Ep 133: Just the two of us…

[00:00:05] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. And I'm Dave. Yeah, so that's it. It's just you and me.

[00:00:19] This is RC Plane Lab light.

[00:00:22] And we'll be light for the next several months while Tommy is otherwise occupied. Out of country, whatever. So he is gone. He has said his goodbyes on the last episode, and I'm still rambling about that for some reason. I don't know why.

[00:00:40] I kind of miss him.

[00:00:41] Like, I really do. Like, we don't see each other all that often. He's barely been gone, and I miss him.

[00:00:45] I know.

[00:00:46] It's, I don't know. And there's been so much going on, too. Like, we actually had to split up and do double duty last weekend. You went north, and I went east.

[00:00:55] Yeah, we split it up. We got it done.

[00:00:56] Yeah. So what did you do?

[00:00:58] So I went up to Streeter for their memorial fly-in slash fun fly. A couple nights of camping. So jealous. Trying to fly. It was a two-day event. It was down to one day with the rain and the wind on Sunday. But I had a really good time. Great bunch of guys to fly with up there.

[00:01:18] I forgot about the weather on Sunday. That was pretty bad here, too. It was cold.

[00:01:24] Yeah, pulling the trailer back in that wind was kind of fun.

[00:01:28] I forgot about that, too. So you went with your brother, right?

[00:01:31] Yep, with Daniel.

[00:01:32] And he took his own trailer with airplanes?

[00:01:34] And he always takes his truck and his little airplane hauler trailer. Even though I've got a 28-foot travel trailer to put stuff in, he always takes his little trailer.

[00:01:42] Well, let's be honest, though. It would be nice to not have to worry about what to do with airplanes at night.

[00:01:48] It is.

[00:01:49] Like when the rain comes and that kind of stuff, you can put him in his trailer and not have to worry about it?

[00:01:52] Normally, what we do is we end up just throwing a tarp over him and then dropping the easy up down on top of him.

[00:01:57] See, I remember you did that last year, and that makes me nervous. I don't know why.

[00:02:01] I don't know if I would be comfortable doing that.

[00:02:03] But we knew this year, though, that the wind was going to be coming and rain was going to come about 3, 4 in the morning. So we went in and just put everything away this year.

[00:02:10] Oh, okay. So at least you had some sort of inkling what was going on. But last year, I think, was that the one last year where we had just every now and then a stray shower would come through and there was like no warning? It would just pop up?

[00:02:22] Yeah, it would just pop up out of nowhere for an hour and be gone.

[00:02:26] And then cleared up and back to flying. So it was weird. But I'm glad you went up there. Did you see Brian? Saw Brian.

[00:02:35] Of course, he didn't stay much. He had to run the shop.

[00:02:38] Yeah.

[00:02:38] And then, of course, he usually comes out on Sunday, but Sunday was canceled.

[00:02:41] Yeah. I need to make it back up there. It's been too long.

[00:02:45] He's been a busy man. As always. Yeah.

[00:02:48] He always keeps it going.

[00:02:50] He has a 6-foot-high stack of UMX planes. You ought to go.

[00:02:54] Oh, I know. He sent me pictures, and he's like, hey, look what I got. And I'm like, no, no, no. Oh, I like that. Oh, no, no, no. I mean. It's Mount UMX. And there's a lot of them in there, though, that are not easy to find.

[00:03:07] Yeah. He's got some older ones in there that are, I even forgot they existed.

[00:03:10] Yeah. A lot of cool ones that I saw in the picture. But good for him. I mean, I'm sure he'll get through them pretty quick and not have them for very long. Get them flipped. Yeah.

[00:03:20] There's a nice yellow lazy bee upstairs.

[00:03:25] Still there. That's sad. That's sad. But, no, I've got a couple more I want to get rid of. Like, I've got a list of things I want to take up to him and see what I can switch out for.

[00:03:34] Yeah, that sounds like a deal.

[00:03:35] I don't know why, but I'm really interested in the new, the twin otters. Or not twin otters. I always do that. The twimbers. The twimbers, yeah. Twin timbers.

[00:03:43] Yeah, there's a couple of those up there flying. And they, of course, they fly great.

