something. I've been out to the field.

[00:17:43] Yeah. So, I don't want to bring up bad stuff, but it seems like everything we have to talk about with you is going to be either kind of fun or, oh, shucks.

[00:17:54] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:55] It's no big deal.

[00:17:56] I've had a good clean streak here for a while. Do you want to start with a fun one?

[00:18:02] With the… Oh, you say fun one. I think actual fun one. Which one? Hank? Yes. That was what… Yeah. That was the first thing on my mind.

[00:18:10] Okay. So, as we've talked about in the past, I got your UMX Twin Otter that you picked up in Toledo.

[00:18:19] Yeah.

[00:18:19] With the switchy-changey… I just bought a new one. So, I've got that one. I put a new board in it, and I was finally able to take it out for a test flight a couple weeks ago.

[00:18:29] Mm-hmm. I remember that.

[00:18:32] That was a nice flight. Yeah. Nice flight. Everything worked great. The plane flew wonderfully. I was pretty happy with it. My piloting skills, I was a little off, and I shorted it a little bit. It landed a little bit further down the field than I expected.

[00:18:46] But not more than 30 feet, maybe. 20, 30 feet.

[00:18:49] For a test flight, it was close. Yeah.

[00:18:52] Absolutely.

[00:18:53] And my brother said, oh, I'll go get it for you. Good intentions. Good intentions. And he has his dog out there with him, Hank. Who usually is fine. Hank is a good boy. He's a definition of a good boy. He's a big, goofy.

[00:19:05] Normally.

[00:19:06] Yeah.

[00:19:07] Normally.

[00:19:08] Apparently, he thought it was a bird. Because Hank went and ran out there, grabbed it, and shook the bejesus out of it. Split second. It was so quick. Just instantaneous. Just a bundle of muscle hitting it. Yeah. It was torn up. And it looked pretty bad. My brother said, oh, I've got to get you a new one. It's like, no. Let me look at it. I took it home. Put it back together. It actually went back together in a couple hours. A little bit of filler. Good to go.

[00:19:41] I could have flown it. All good.

[00:19:44] Mm-hmm.

[00:19:46] Dave being Dave. Can't leave anything alone. Nothing. Nothing can be left alone. Decided to repaint it. I was going to do it in the Canadian Air Sea Rescue. The yellow colors. Hold on.

[00:19:56] Before you get to that, though, when did you clean it?

[00:20:00] Oh, that was after I put it all back together and was sanding on the filler and so forth. And just cleaning it up to get ready for paint. Mm-hmm. I decided to give it a little, because it had been at the field, and I got a little mud and stuff on it from landing on the dirt. On the grass, yeah. And then the sanding dust and so forth. So I decided to give it a bath with my traditional cleaning Windex. Just give it a squirt of Windex. And wipe it off. And wipe it off.

[00:20:24] Well, the black paint apparently is not safe to use around Windex.

[00:20:29] Not Windex-proof.

[00:20:30] Not Windex-proof at all. So not only did it leave big smudges in the black paint, it also then smudged the black paint all over the nice white wing. Because that's all I was cleaning at that time was the wing.

[00:20:44] Which is okay, because you were going to paint it. However.

[00:20:47] However. Lesson for everybody. Okay. Lesson for everybody. If you're going to keep one, you might want to give it a light coat of water-based polyurethane polyurethane to seal up that black paint so that you can clean it without destroying it.

[00:21:00] Okay.

[00:21:01] But I was going to repaint it in the Canadian rescue colors. The yellow, red, and white. Because this aircraft has red all over it, I've had bad experiences with Horizon's red bleeding back underneath the colors. I went ahead and was going to give it a quick coat of silver paint, which is a good blocker coat to cover up that red. Not thinking clearly, obviously, I grabbed my trusty can of Rust-Oleum and shot it, which then promptly melted the entire aircraft.

[00:21:32] Yeah.

[00:21:33] So what Hank could not destroy, I destroyed it. I had disassembled at that point, so I had the wings separate. So the wing is safe, but everything else got melted. I've ordered replacement parts, and of course, they're on back order, because why wouldn't they be? Yeah.

[00:21:52] Well, I'm glad to hear, because last time I had talked to you, you had messed up the wing, or messed up the fuselage with your spray paint, and you told me you were done with the airplane. You're like, I'm done. Like, this is, it's not worth doing anything else. But I'm glad to hear you're actually going to go ahead and get it fixed.

[00:22:11] It's a good flying little airplane. It is. They, I'm $80 in for the speed control receiver setup, and they've already shipped me the tail, so I am currently waiting on the fuselage and the, I can't believe I paid $4.99 for two foam spinners.

[00:22:30] Oh, that hurts.

[00:22:32] That hurts. That does hurt. It's like, why are these things $5? Yeah. But anyway, those are the two parts I'm waiting on, and it's ready to go back together. And I got a set of floats for it, and I just nailed my mic.

[00:22:42] That was hard.

[00:22:45] So, yep. We're going to turn it into a float plane.

[00:22:48] That'll be cool. I would like to do that. But the biggest thing that is stopping me is, well, it doesn't fit in the box with floats. I don't have a box. True. But I do. So, that changes things, I guess. No, but that'll be, like I said, I'm excited to see that back up and going. I would like to get floats for mine, too, sometime. But one of these days, I'm just not in a huge hurry for it.

[00:23:15] And that's a side effect for Order and Floats. I wanted to see how they would work with the Ultrix.

[00:23:21] Just kind of mock something up. I hope that works well.

[00:23:25] Yeah. Ultrix bodies, by the way, just the actual bodies are pretty cheap. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:30] So, if you F it up, it's okay.

[00:23:33] It's okay.

[00:23:33] I've done that. Actually, I might still have the dirty one, the, I think I do have the dirty one with the, not broken, but kind of crinkled nose. So, if you want to practice on that.

[00:23:45] Yeah. I might do that to play around and get the center of gravity right on.

[00:23:48] Yeah. Wouldn't be too bad. You could destroy that and then throw it away.

[00:23:52] Yeah. Yeah. So, that sounds good. So, anyway, that was another.

[00:23:55] Remind me.

[00:23:56] Ulterior motive for getting the set of floats for the. So, how much are floats, by the way? 20 bucks. 20. 20, I think it was like 25 bucks by the time I got them. See that?

[00:24:06] Yeah. Okay. There's not much in the box, trust me. I bet there's not, because it's just a couple long pieces of foam. So.

[00:24:12] Yeah. A couple molded foam with no details, no rudders, no nothing. And then. I didn't think of that. You're right. No rudder. Little baggy. Well, with the twins, you don't need a rudder because you got the differential thrust.

[00:24:24] Differential thrust. Yeah.

[00:24:26] Everything else might be a little interesting without a rudder.

[00:24:30] Okay.

[00:24:31] Gotcha. Anyway, there's that little project. So, thanks, Hank.

[00:24:35] That's what started it all. Actually, blame yourself for not landing close enough.

[00:24:40] Yeah, that was my fault.

[00:24:41] I should have hit myself with it. Just catch it on midair. It's tiny.

[00:24:45] Yeah. Have you seen me stand up with one leg and try to catch airplanes?

[00:24:49] Well, when you're sitting, you can still do it, right? I did whack myself with the Ulteryx.