[00:03:47] Yeah. It was like, I'm already thinking ahead, now that we're back from Joe Null, I'm already thinking ahead to next year's Joe Null. And like, the twin otter is a fun plane. Don't get me wrong. I had a lot of fun flying that on the floats. It's great. But I just think the twimber would be just that much better. Yeah.

[00:04:07] And everybody's talking, we need a night twimber. Oh, I wondered if they were ever going to do that.

[00:04:11] That would be cool.

[00:04:12] That's, everybody up there is just requesting that, requesting that.

[00:04:16] I know, well, that'll probably be next year's release. That'll probably be the spring or something like that. Or maybe even fall, who knows? Once they get past this first run on their regular twimbers, I could see them doing that.

[00:04:28] We've got to quit calling it a twimber.

[00:04:30] Well, here's my question for you, actually. So I've seen people online call it that, but I've seen it called two different things. It's a twimber with an M or a twimber with an N. What do you think? The twimber rolls off the tongue much better than the twimber. I know, right? So I'm going to call it a twimber from now on. It's a twimber. Yeah. But I've got to get one. I don't have to get one. I probably shouldn't get one, to be honest, but I want to get one.

[00:04:58] Their fly's great. Everybody up there was blasting around with them.

[00:05:01] Did you get to fly one or not?

[00:05:02] I did not get a fly one. Oh, okay. I did a lot of night flying, though, for the first time. I mean, I've done some night flying, but we've got quite a bit done. I've got a couple flights in on the Night Radian and both of the Ulteryx, the 600 and the UMX, both. I finally got my UMX Ulteryx up and flying right.

[00:05:22] Nice.

[00:05:22] Nice. So no more diving at the ground and oscillating.

[00:05:26] Well, I mean, so you bought that used. When you buy things used, you're never quite sure what it's going to end up like. But it was an easy fix, and you're still out. Not as much as a new one.

[00:05:37] No. No, I've basically bought a new one minus a light kit. So basically, it was a free light kit. So you're ahead.

[00:05:43] I'm ahead.

[00:05:44] You're like, what, $25, $35? Yeah, I'm $25, $30 a head.

[00:05:46] Yeah.

[00:05:47] That's okay. And I'm one-on-one anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

[00:05:50] So do you fly those at night-night, like when it's completely dark?

[00:05:54] I did not fly both of those at night-night. Okay. I don't know if it's my age or what the deal is. I get extremely grainy vision when it is pitch black out. I mean, I can fly very, very dark, but as soon as it's pitch black, my vision just grains up really bad.

[00:06:11] Yeah.

[00:06:11] And I actually somewhat kind of see like a strobing light effect, kind of like migraines coming on or something.

[00:06:17] Oh, that's weird.

[00:06:18] It's really hard to explain.

[00:06:19] Yeah.

[00:06:19] So I'm not super comfortable flying in pitch black.

[00:06:22] Yeah.

[00:06:24] But I can fly up until it's really close to that.

[00:06:27] So what about the night radian? Do you fly that when it was dark, dark? That's when I fly when it's the darkest. Yeah. See, I can handle that, too, because it's slow. It's not – I mean, it's nice and big, too, which is nice. So you can easily tell right, left, forward, back.

[00:06:44] And with that, I've got the aftermarket light kit on it, which will take and give you nav lights, which makes it tremendously easier to see which direction it's going.

[00:06:52] I know. Anybody that has a night radian needs to get that. Yeah. I did the same thing.

[00:06:57] Because the stock one does not give you the nav lights.

[00:06:59] No.

[00:06:59] Situation. It's – I mean, they did a good job, but – I like all the color patterns you get. I mean, you get a lot more color patterns with the stock setup, but you just do not get those nav lights.

[00:07:10] Yeah. And the other thing I like about the aftermarket one is it actually pulls power off the board. Yeah, there's no plugging it in separate. As opposed to having to use your balance lead to power the lights, which is how it comes stock. I run the G2 batteries that don't have balance leads, so it wouldn't work. So it's a plus. Yeah. See, when we were at – Joe and all, Tommy actually flew, and I don't know how, but his UMX Ultrix in pitch black.