[00:24:52] I did fly the Ulteryx into myself.

[00:24:54] Did you? Yeah. I missed that one, too.

[00:24:56] How'd you do that? I was trying. I was trying. I was catching it.

[00:24:59] Oh, okay.

[00:24:59] Yeah, and I just, basically, it was just easier to hit myself in the chest than…

[00:25:03] Yeah. I did that once with the UMX Radian. I was just sitting in my chair, and I would fly it to myself and catch it. And then one time, I was just a little bit off. I was going too fast, and I didn't get my hand out in time. And yeah, just right off my chest, and it just bounced right down. I was like, eh.

[00:25:18] Yeah, it weighs nothing. It's not going to hurt you.

[00:25:19] No. No, but I had to get up, unfortunately, because I was in the flying chair that I got at Joe and All, where you sit back, and you're faced up. It's hard to get out of when you're fat like I am, so…

[00:25:29] Speaking of Ulteryx, we had a fun flight with Ulteryx on our evening. Did you? Yeah. It was kind of Alfred Hitchcock-ish. Oh, I forgot about that.

[00:25:40] Yeah, I wasn't there for that one.

[00:25:41] We had a little bird incident. Apparently, there's something about the UMX Ulteryx that brings out starlings. Like, there's no tomorrow. Like, hundreds of them.

[00:25:51] Yeah, you sent me the video on that, and I was very surprised by how many there were. Oh, the video shows you nothing. Really?

[00:25:57] Yeah. In my opinion, it doesn't even look like there's any birds there.

[00:26:01] Wow. It looked like a lot to me.

[00:26:03] There were hundreds of them. And at one point, it kind of blacked out the airplane. I was having trouble seeing it.

[00:26:09] Really? So you think they just think it's a predator or something? They're trying to get out of the way?

[00:26:15] Putting it out on our Discord server. We've had some opinions. Some people think it might sound like bugs. The motors might sound like bugs. I don't know.

[00:26:26] Yeah.

[00:26:27] But they were attacking the aircraft itself and diving at it. So I think they see it more as a predator or intruder.

[00:26:37] Yeah.

[00:26:37] I took off. There were no birds in the sky. And within a minute, hundreds of them. Don't know where they came from. And they would chase it from one end of the field. Whatever I did with it, it does mess with their brain when you hover, by the way. Really? They can't deal with a hovering airplane. It was really odd.

[00:26:57] Yeah.

[00:26:57] I landed. And my brother took off with his mini Ultra Stick. They all but completely disappeared. No birds. Wow. When he landed, I put another battery in. Went up. Within a minute, here they come again. It wasn't quite as many the second time.

[00:27:12] Yeah.

[00:27:12] But they were all over it. And we repeated that again last week.

[00:27:18] Yeah. I was out there for that one.

[00:27:20] Yeah. And there weren't very many that night.

[00:27:22] But like as soon… I don't remember. Did I take off with the… You had the Twimmer up. Is that the one… I couldn't remember what time it was. But whatever it was, what I was flying scared them all away. And then they were just gone. Yeah. So you were fine to fly then. Yeah. So apparently you just need to fly two airplanes when you're doing it.

[00:27:38] Fly somebody else. But there's something about that UMX Ultrix that just drives the Starlings nuts.

[00:27:43] I need to bring mine out too.

[00:27:45] And one of our other listeners also reported a Starling incident.

[00:27:49] Really? Yeah. I remember that.

[00:27:52] Yeah. I can't remember which one of the guys it was. But they said he had some chasing around that night. The same night I had the major group. That's so funny.

[00:28:00] Who would have thought? I mean like I guess I just never think about animals. I mean sure you fly and every now and then you see a vulture or a bird or whatever flying around. Seagull or something.

[00:28:10] And I've flown with gliders plenty of times with red tails. Yeah. And our turkey vultures which are always at the field. And none of them really like my eagle very much. That kind of ticks off all the wildlife.

[00:28:21] The actual eagle. The looking like an eagle. When you say eagle I think of like the eagle 2 or something like. Well no like the who made it. Like the gold bird eagle 2 or a glitter that kind of thing.

[00:28:33] The bald eagle.

[00:28:34] Yeah. You're talking about the actual animal looking eagle. Bird looking airplane. The bird eagle.

[00:28:41] Yeah. And that ticks off. Especially the smaller birds. They get all up in arms about it. But I've never had that many of them.

[00:28:48] Would it be up in wings?

[00:28:50] Yes. It would be up in wings. And the turkey vultures they'll come fly with it. They don't seem to mind it too much. I guess they just see it as another one of them.

[00:28:59] Yeah.

[00:29:01] But anyway.

[00:29:02] That's funny.

[00:29:03] So we're going to have to get two of the Ulteryx up there and see.

[00:29:06] Yeah. We have to do that sometime soon. I need to get out to the field again. It's been over a week. And I'm jonesing to actually fly. Like the last couple nights I've looked outside. And I just haven't felt like it. But it's like it's just perfect. Just to go outside for a battery or two.

[00:29:23] You've got the ideal setup where you can just step outside the door. Then back into the air conditioning.

[00:29:27] Yeah. I guess that's. Was it yesterday I walked out? Like I literally walked outside. Didn't do anything. But like started sweating instantaneously. And my glasses fogged up and all that stuff. It was just so humid. It was terrible.

[00:29:41] The glasses fogging up in the evenings is just the worst. Annoying. Yeah. But. You got low vision already because it's getting dark and.

[00:29:49] I can't see anything. That's what we deal with here in the Midwest.

[00:29:53] At least we're not in Florida.

[00:29:54] What's Florida? Constant humidity and. Oh is it? Yeah. Okay. I didn't know if there was something going on in Florida I didn't know about. No no. It's just constant humidity. Because that happens. So you got to fly your new airplane? Both of them. I'm trying to go in time so we get everything together. Okay. So yes. Before.

[00:30:14] I got two other things to talk about.

[00:30:15] Yeah I know. And that's why I'm trying to keep it in time frame. But so I did finally last episode we talked about when Reggie was on which actually it's been quite a while since we were it's actually almost been a month hasn't it? It's been a while. Because we recorded a couple days after. Yeah. So it's been a while since we sat down on this. So since that time I did get the slow ultra stick put together. Got to fly that. But it took a whopping hour. No.

[00:30:43] I think it was. So okay. I read the directions which are very short and I was like surprised with how easy it was. So I needed this screwdriver for two screws. The box wasn't long enough for the aluminum tube to be in one piece. So there's a connection that gets screwed on to make that aluminum tube longer. No big deal. Two screws. Now that stays together now. So I don't undo that every time. And then there's another three screws but they're all thumb screws.

[00:31:19] So you literally don't need any tools. There's one that goes, one screw by the way holds the entire tail on. Nice. It really, it's so simple. Like it's, and obviously because it's just an aluminum tube. So I'm trying to think how it went. So the horizontal stabilizer slides on. And then the vertical stabilizer kind of clicks into that. And then there's one screw up through the bottom that holds the whole thing together. And it holds it tight. I mean like it flies really well.

[00:31:52] Two more screws that hold the wing on. And the wing, the wing's actually kind of cool because it's a two-piece foam wing that's held together with a plastic keeper piece. I don't even know what you want to call it. That actually sits inside of a molded channel on the two wing halves. And there's a tube that, a wing tube that goes in there. And so that, like if you have a small car, it's very easy to take that apart. And pop it apart real easy. No problem whatsoever.