[00:07:40] It's doable if you keep it in close. Not for me.

[00:07:43] Like, I was actually watching him, trying to pay attention. I know it's different when you're actually flying it yourself, and that, okay, I'm going to bank it to the left, so I know I'm going left. Which you don't have that input when you're watching someone else fly. But I just – I kept losing it. Like, I could not tell what was up, what was down, if it was coming at me, going away from me. And it was just not – Yeah, it's really hard to tell the top from the bottom.

[00:08:04] Yeah. Other than the fact it's a little bit dimmer on the top. I guess that's why you have the safe button if you need the panic to turn it on.

[00:08:12] I always forget that's there.

[00:08:13] Well, I usually don't use it either. It would have been nice when I got disoriented and was smacking it into the ground. Oh, did you?

[00:08:20] Yeah. I – You took after me. Yeah, I got it up nice and high. It was really close to dark. It was probably too dark to be doing it. I got it up nice and high and did the spinning saucer thing. It does so well.

[00:08:33] I love that.

[00:08:34] And I pulled out, and I'm thinking it was upside down instead of upright. And I fought with the stick for, like, a quarter of a second, and then it hit the ground. So it would have been nice if I'd remembered to flip the switch, and it would have leveled things off.

[00:08:48] Nice thing about that airplane, though, is, like, it really will right itself. Like, if you just let go of the sticks as it's falling after you're doing your little twirly thingy – Yeah, it always pops back upright somehow.

[00:08:58] It's like a cat. Yeah.

[00:09:00] I mean, it's designed really well. It's a lot of fun to fly. And as long as you give yourself enough altitude, it will get out to where what's up and what's down. Like, I've never had it go upside down on me when I thought it was –

[00:09:12] Yeah, it'll always flip back over or try anyway.

[00:09:15] Yeah.

[00:09:16] And it made the infamous whomp. Picked it up and flew it again.

[00:09:21] Well, okay, I was going to say, if you need to replace the actual – the fuselage itself or whatever you call on those little foamy ones, it's not expensive. It's easy to do. I ended up getting a new one for mine because, well, I whomped it in the ground a couple too many times. It was still flyable. Like, it was fine. But to me, I just wanted something a little bit prettier.

[00:09:42] Yeah, it did crack the nose. It didn't come off. It just cracked it. Yeah. When I got it home, just throw a little shugu in there, and off we went.

[00:09:48] Oh, I just taped mine because it was a quick fix at the field, and then I was like, eh, we'll just replace it. Yeah. And I haven't flown it since then, so that's the worst part. I just haven't had a chance to yet.

[00:10:01] So, yeah, it was a really good fly-in. A lot of people there. Unfortunately, I didn't wander around a whole lot. I was feeling a little off that weekend, so.

[00:10:08] Yeah. Well, it's still good, though, that you got to make it and see some people and fly. Somebody else fly the E-streak. Oh, really?

[00:10:16] Who was that? That was Tom with the Brandenburg.

[00:10:21] John. John. John. Oh, the guy that we met in. Yeah, the guy you met in. Tommy and I met at. No. Joe Noll. It's a very pretty airplane. Yes, it is. It fills the trailer up nicely. Did he fly it? He did not. Oh.

[00:10:33] It was a little breezy on Saturday during the day.

[00:10:37] Did he get it out, though, at least? No, he didn't. No, he didn't get it out? Okay.

[00:10:40] Yeah, he spent most of his day working on a Piper Super Cub for somebody else. Ah.

[00:10:45] That plane just looks like it takes forever to put together.

[00:10:49] Oh, I can imagine all the cables and everything. I mean, the pup is bad enough for me. It's so I can imagine.

[00:10:55] Yeah, it's more than I would want to go through to put a plane together. But I appreciate those that do because it's really neat to watch.

[00:11:03] So after having a couple people fly the E-streak, we've come to the determination that it's just not me, that there's not enough down thrust in the motor for that stupid setup that I've got in it.

[00:11:12] Okay.

[00:11:13] It, it is, the elevator changes, trim changes quite a bit at different throttle settings. So I normally set it up for a low throttle cruise trim, and then it just climbs under power. Okay.

[00:11:26] Which it's really good at. Yeah. It doesn't matter where it's facing. It goes the same speed. Yeah.

[00:11:33] So we decided I spun it a few times, but I not really pushed on it hard because of, well, it's so overpowered. but it's fine. It's like, you want to spin it, you go for it. So he took it up real high and spun it. And, the nose stays pointed at the ground. You cannot get it to go flat. it's possible maybe it's shift to center of gravity rearward a little bit, but if it flies so well, otherwise don't really want to mess with it.

[00:12:00] That's not a plane that's going to be good for something like that anyway. I mean, that's a good, just, I mean, really shiny substitute to where you're not going to really do anything like, I don't think you do anything with that type of plane anyway.

[00:12:12] Yeah. And it, invert spins exactly the same as it does upright.

[00:12:17] Yeah.

[00:12:17] It doesn't seem to care very well. it does spin, spins nicely and you can get them spinning very quickly. Really? but it will not flatten out. I have yet to do a power on snap with it. Cause I'm afraid of hearing snap, maybe one of these days when it gets a little more time on it, I might give it a power on snap and see what it does.

[00:12:39] Well, you built it pretty quick. You could always redo it. You still have the plan.

[00:12:41] Oh yes.

[00:12:42] Yes.

[00:12:42] It's not the end of the world, but I want to play with it this hour.

[00:12:46] Yeah.

[00:12:47] And I have snapped it. It does snap. Nice. It just, I've always pulled the power back just before.

[00:12:52] Yeah.

[00:12:53] So we'll see how that goes. Yeah.

[00:12:55] In time. Well, I'm glad to hear you had a good weekend though. Yeah. That was, I was, I was, I was sad to not make it up there, but like I said, we had RC Fest this weekend and that was a lot of fun too.

[00:13:06] And I say, how'd that go for you?

[00:13:08] Well, actually, before we get into that, I forgot we had somebody that, so the last episode where Tommy and I were wrapping up our Joan all week, we had mentioned that the trip was great until we got home. And I think he said something about, we'll go back to that and kind of talk about what happened. Completely forgot about it.

[00:13:27] So we had somebody like said, text in, I don't know who it was because just phone number asking what happened because we apparently suck at telling stories and forgot to finish it. So we get home and now, Tommy has the SUV that has a rear hatch that opens up nicely to give you access to everything that you loaded in. Like a good SUV should. Well, it didn't once we got home. And like I said, luckily it happened as we got into my driveway.

[00:13:55] We went to unload stuff and the hatch did not open. He couldn't get it to open no matter what we did. There was just something, I mean, he's fixed it since then, but something was weird. Like we tried pushing on it and then unlatching it at the same time, to try and see if there was something that was jammed in it. Couldn't do it. But we had, I mean, the back of that SUV was full.

[00:14:18] I mean, like it was almost completely to the ceiling and we had to unload all of that and somehow did it through the side doors. Yay. Now this is a, I mean, I don't even know what it's a, what is it? A medium size SUV? Yeah.

[00:14:34] It's not a large one like mine, but it's, it's not a small one either. So yeah, it's like a midsize SUV.

[00:14:39] Yeah. So yeah, it's not expedition size. It's more like, I'm terrible. I don't even know what it, I know it's a BMW something, but I don't know what, I don't know them enough to know what three. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But it's like I said, it's not, oops, it's not expedition size. It's, it's smaller than that, but it's bigger than like a, what's the one I'm looking for? Like the Ford. Escape. Escape. Yeah.

[00:15:03] So keep in mind, we had the eight foot telemaster in the back and that has a pretty wide tail on it. We had to get that finagled through the side door. So yeah, you got to get it turned 90 degrees and out the door. Somehow, somehow made it happen. And then we had to get his stuff loaded back in through the side doors too. And that was, like I said, that was the worst part of the trip. Other than that, everything went swimmingly. Oh, that's great.

[00:15:29] Well, it was safety.

[00:15:30] No one was stealing anything out of the truck. Even if they wanted to, they could not have. but I have not talked to you since we've been back really from Jonah. Do you plan on trying to make the trip next year?