[00:32:24] With my car, I don't have to take the wing halves apart, but I do have to take the wing off. So it's two thumb screws that hold that on. The front, it just goes into like a keeper. Locking tab or something. Yeah, it has two or three tabs on the front that hold it on. And then two screws on the back that go in from the bottom to hold the wing on. And then you have one servo. You can split the servo if you want, which I might do that sometime.

[00:32:52] They give you flaps at that point?

[00:32:54] You could do flaps, yeah. You don't need flaps by any means. Really? I promise you, you don't need flaps with that airplane. But like I said, there is an option for two servos. I might do it just for fun. I mean, I'd see what happens to it.

[00:33:11] But my only constructive criticism of that airplane, and it's a great airplane, but what I would love to see instead of taking the wing off would be some sort of twisting action to where you could just fold it back on itself and just have it click into place to where it'll just be one long, small, skinny piece that you can throw in a trunk. I think that would be cool.

[00:33:36] That would be neat.

[00:33:37] But other than that.

[00:33:37] It would add weight.

[00:33:39] Not much. I mean, if it's all just the little plastic piece on there, you could do it for less than an ounce, I would think. I mean, I bet it would be negligible if you changed out the screws that actually held it on, because those are solid metal thumb screws. So that's not a lot, but enough to where you could make up for it somewhere else, I think. Like, I know somebody owns a 3D printer. True. But these are metal. Oh, you're talking about to make?

[00:34:11] I'm not going to go through that whole thing.

[00:34:13] Yeah. No, I'm not going to go through that, but I think that would be cool if they did that. Anyway, so I ended up maintaining it home between storms. Like, I was excited to get that one out. I had four batteries charged for it, and I think I went through all four that night. It flies so good. Like, it was between storms to where there was no wind, and I was very impressed with how, I mean, of course, it weighs nothing. It flies great. I had a bunch of fun with it.

[00:34:43] So it uses, I think, 3S2200 batteries, which…

[00:34:48] Super common, super economical.

[00:34:50] You can use 2S on it, apparently, too, but I don't know why you would want to. Why would you? bigger is always better, right? Yeah. But 2S would, I guess, be lighter and make it fly a little… A little floatier. But flying it on this battery, that does not matter. I mean, it doesn't need it. And I like how the 3S2200 batteries fit perfect. I mean, like, obviously, it's designed this way, but it fits perfectly right up front.

[00:35:16] I mean, they have a place where it can't go forward because it hits the motor mount, and it can't go backwards because it hits the wing, the little cross member for the wing that holds the wing on. So it fits perfectly in there, Velcro's on. Balance is perfectly. Balance is perfect on that one, and I didn't have to worry about a thing. Perfect. So it was fun. Now, Crystal has a friend that lives in Champaign, so she was going to go have dinner or have lunch with her one day.

[00:35:45] So I decided, Piper, let's just go over to Eli Field, let them do their thing, and we'll just have some fun over there. It was windy.

[00:35:53] And it doesn't like the wind, does it?

[00:35:55] It does not like the wind. Like, I was surprised the difference between when I was flying at home with no wind and what it was like out there at the field because I knew it was windy, and I kind of expected it to be affected by that, but not as much as it was.

[00:36:17] No, have you got the one with the AS3X receiver on it, or did you put your…

[00:36:20] No, this is the AS3X. Okay. So it has safe and the AS3X on it.

[00:36:24] And the AS3X didn't really dampen it out too much? The AS3X… Okay, so when I…

[00:36:29] I didn't start a new model from scratch, so I didn't program it and do it all on my own. I used the file from eFlight that you can download. I've noticed with that, and I could be, like, missing something or could be wrong. So if I'm wrong, somebody tell me. But I've noticed with those files, especially on the erratics, you cannot change the gain on the AS3X. It's, like, locked in with that. Like, the option forward and forward programming is just not even there.

[00:36:56] Or it might be grayed out. I don't remember. So if you bind it and just create your own model and all that kind of stuff, you actually can change the gains and assign that to a switch. So, like I said, on the erratics, I assign the gains on that to a right knob. So I can adjust it in flight and see where I like it. The AS3X on this one just does not seem to do almost anything.

[00:37:23] I've noticed that with my Carbon Z Cessna 150, that the AS3X doesn't really do anything.

[00:37:31] You don't notice it. Like, a lot of times, if it's windy or something, you can notice the airplane just being rock solid, locked in, when the AS3X is working at a higher level than apparently what this is programmed to. And, like, a lot of times, too, if you just take the airplane with AX3S on and jiggle it, you can see how much it moves. And a lot of times, it will move a lot, depending on how you have it set up.

[00:37:57] With the files on this one, straight from the factory, you barely hear anything. Same with the Cessna. Yeah. So I think what I'm going to do is rebind that to a whole new airplane. You, like, just set up a whole new airplane on there. That way I can kind of customize it more the way I like it.

[00:38:17] Because, I mean, it does such a good job on the ultra-micro stuff.

[00:38:20] Oh, yeah.

[00:38:20] It's a 10-mile-an-hour wind. It's like I would never be able to fly this thing, and it's just cruising straight along.

[00:38:25] And it doesn't care. So I was surprised. Like I said, I was flying along, trying to go straight and level. It was gusty winds. I don't remember how much it was. It might have been 15-ish.

[00:38:36] Which is not uncommon around here.

[00:38:37] Unfortunately, no. It was more than I was comfortable flying in. But I just, I drove an hour. So I'm here. I'm going to do it. This is a cheap plane. If I crash it, I'll fix it. Didn't crash it. I mean, had no problems with that whatsoever. But, like, you would be flying along, and it would jump 10 feet in half a second. Yeah, because it weighs nothing. And then it would come back down in another half second, just with all the buffeting and stuff.

[00:39:04] Maybe it's getting something over the corn, too.

[00:39:06] I don't know. Very turbulent.

[00:39:07] But it was just very, and like landing, there was no way I could actually land on the runway, the way the runway was facing, because it was a crosswind. So it was landing towards me, going cross runway, and rollout was maybe six inches, just with the amount of wind that was there. I mean, pretty much. And then if you turned the propeller off, the whole plane would just slide backwards and away from you.

[00:39:33] But, we were there for a little bit, killing time, while Crystal was at dinner, or at lunch. Piper was able to, a very little bit, play with her RC crawler. But apparently, I didn't realize, because we didn't get any rain, but they got a ton of rain the night before we went over there. And it was muddy and, like, literally just waterlogged.

[00:39:54] I saw the car when I came in, and it was in your garage, and it's like, oh, somebody's been mudding.

[00:39:59] Yeah, that's when that was from, and it is a mess. So, I mean, it is what it is. It's not that big of a deal.

[00:40:07] Take a stiff brush to it, it'll all come off.

[00:40:09] Or, yeah, or just run it a few times, and it'll work itself off anyway. I'm not a big cleaner of things. I mean, like, that's what those are made for. So, a little dirt just looks like you've had fun with it to me. Yeah, there's a little dirt, and then there's, really? I'm not going to take Windex to it, Dave.

[00:40:29] Okay, don't do that, because the paint might come off. I never gave it a thought that Windex would take the paint off. I clean all my airplanes with Windex.

[00:40:35] Yeah, I, I, that's weird. Anyway. I, I don't remember what it is I use. There's a…

[00:40:44] Simple Green's another great one to clean up stuff.

[00:40:46] No, it's one Tommy uses. I don't remember what he got, but it's an aerosol glass cleaner that he turned me on to. I don't even remember what it's called. but it's, it's a great, yeah, it smells good. It cleans glass really well, like actual glass, too, because Crystal's stolen a couple bottles of it, because I think he bought me a six-pack. She's stolen a couple of the, the cans of, the aerosol cans of it, using it for windows and stuff around here.

[00:41:09] But especially for, like, monocoat-covered or ultracote-covered airplanes, it works great for cleaning those off. I haven't used it on foam, but… Yeah. Usually… Check it on something…

[00:41:21] Yeah….broken.

[00:41:22] Well, honestly, like, when you fly electric, you don't have a lot of stuff that gets on the airplanes. Like, this is more for gas engines or something like that. Nitro, I don't do much.

[00:41:33] Most of my electric cleaning is dust from the shop and or flying off of wet grass and it throws mud and grass up underneath. Yeah.

[00:41:41] Yep. The freshly cut grass or something, the clippings and stuff.

[00:41:44] Yeah, my ducted fans just turn everything green on the inside.

[00:41:48] I could see that, but I don't know. So that, that was my time with that airplane. Now, I think it's time to go back to Daniel's airplane. Okay, so that was… Why did he not, did he, was he, did he not think I was serious about coming on here? Like, I asked if he wanted to come on, we should…

[00:42:08] I think we should have probably went into it a little deeper. However… Wow, we need to do that and have him on something. We need to drag him in here.

[00:42:13] Yeah, we'll make it. Even if, like, if we plan ahead, we can do it on a weekend or something, as opposed to

[00:42:18] A Wednesday or Thursday night. Well, he's free in the evenings now, but he's not got his part-time job.

[00:42:22] Well, there you go. We'll, we'll make that happen. We can talk to him about stuff and his issues and his stick issues.

[00:42:29] He's got a stick that is just lazy and does not want to fly. Well, it flew, though. It has flown, but it is putting up a fight. It's telling us that it's not happy.

[00:42:38] Well, so this is the stick that was bought, if everybody remembers, he crashed his other stick-ish type airplane. New Year's Day. You crashed, whoever. I crashed it.

[00:42:49] You crashed it. It wasn't behaving on its maiden flight.

[00:42:52] And that was the one that folded the wing.

[00:42:54] No. No, that wasn't that one? The one that folded its wing was the first one. The one that crashed New Year's Day was a replacement that I bought him for the one that broke. Okay. And it crashed on its maiden flight because it… The elevator. Something was wrong. It didn't want to go up.

[00:43:09] Yeah. I forgot about that one completely.

[00:43:12] So this is… This is stick three. This is third time's a charm, hopefully. Yeah. But… So far, so good. But it's been putting up a fight, man. We're both about sick of this airplane right now.

[00:43:23] Well, how many times has he brought it to the field and then you couldn't fly it because servo issue or something like that?

[00:43:29] It's been four or five times.

[00:43:30] I know of at least two. So…

[00:43:33] It's a Great Plains Giant stick with a Zenoa 38 in it. It's an older Zenoa 38, but it's got tons of compression. It's a good motor. The airplane we bought used. It has… It had a full radio. It was ready to fly, essentially, when we got it. I had him go through it, make sure everything's nice and tight and everything looks right. And we found a few little things here and there, but no big deal. We were having trouble getting the motor started.

[00:44:02] And so he wanted to use an electric starter on it. He's got his big Dynatron. And yeah, it'll crank a Volkswagen. But he was having trouble getting it centered up. It didn't have a spinner or anything on it. And so we ended up getting a spinner for it. And so we got the motor running and it actually was running pretty decent. We ran it up in my front yard. It is incredibly loud. My ears are still ringing.

[00:44:25] It's a very loud airplane. The exhaust seems to have everything…

[00:44:28] It's got a good cackle to it. Yeah.

[00:44:29] Everything's taken out of the exhaust or it's like a straight pipe.

[00:44:32] Yeah. It's got an aftermarket JTEC or something on it and there's no baffling. It's annoying in my book, but he loves it. Well, it sounds good when it's farther away. Before we were able to get to that point, though, we had some problems with it. Let's see. Where was it? The router servo quit working. And it had Tower Power servos in it.

[00:44:58] Tower Pro?

[00:44:59] Tower Pro. Tower Pro. It had Tower Pro servos in it, which are not my favorite, but they were in it. These are the ones that came with it? These are the ones that came with it.

[00:45:07] Okay.

[00:45:08] And all of a sudden, the rudder just quit working. So we ended up swapping that one out. Got the motor running. While we just had the fuselage in my front yard and was running it up, trying to tune the motor a little bit. He was standing with his feet in front of the elevator or the stabilizer to keep it from moving forward.

[00:45:26] Yeah.

[00:45:27] He steps on it. Breaks the elevator off.

[00:45:31] Better him than anybody else.

[00:45:32] Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, let's fix that. He repaired that. And it took a couple days. And we took it out to the field and went to fly it. Everything looked good. We went, I'm just pre-flighting this thing like crazy since we've had such bad luck with sticks.

[00:45:50] Yeah.

[00:45:51] Big sticks, we should say.

[00:45:52] Yeah.

[00:45:53] Everything looked good. I got it out on the runway, taxied out. Oh, no, no, no. I take that back. We were out the field before then. And the elevator servo quit working.

[00:46:06] Yeah. I remember the post fix of the elevator getting ready to fly it. And I was out there with you guys. And that's when…

[00:46:14] Elevator and one of the other on service quit. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay.

[00:46:19] So, we swapped those out. By the way, at this point, I would have swapped everything. Like, I don't know if he did or not, but I would have changed every servo out. Since right now, you're at three of the four?

[00:46:30] Or has it got… It's got flaps. So, it's got one, two, three, four, five, six. It's got seven servos.

[00:46:38] I still would be changing them out.

[00:46:39] So, we've swapped three of them out so far and then took the good aileron servo and moved it to the rudder or the elevator that failed. Or, no, it moved it to the rudder.

[00:46:51] It scares me, but okay.

[00:46:53] Oh, you should be scared. So, we take it out. All right. That's like, yeah.

[00:46:58] Second time. Look at you go. It's like you've never done this before. It's a new night. It's been one of those days. Trust me. I know.

[00:47:06] Anyway, we get it out the field. It's an evening. Everything's good. It starts, runs. It's great. We got the spinner on it. I take it off. It's pretty close in trim. Nothing major. And all of a sudden, the trims change in flight. And it's acting weird. And I realized all of a sudden that the rudder is no longer working. So, it worked on takeoff. But rudder's no longer working. But it's tracking pretty straight. So, I went ahead and made a nice approach.

[00:47:36] And I was hoping it was going to roll straight when it touched down. And it did. I shut it down as soon as it quit rolling. We go to pick it up. And I realized something's hanging from the airplane. On approach, I saw something hanging. It's like, what's going on with that? So, the right aileron horn has fallen off the airplane. It vibrated the screw out. Even though he put the little lock washer on it, it vibrated the aileron connection out. So, I only had the left aileron.