[00:15:42] That is the plan. Good. I'm happy to hear that. Get to arrange some family stuff and, of course have the time, but time's not a problem at this point. It's accumulating, but.

[00:15:52] Good. I already have it scheduled off at work for next week or next year, next week. Man, I wish it was next week. Wouldn't that be nice? No. Oh, it would for me. Like, I, I hope everything works out and you get to come because it is, it's hard to describe what it is. Yeah.

[00:16:10] I've got to go at least once. It's like. I say you guys were killing me. You kept stuff out and I'm at work and it was a slow week at work anyway. So I'm hacking my phone, watching you guys do stuff. Like you guys are killing me here.

[00:16:22] We thought about you the whole time and we wished you were with us, but we definitely enjoyed ourselves.

[00:16:29] Well, that is great.

[00:16:30] Yeah.

[00:16:31] Think you can get, your brother to go with us too?

[00:16:33] At this point it looks like it's a possibility. Nice. That's going to be fun then. I'm looking forward to it. Not looking forward to hauling my trailer 12 hours, but,.

[00:16:42] It'll probably be more like 13 or 14 then if we're. Yeah. With the trailer.

[00:16:45] But that's okay.

[00:16:47] But. We'll make it a point to take the golf cart again somehow. We'll get everything on. We'll get your camper. We'll probably run another camper. Yeah. We'll figure something.

[00:16:57] And that'll make it easier on you guys too, not having to put everything in the SUV.

[00:17:01] Yeah.

[00:17:01] You can put that little stuff in the trailer.

[00:17:03] Yeah.

[00:17:04] It'll work out great.

[00:17:05] Like I'm, I, yeah. Give me a reason to buy new tires for the trailer. Well, that will. See, and that was the thing. Like we bought. But this was an expensive year for us for going because there was so much stuff we didn't have that we needed that we now have for next year that we don't have to buy. Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:17:23] You're stocked up now. You've got all the essentials that you need.

[00:17:26] Yeah. Like the biggest thing was golf cart batteries. I had to buy golf cart batteries because the ones we had were, I mean, probably eight years old maybe. I didn't trust them. I mean, they're great for around the house when I run a couple miles, but we literally drove like 20 to 30 miles a day there. There was a lot of drive.

[00:17:43] So you put a lot of time on that cart.

[00:17:45] Yes. I definitely have butt imprints on the seat and they are there and they're going to be there for quite a while.

[00:17:50] But that's okay.

[00:17:52] It was fun. So what else? What else did we do? Oh, we made it to the field with Tommy before he left.

[00:17:58] Yeah. That last good day. The weather was good.

[00:18:01] He said he wasn't going to make it out. And then we got the text, said, hey, Lori said I can go to the field. Let's go. Yeah. So we made it out. We flew, I can't say, I can't say the E-streaks. You guys flew the E-streaks together and I flew the shiny, but it was nice. It was good to be able to get out and actually fly everything together.

[00:18:21] We tried to do formation with that and that's incredibly hard to do with E-streaks. Very difficult.

[00:18:25] Yeah.

[00:18:26] But what? We did the best that we could. Trying to keep four of them that are drastically differently powered together. I know.

[00:18:33] Some people are faster. Some people are slower. Some people just have bad depth perception to see where you are. Some people's piloting skills are less than others. Why were you looking at me when you said that?

[00:18:43] I was thinking about relations.

[00:18:47] Your brother, I got you. No, he was doing just fine.

[00:18:49] He was doing just fine. We actually put him in the lead and we just kind of tried to join up on him because that was probably the easiest way to do it.

[00:18:54] Yeah.

[00:18:55] I think we got some of them in the same shot at the same time.

[00:18:59] Yeah, but it had to be zoomed out a lot. I was thinking it'd be cool to be able to post those online, but I don't think it's a good picture to just see three dots and not actually, or actually four dots, I guess, and not know exactly what you're looking at. But that's okay. It was fun. It was good to get out and actually spend one last relaxing day just enjoying ourselves. Yeah.

[00:19:19] Yeah. I ended up dumping the F-86, but things happen. That was not necessarily your fault. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that battery just decided not to push.