[00:48:04] Which I didn't even notice in flight. And this is like a three-minute flight. The rudder has quit working. And we also realized that the rudder hinge has broken as well. So, the rudder's hanging by one hinge with a dead servo and only one aileron. Wow. So, we had three detrimental in-flight failures in three minutes. That's impressive. And things turned out okay. I did not realize that. I must not have been out there for that one. No, you weren't out there for that one. Okay.

[00:48:32] So, I haven't heard of this yet. Yeah. So, we had those three failures. So, he takes it home. And I told him, okay, forget the lock washers, which normally work fine.

[00:48:40] Mm-hmm.

[00:48:42] Lock-tied everything. Fix the rudder. Put new hinges in it. And we bought another, he got another servo out of his pile of crash servos from the previous sticks. So, and put that one back on the rudder. So, we were good there. He brings it out again. I fly it again. Everything's perfect. I land it. He goes to take off with it. He's flying around for four or five minutes with it.

[00:49:10] Everything's going great.

[00:49:10] And, we're not doing anything stupid with it. It was just cruising around big old circles. Big circles. And I hear, clang! And something falls off the airplane.

[00:49:21] This is where I was. So, I mean, I was there for this one.

[00:49:25] And, of course, he's kind of freaking out. He's, not an inexperienced pilot, but not, he has not had a lot of in-flight failures.

[00:49:31] Yeah.

[00:49:32] And I'm pretty sure that was the spinner falling off. I tell him, just keep flying.

[00:49:36] Yeah.

[00:49:36] And he brings it in and makes a perfect approach. First time he's landed the airplane ever. Everything looks good. We're fine. And the spinner is, in fact, gone.

[00:49:44] Yeah.

[00:49:44] It's got a big couple nicks in the prop.

[00:49:47] I wasn't sure what happened on that one, so I made sure Piper was behind me with him coming in. I just, I wasn't sure.

[00:49:54] Yeah, we weren't sure what exactly. I was 90% sure based on the clanging noise. Yeah. And what I saw falling from there. I was pretty sure it was a spinner.

[00:50:02] See, I, okay, so I wasn't standing by you guys when that happened. Piper and I were down a little bit farther. so I heard that, and like, for some reason, to me, I thought the exhaust came off. I don't know why that's what. That was the first thing that went through my head because, exhaust fall off these things all the time. Yeah. And it's loud to begin with, so I don't think you would notice a difference.

[00:50:19] You would notice a difference. But because it made a clanging noise, it's like, okay, something hit the propeller, so it had to have been the spinner.

[00:50:26] I didn't even think of that. Okay. Yeah.

[00:50:29] So he landed. Everything looks good. And the center securing bolt sheared off at the prop nut.

[00:50:36] Just too tight, do you think, or what? we don't know. Don't know. Don't know. Bad bolt, maybe.

[00:50:42] Yeah. Well, the spinner is long gone.

[00:50:45] Yeah.

[00:50:45] Never going to find that out in the corn.

[00:50:47] No.

[00:50:48] So we have flown it again. Okay, you have. Yeah, we flew it again. well, no, we have not flown it again. We attempted to fly it again on Sunday.

[00:50:59] Okay, well then, hold on. We'll get to that then. Let's go to that same night when I was with you.

[00:51:04] And I'll talk about it, because like I said, I'm trying to keep this in order.

[00:51:06] All right, keep it in order.

[00:51:07] In order so I remember what, everything that happened and don't forget something. So, as we said before, I got the slow ultra stick together and stuff, and I also got the twin timber together.

[00:51:16] Swimber!

[00:51:17] So, for this day, the day that he lost his spinner, was the day that I made in the twin timber. And, so, let me talk about that one a little bit. Obviously, it was more involved than the slow ultra stick was to put together. the propeller and the, spinner was installed on the ultra stick already, which was nice. There was not a lot of work to do on that. Obviously, for the, like, twins, it seems it was the same thing for the twin otter.

[00:51:49] The box does not ship with the propellers and spinners installed. Understand. Takes a lot more room. but it's kind of a pain because I like for those as much as I can to keep them in the box because it's easier to transport, safer. I don't have to worry about things getting messed up. But, anyway, so I had to put the spinners on that and the propellers. the gear had to be screwed on, which was, I mean, it didn't take long on that one either.

[00:52:19] The, the bolts that I, or that came with it, the screws that came with it, I, they were tight. I mean, like, obviously, it's meant to be that way. It's like a wood-type screw. I was a little concerned that I was going to strip them because I've dealt with some arse before that come with kind of crappy hardware. No problems whatsoever. I was very surprised that this was actually decent hardware going into it. but the gear is very, very forgiving. It's a weird setup.

[00:52:50] It's soft and springy. Very soft and springy. You can take it, I mean, like, I should, not too soft. Like, you're going to have to land it hard to get it to bounce a lot. Like, if you're just sitting it down, it doesn't even squat at all. So it's not,. But it's soft enough. Soft enough to where if you land hard, it's going to be okay. so I have no problem with that. Like, it's, it's designed to land hard.

[00:53:15] If you land hard, the propellers are high enough out of the way to where you're not supposed to be able to mess those up.

[00:53:21] Let's hope you don't hit those because they're on the top of the wing.

[00:53:24] I know, that's what I'm saying. Like, they don't even reach down to the bottom of the fuselage. So you're really in trouble if you mess those up. one thing I like about it is even though the wing has to split and come off, because that's a bigger airplane.

[00:53:37] Like, it's a sizable airplane.

[00:53:39] It's bigger than I expected it to be. Like, when I heard about it, when I saw it, you hear 1.6 meter, but to me, that means nothing like it should. But give me inches. give me feet, give me whatever. but it, it does take a screwdriver to put the wing on. that's the only thing I would like to change about it. It has to have a tool. like the UltraStick has the thumb screws. You don't have to use any tools whatsoever for it. But it goes on quick.

[00:54:06] The motors, so it's kind of neat. Obviously, there's two motors. They're color-coded where they plug into, like, it's a quick plug that you can only plug in one way, obviously, so you don't get them backwards. Yeah, don't mess anything up. and then it's color-coded on the inside of the fuselage where they plug in. Same with the aileron and flap servos. That all goes into one block that's color-coded that only plugs in one way per wing.

[00:54:33] So it's got, like, quick connects, so you're not doing each individual aileron servo. So it's a one-stop shop. Pretty much. It's a quick clip, and it's a cool, quick design to get it put together. I like it. It could be a little bit longer, though. Like, you have to have the wing at a weird angle to give me enough room to get my hand down in there and get it plugged in.

[00:54:59] Does that make sense?

[00:55:00] Yeah. I've been there myself. Yeah, if they gave us an extra inch of wiring on it, it would have made it so much easier.

[00:55:06] You could have just kind of pulled that wing back up and out of the way and had room for stuff. But so that's my thoughts on that one, on how it went together. I kind of liked it. We went out to the field that night. I don't remember what Crystal was doing. She was—it doesn't matter. So Piper and I went out to the field, and I flew that airplane for the first time, flew the Twimber. 4S5000, I think, is what I used on it. Perfect balance.

[00:55:34] So it looks like it's really rock solid.

[00:55:36] I actually had to move the battery back about an inch. Like, if I put it all the way to the nose, it was too forward. Or, the center of gravity was too nose heavy. So I don't know how that would work with some of these lighter batteries. Because, I mean, it can fly down to, like, a 3S2200, I think, is one of the things that's listed. You would have to put some sort of nose weight in there.

[00:55:58] Yes, jamming all the way forward and— Like, I don't know why— I've been using Plumber's Putty. Really? Yeah. Never dries.

[00:56:04] That's a good idea, actually. I can chew it out with a screwdriver if I need to. It's like, oop, too much.

[00:56:09] Yeah. I like that. But anyway, I'm just going to stick with my battery that's sized for it. But anyway, so I flew that a couple times. I really liked it. It takes off in about 10 feet. It's got plenty of power. Played a little bit with the flaps. Didn't have a lot of time. It was getting dark. It was getting kind of dark. It does have the lights on the wingtips and stuff to kind of give you some orientation, which was nice. And it was still a little bit windy.

[00:56:34] So I've not flown that one with no wind. So I had flown—before I flew that, I flew the Ultra Stick, a couple batteries through that one. And it was windy. So it was fun but not great. what I mean? A little bouncy. So after I came in with a Twimber, like I said, Piper was with me, and she asked to fly. I mean, like, you can't say no to that. But I told her, I was like, that's fine, honey. Next time when we come out, we can bring your AeroScout.

[00:57:06] She's like, well, I don't want to fly that. I want to fly that one. And she pointed to the Ultra Stick. I was like, okay, still have two batteries left. That's perfect. But I didn't have it set up for it. So I told her, I said, let me figure it out. I don't remember how to do it right offhand. Let me get it set up. Luckily, with the transmitter case I have, I threw in the extra transmitter because it holds two. You got her spare.

[00:57:27] Just in case, I left the IX-12 in there so that if this ever happened, which I didn't think it would ever actually happen. But just in case it did and we were out there and she wanted to fly, we could. So I got that set up. And by this time, it wasn't dark, but it was quite a bit darker. You could still see the airplane fine, but not far away. Yeah. But the nice thing about it was there was absolutely no wind. Oh, it was dead. I mean, like, calm as you could ask for.

[00:57:59] So I took off. I put it in safe mode, which I had never flown it in safe mode before, and just gave her control. And she did great. I mean, like, I was—safe makes it so easy for this. It keeps her from looping. And that's what she kept asking. Can I do a flip? No, honey. Can I do a loop? No, honey. Let's—I want to get you to where you can actually control where it's going. if I say turn left, I want you to know to turn left.

[00:58:28] If I say fly away from us when it's coming at you, I want you to know how to do that. So that's kind of what we were working at was getting orientation down because that, for somebody that's new, is difficult.

[00:58:39] I wasn't watching, but I was listening, and you didn't get too much feedback or pushback about the looping.

[00:58:45] No, she—like I said, I was pleasantly surprised by the way she was flying and acting and stuff with that. She was actually into it. I think she likes that plane. I think she probably likes that better than her AeroScout. And it really makes just as good of a trainer.

[00:59:01] I would say there's probably very little difference in the flying qualities as far as a trainer goes.

[00:59:05] I mean, yeah, especially with no wind. The AeroScout will handle wind better than this one does.

[00:59:10] That thing's amazing, by the way.

[00:59:12] I know, right? I mean, like— I've never had a trainer fly inverted, hands off. I cannot say enough good things about that as a trainer airplane. Like, I want—like, I have not flown it as much as I want to because it's her airplane. it's—she can have her own. I don't want to mess around with it too much.

[00:59:28] But if she likes this Ultra Stick more, I might just trade her and let her do—if that will get her out to the field more, if she likes that one more and she wants to fly, I don't care what you fly. As long as you're flying something. As long as we can do it together in Buddy Box, I'm not worried about it. There was only a couple times that I had to take back over for. One time I kind of felt bad because I—she—so we landed and put another battery in.

[00:59:55] And I took off and went around and I got to where I was like, all right, honey, here you go. It's yours. And so she's flying. And I said, okay, start to—start to turn and come back to us. And she's not listening to me. I was like, Piper, seriously, it's time to turn. It's getting to the point where we're not going to be able to see it. She's like, well, I'm trying to. It's not moving. Yeah. That's on me. I forgot to give her control.

[01:00:17] Oh.

[01:00:17] I was like, oh so— So it's nice and stable. Yeah. It's not doing anything. So I went ahead and turned and, got it back and actually gave her control, which you would think I would remember that because the transmitter tells you. Like, that's one thing I absolutely love. The transmitter tells you who has control when you flip the switch.

[01:00:35] And the nice thing, too, like, when we did it—when we did it before when you had the cable, like, I didn't have anything that talked first off. So you had to hold the button is how I had it set up a long time ago. Right. What is cool about the new ones, and especially when—like, I was trying to let her fly to see if she could get out of some of the predicaments she got herself into. what I mean?

[01:01:01] Yeah.

[01:01:01] Fix her own issues. But what's cool is you literally just—the training or the trainer, the master, as soon as you touch any of the controls—

[01:01:12] And I love that.

[01:01:13] I know it gives you control back. You feel like you're doing it faster. How hard is it to let go of a switch? But it is just so much easier to— All of a sudden, you have it. Just move it. And then it tells you, master control or whatever. I don't remember what it says, but something like that.

[01:01:27] Just don't sneeze and jar the radio. Been there, done that.

[01:01:31] Never thought of that either. But I was very proud of her, the way she handled it. She wanted to do it again. Like I said, we did a second battery. Then a bee landed on her.

[01:01:40] I heard the freak out. That ended everything.

[01:01:43] For the rest of the night, she was in the car.

[01:01:45] We need to specify these are sweat bees. Sweat bees. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, no, no. You're right.

[01:01:50] This is nothing dangerous whatsoever. But we only had 10, 15 minutes before we left. Yeah. And it was—

[01:01:57] And Fred decided to eat her pizza.

[01:01:59] I forgot about that, too. That's on us for leaving it out. That was no big deal. We stopped at Subway on the way out. I was hoping to make her happy with something like that. And, yeah, we left it on one of the tables.

[01:02:10] You made Fred happy. He didn't eat. I think he just licked it. He opened the lid and got yelled at.

[01:02:15] Yeah. I don't think he got anything. But still, it doesn't matter. I brought it home. Crystal ended up starting to eat it until I told her about that.

[01:02:24] I don't remember. Sorry, Crystal.

[01:02:25] I don't think Piper had any of it. Like, she had one bite of one piece. Yeah. That's how she is. But anyway. So, no, it was a lot of fun. And I was glad to be able to have a night like that. And I'm hoping to have more. It was a good night. Nights like that.

[01:02:38] Except for, losing a $45 aluminum spinner. It was a nice night.

[01:02:41] Yeah.

[01:02:42] That your brother had polished.

[01:02:44] Yeah.

[01:02:44] Pretty much. Yeah. It was used when we got it. And it was looking pretty rough. And he likes polishing aluminum. I don't get it. But, okay.

[01:02:54] He likes a nice shiny knob. And. So, that takes us to the most recent happening on your end. That I actually, I have no. You don't know. Really no knowledge about this. So.

[01:03:11] Yeah. Other than the phone call I made to you looking for a drone. Yeah. Yeah. So, tell me all about it. Okay. So, my Grand Tundra.