[00:19:30] Yeah. It decided to give up at the worst time. Although I guess with an EDF, there's no good time to give up. No.

[00:19:36] I wish I would have had a little more airspeed or altitude to play with, but it decided to go just explore the drainage ditch.

[00:19:43] I mean, it turned out. Okay. So let's tell exactly what happened. You were taking off. You had a longer rollout, I guess, than you're used to.

[00:19:52] Yeah. It wasn't pushing real hard on takeoff. It took longer than normal.

[00:19:55] And then you took off. Got the gear up. And it wasn't three seconds later than that. You said something. I looked over and it just looked like it stalled and fell out. Yeah.

[00:20:06] It was just started wallowing around and the nose came up. And when the nose came up, that was it.

[00:20:11] And you were, I mean, 30 feet in the air, maybe? Yeah.

[00:20:16] It wasn't high.

[00:20:17] No, not high at all.

[00:20:18] It actually crashed five foot underground because it ended up at the bottom of the drainage ditch.

[00:20:23] Which was actually okay because everything was kind of like in one little spot.

[00:20:28] Yeah. The only thing it did was knock a little piece of foam off where the canopy mounted. So it pushed the canopy latch off. And that was it.

[00:20:36] Yeah.

[00:20:37] There's a little bit of foam wrinklage. But for dropping out of the sky, jet. I expected a lot worse, to be honest. Oh, I expected it to need a trash bag.

[00:20:46] I thought there was going to be a lot more carnage. And I was glad to see that there wasn't because I didn't want to see a crash and lose a plane. I did more carnage cleaning it up.

[00:20:54] No, really? Blowing the grass out of the blades. Oh, I forgot about that. It sucked up all the servo leads. Yeah. So that actually took me longer to repair than putting those back together.

[00:21:07] Yeah. So you had, there was grass in it, and you were just trying to clean it up? Yeah. Is that what it was? Just to blow the grass out of the thrust tube. You took the wing off.

[00:21:15] Yeah.

[00:21:15] And forgot that the servo leads that were supposed to go to the servos, the extensions that were coming off of the, not ESC, the extensions that were coming off the radio got sucked in. Yeah.

[00:21:27] And they barely, just barely reached the fan.

[00:21:30] Just enough to make it spark.

[00:21:32] Shoot them up.

[00:21:33] It would scare you.

[00:21:33] They got hot.

[00:21:34] Yeah. Didn't do anything to anything else, though? Like, your receiver was okay and everything?

[00:21:38] Everything was fine. One of the fan blades has got a minor nick in it. If it was a full-size airplane, it'd be written off. But, yeah, this will keep going.

[00:21:46] And what size is this one? 80? 80 millimeter. 80. Yeah. That's not bad. If you've got to replace it, they're not too expensive. No.

[00:21:52] They're not bad at all. Unfortunately, I just sold all my extra 80 millimeter stuff. Well, you should have done that. That's why you never sell stuff. I get good money out of it. It's all right.

[00:22:03] Well, I guess. But if you've got to buy another one, that's going to be a lot more expensive than what you got for it.

[00:22:08] I think a new set of fan blades for it's like 12 bucks. It's not going to kill me. It's worth it, then. But it's barely nicked, so I'll probably just file it and rebalance it and go for it. Be good. Yeah.

[00:22:20] Well, that'll be good. I'll be excited to see that one fly again sometime, too. Oh, I also wanted to give a quick update on the Jet, the MB339 that I'm supposed to be getting. It's going to take a while. So apparently, I missed the first shipment. I didn't order quick enough, so I'll be waiting until September-ish. September-ish.

[00:22:40] But it's best to get those second batches. they find all the problems with the first ones.

[00:22:44] Do you think so? I mean, do you really think that they made any difference in it? Like, I think they, and I could be completely wrong, but I think they sold more than they expected to sell on the first batch, and then just went straight to, we need to order more. Same thing. Let's go.

[00:23:00] Yeah. You never know. You'll never know.

[00:23:02] Well, I'm going to tell myself it's better to get it out of the second batch, because that way I'll feel better about waiting.