[01:03:18] That you've had for many.

[01:03:20] I've had it for many years. And it's been a pretty reliable airplane. I did have to put a second speed control in it. But that's my fault. I accidentally reversed the propeller in flight. It doesn't like that. Really? No. Because it burned the speed control. Interesting. And it went down in the corn. But it was real low when I did that.

[01:03:39] And, yeah. No major damage on that part. So, who makes this? Is this Hobby King?

[01:03:44] This is Avios. Avios through Hobby King. Okay. It's a pretty good sized airplane.

[01:03:53] And not a great flying airplane.

[01:03:56] But it was also one of my workhorses that I flew a lot. So, it didn't fly awful. But it wasn't a great flyer.

[01:04:02] It wasn't bad enough to make you fly it less.

[01:04:04] Right.

[01:04:05] Because that was one I remember you flying often.

[01:04:07] Yeah. I flew it pretty often. It had the big Tundra tires on it. And I had floats for it. And I had skis for it. And it was flown quite a bit. And I had banged it up a couple times. But nothing major. I touched down in the drainage ditch and ripped one of the elevators off. And, just minor day-to-day knocks.

[01:04:26] Yeah.

[01:04:26] Yeah.

[01:04:27] Yeah. What you expect with an airplane.

[01:04:28] Just a knock-around airplane.

[01:04:30] Mm-hmm.

[01:04:31] It had a problem. It was never stable in approach. It always wiggled around in the approach and so forth. so I put a Eagle Tree gyro in it. And that settled it down. Made it much more interesting to fly.

[01:04:44] So for people that don't know what this is, explain the setup. Like, what does it look like?

[01:04:49] It's a bush plane. Big tire. Big soft landing gear with rubber bands. big tail wheel. High wing. Large flaps. six-cell or four-cell setup. I flew it once in the four-cell setup, and it was always six-cell after that. it'll go vertical. It'll take off in its own length. Yeah. It'll land in three lengths.

[01:05:11] Is that the one you took off from the bench? Or not the bench, but on the table or not?

[01:05:15] No, I don't think.

[01:05:17] It was too big for that.

[01:05:20] It'll take off in its own length. It just dropped full flaps and hammered a throttle, and it was airborne.

[01:05:24] Yeah.

[01:05:25] So, I mean, I knocked it around. Had a lot of fun with it. It, inverted snap rolled beautifully. I loved doing inverted snap rolls with it, and it would snap roll okay. I had some visitors out the field. A friend of my brother, he works with my brother, and he was out there with his kids, and it was, I was knocking it around, doing snap rolls and stuff with it, just playing hard with it.

[01:05:47] I was probably 50 to 100 foot above the corn and did a horizontal snap roll with it, and all of a sudden it started making a squealing noise or a whistling noise, and then I had absolutely no control over the airplane. Everything just shut off. and it went smashing down into the ground, full throttles from what I can tell. I don't really know. It happened so quick because I was, wasn't very high.

[01:06:13] Yeah.

[01:06:16] My brother wasn't there at the time. He had to actually ran home to go get another servo. yeah, because he wasn't trusting the throttle servo, so he decided to- Good idea. We were just going to swap the throttle servo out.

[01:06:29] And this was on his stick again? On his big stick, yeah. Okay.

[01:06:33] So it went down, and, with my situation, I don't go out in the corn very well. I can't, I get tangled up, I can't hardly move. Yeah. It takes me five minutes to go three rows. Understandable. and no one was, and it's, by the way, it's hot and miserable. And no one was really, offering their services to go find it.

[01:06:52] Yeah.

[01:06:52] Which is, once again, understandable.

[01:06:55] Yeah.

[01:06:55] And I'm not exactly sure when it went down, because everything just happened so quick. I mean, I got a general idea, but not really.

[01:07:04] Yeah.

[01:07:05] He gets back, we change the servo out, and we go to play with his airplane a little bit, and the carburetor's messed up on it, so forget that.

[01:07:14] So it went back in the trailer. he ordered a carb rebuild kit, six bucks.

[01:07:19] Yeah.

[01:07:20] We'll be back on track. It's got an air leak somewhere. It changes tune.

[01:07:24] And it's just something else with these big sticks for him to have in the OS.

[01:07:28] Especially this one. like I said, it just changes, tune. Yeah. No biggie. We'll get it. so he decides to go, and I tell him, just leave it. And at this point, I'm just too hot. I'm too tired. just leave it. Oh, no, I'll go wander around. I'll go dig around for a while. So he gets the big old PVC pole and walks out there, and he's out there about an hour digging around out in the corn. Oh, God.

[01:07:53] Before he got there, though, his friend had came over on a gator, and he had ran me out, and I had stood on the gator and looked in the bean field, which is immediately to the east of the corn field, thinking, it might have made into the bean field. I don't know.

[01:08:07] Yeah.

[01:08:07] And I couldn't see anything. So anyway, he went and we're on the train of the corn for about an hour, and I told him, that's it. Come back. We're done.

[01:08:14] Yeah.

[01:08:15] And he said, oh, I'll call Rob. Rob's a farmer friend of his. And we borrowed, I'll borrow the ag drone.

[01:08:22] Okay.

[01:08:23] So, in the meantime, I called you looking to see, because I know you had a drone at one point, but didn't know what its status was.

[01:08:29] Yeah. I mean, it would have worked, but it would not have been FPV. It would have been, we're recording this, now we're going to watch. Yeah.

[01:08:35] And that really is not the most efficient way to find it.

[01:08:38] No, not at all.

[01:08:38] So anyway, he borrowed the ag drone, which is an older, it's actually an older DGI from his, his friend.

[01:08:46] Yeah.

[01:08:46] And, we went out the next night and made one battery flight up and down the corn where I thought it might've been and just couldn't see anything. And he was saying that I, he had the phone, so I couldn't really see it. He said, I can't really see anything. The corn is so dense. They, they drilled the corn or something. I mean, it's tightest I've ever seen it.

[01:09:06] Really?

[01:09:07] He said, I really can't see it unless it's up on top. We're never going to find it. And it's like, well, whatever. It's like, let's make a pass through the beans. He landed it, came back and changed the battery and let's, let's just make a pass through the beans. And there it was, it was 13 rows in and about 300 yards out. God.

[01:09:24] See, that's amazing to me though, because like the, that extra that I crashed, was it last? Yeah. Just last year, that Reggie's old one that was in the beans and you could not see it.

[01:09:35] No. And the beans are short this year. They're very short crop for some reason. That's weird. Now it's had a drought. That's why they're short.

[01:09:41] Could be like the last year that was tall and it just covered everything. And we just, we never found it until the farmer took it out of the beans.

[01:09:48] Yeah.

[01:09:48] These are a little over knee high.

[01:09:50] So they're, they're not bad.

[01:09:51] Still, that's still pretty tall.

[01:09:52] It covered, it covered it up pretty good. I mean, but we did see it with the drone very, very easily. We, he made one pass. It's like, Oh, there it is. That's nice. Well, it probably helped that it was a bigger plane and it was white.

[01:10:03] Yeah.

[01:10:04] It was white and blue and it did stick out quite nicely on the video. Like a sore thumb.

[01:10:08] Yeah.

[01:10:09] So he took and, looked at the screen and started counting rows and was like, okay, it's 13 rows in from the corn. and then I realized, it's about 300 yards out. That's far.

[01:10:23] Yeah.

[01:10:24] And so he brings the drone back, goes and walks right to it. He just went in, went over 13 rows and started walking. found it, picked it up, brought it back. It was in one big old chunk. and the, originally I thought because I was snap rolling it a lot and the battery tray is coming loose before in this thing and it's big six cell battery.

[01:10:44] Yeah.

[01:10:45] I, I assumed it knocked the battery loose and unplugged it. Well, that is not the case. We got it back and realized it had been on fire. Oh my. the electronic speaker control. And we don't know chicken or the egg. If the motor went out first and can cause the speed control to fry or the speed control fried and cook the motor. Don't know. Well, you said you had a different or a separate BEC on there though, right? It has a separate BEC. Okay.

[01:11:13] Because it was an 80 amp ESC, with no BEC in it.

[01:11:18] Yeah.

[01:11:18] So it was a standalone BEC unit.

[01:11:20] Huh.

[01:11:21] Speed control completely toasted and the inside of the fuselage is all melted. You could tell very, very fire damaged. So it had had a small fire. Luckily we'd had some rain and everything was nice and green and yeah, it would have been really easy to find it a couple of months from now. It'd be really easy to find. In the corn? Yeah, no doubt. poking through it, not much solangeable. The motor's locked up and burnt. Speed control's burnt. the BEC is burnt.

[01:11:58] My brand new battery, maybe five flights on the brand new 108, 100 C, 6L. It's puffy and burnt.

[01:12:08] Hmm.

[01:12:09] Not much to salvage. So I take it home, start pulling stuff out. By the way, the truck still stinks of burnt electronics. Oh, I don't like that smell at all.

[01:12:19] That's terrible.

[01:12:20] Start going through it, rip all the servos out of it, salvage what I could, what I normally salvage, the hardware and so forth. I gave you a nice little present.

[01:12:27] I know. I got the landing gear.

[01:12:28] You got the landing gear. I like the big balloon tires. salvage what I could, which wasn't much. And then the next night I start playing with stuff to see what's what.

[01:12:38] Mm-hmm.

[01:12:39] None of the servos work. And I start smelling them. They're all burnt. Even the ones that are out in the wing that were nowhere near the fire, they're toast.

[01:12:48] That's weird.

[01:12:49] Speaking, the, receiver and the gyro appear to be perfectly fine. I don't know if I would trust them. I don't know how I could have burnt all the servos and not fried those two items.

[01:13:04] Yeah.

[01:13:05] They're going to go in a very small light foam plane. It's a nine channel receiver, so I don't want to throw it away.

[01:13:12] Well, I'd rather throw that away than throw a whole nother plane away.

[01:13:14] Well, it's going to go into a flat foamian.

[01:13:17] Oh, okay.

[01:13:18] Something not important. Beat the crud out of it before I trust it again.

[01:13:22] Yeah. I mean, and I did see you post some of that stuff on Discord. I don't remember who it was, but somebody made mention that perhaps the servos were burnt. And, they, the over voltage got the servos, but the, the receivers can handle a little bit more. Yeah.

[01:13:38] Which kind of makes some sense. It does make some sense, but I'm thinking the odds are pretty slim that, cause I think they're rated at like nine volts for the receiver. And I don't know what the servos are rated for. They were Hobby King specials. So who knows? Probably four, eight, I would think. Yeah. Up to six volts, I'm guessing.

[01:13:56] You think so for that?

[01:13:57] Yeah. I mean, as an overvolt, they were probably happier at four, eight, but they could probably overvolt to six volt. The cases were melted on several of the servos, like melted, melted, not just. That's just so weird. Yeah. So I'm not sure. I mean, the odds of overvolting the servos to burn them up, but not enough to burn up the receiver. There's very little difference between six and nine volts.

[01:14:21] Yeah.

[01:14:21] Very little. Yeah. And I'm running, I could have dumped 22 volts or a plus.

[01:14:27] Huh.

[01:14:28] So it's hard to say. It's, it's sad that it's gone, but I've got 52, 53 other airplanes. So. Yeah. So what's going to replace it? Nothing at this point. No, you got to get something. I do have a place to hang the Skywarden now that it's no longer hanging.

[01:14:45] True. Yeah. I'll come up with something at some point.

[01:14:49] Cause I got to have something, but always in the bin in the mindset, you destroy one. Oh, I can get a new one.

[01:14:54] Yeah. That works for Reggie really well. It works for Reggie really well.

[01:14:58] Speaking of Reggie, I got a Reggie project at home now too. So.

[01:15:01] See what happened last time when he's like, Oh, I work on my stuff now.

[01:15:05] Yeah. He can't bring me anything small either. It's got my workshop filled, but.

[01:15:10] Yeah.

[01:15:11] We'll get through it. You're a better person than I am. He needs to learn how to do this stuff on his own.

[01:15:15] And especially because he gave you a full cockpit kit. You're supposed to put in something.

[01:15:19] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:15:20] He should fly at first, by the way, before you spend all the time on that.

[01:15:23] And I love working with vacuum form. Anyway. Hmm.

[01:15:27] Yeah. Not so much. Well that. Yeah. That's just. Anyway. You owe him, Reggie. You owe him big time.

[01:15:35] That's all right. We will figure it out. And he's so excited about Noel next year. He wants to know what he can bring. It's like, dude, that's a year away. Well, what do I need to bring?

[01:15:43] Like, I don't have a clue. We'll plan as it gets closer, but I really. Yeah. Give me six months. I really hope everything works out and then we all can make it. Seriously. That's going to be a blast.

[01:15:53] Yeah. We'll have fun.

[01:15:54] I don't mean to like every episode. I think we've talked about that since we went.

[01:15:58] I couldn't believe he brought it up though. I was like, really, Reg?

[01:16:01] Well, we'll see if he makes it or not. We know Reggie, so we'll see. Anyway, yeah, that's all I'll say on that one. Well, you got anything else?

[01:16:11] I'm done tearing up stuff. Yeah. I don't know about that, but for now. I will say the drone worked out really well. Thank you, Rob. I thought, yeah.

[01:16:21] I thought about getting one of those.

[01:16:23] Daniel's saying, this is a lot of fun. I need to get one of these.

[01:16:26] It's not fun.

[01:16:27] Stop it. Did you slap him? He did just find my airplane, so I gave him a little slack on that.

[01:16:33] Yeah. I mean, I get it. To me, they're a tool. This is a tool for going and finding airplanes. Yeah. It's not fun like flying airplanes.

[01:16:42] It does self-limit it to 399.99 feet.

[01:16:46] Oh, does it? Yeah.

[01:16:47] We took it up as far as it goes, and it maxed itself out. It was in meters, and I did the math. It was actually 399. It was 390 feet, I think, it maxed itself out at. That's close enough.

[01:16:58] Yeah. That's within air.

[01:17:01] That's within the tolerance. Yeah, tolerance or whatever.

[01:17:04] All right. Well, cool. Then, I think I am done. Are you finished? I am finished. Until next time, thank you for listening. I'm Ron. I'm Dave. Good night. Good night.

[01:17:13] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Planelab Podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com, or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com, or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.