[00:23:07] Yeah.

[00:23:07] But, no, I've got other things I need to take care of first. Like, I'm trying to work on the Telemaster. I want to get the 12-foot Telemaster done. Tommy got quite a bit done for me. Yeah, it looks good. But I got the electronics installed on the fuselage. I haven't started on the wings yet, but the tail's all done. Electronics are done. Switches are mounted, all that kind of stuff.

[00:23:28] So, really just need to tidy up the inside of it, figure out where I need to mount the batteries after I balance it to figure out where they need to go and all that kind of stuff. But we should be good. I'm excited. I think I have 8-inch tires on there. Is that 8-inch tires?

[00:23:42] Those are huge. They're at least 6ers. I think that's bigger than 6.

[00:23:46] I absolutely love those tires. I don't know what they came off of. And they're labeled Goodyear. They're big tires that we got in Toledo. And I don't know why, but they were $5 a piece. Because I want one of them. I mean, like, why would you buy one? I don't understand. But anyway, $10 for the pair of them. And I think they look so good. They really do.

[00:24:07] They look good. They look the part. The ones that were on there previously just didn't, they look con car-like.

[00:24:11] Yeah. And see, before I saw these in Toledo, I actually bought the, actually, I think they were the five, no, the five or six-inch balloon tires. the ones that you actually air up, whatever you call those. The floofy ones. Yeah. There you go. So, and I thought they looked okay. Like, I wasn't excited about them. But now that I see these actually mounted on here, I'm excited about it.

[00:24:35] Yeah. They definitely look the part. I really am. I mean, any other airplane, they would look like a bush tire. On this, they look like they're supposed to be there.

[00:24:42] Yeah. And so, when I was at RC Fest, they had one of these 12-foot telemasters that was electric. Which, after seeing it be electric, I kind of regretted my choice of buying a gasoline engine for it. I think electric would have been cool, but I digress. It's okay. I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

[00:25:02] You saved several hundred dollars on batteries.

[00:25:05] Well, but I spent several hundred dollars more on the engine than I would have, I think. Yeah, it's a watch. The electric setup. But anyway, they did a candy drop with it. And it's like, okay. After seeing that actually done out of the same airplane, different colors, but same airplane as what I have, I want to do that. I think, probably not this year, but next year, my goal would be to get that set up for that. I want to actually get this together and fly it.

[00:25:32] Make sure we're all good before I do anything.

[00:25:34] So, planning on a bolt-on hatch or cutting a hole in the bottom of the fuse and… Cutting a hole. Cutting a hole.

[00:25:40] Yeah. Although the bolt-on would probably be easier. You could actually bolt it right under the… Right under the gear. Under the center of gravity and all that kind of stuff, too. But the hatch would look cooler. Yeah, it'd be smooth. So, yeah.

[00:25:54] That's something to think about.

[00:25:56] Got time to figure that out. But anyway, so yeah, I'm getting closer on that one. I'm excited to hopefully in the next two or three months have it done and fly it. Let's hope so.

[00:26:05] We'll be out of summer in two or three months.

[00:26:07] I know. I'm just… I'm trying to push ahead to September.

[00:26:11] It's coming fast.

[00:26:12] I want my jet.

[00:26:16] I don't know. I was scheduling people today and needed a three-month follow-up. And September? What? That can't be right. September is not three months away.

[00:26:25] It's hard to believe that we're already halfway through the year.

[00:26:27] The middle of September is three months from now. So, yeah.

[00:26:30] Have you been flying much lately?

[00:26:31] I have not flown a whole lot. Just things going on. Wife's had surgery. Blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:38] Yeah. So…

[00:26:40] I get it. It's been a little sluggish. So, yeah. Last time I flew here was with you and Tommy and then Streeter. Oh, wow. So, yeah.

[00:26:50] That's been a while since he was here and we did that. Yeah. I have lucked out enough to where, with Piper being out of school, I don't have to get her to bed early. And summer has been so nice to go outside and actually fly here at home where I don't have to worry about going anywhere. And it doesn't take as long. But I have flown a lot.

[00:27:10] Yeah. You get to fly all that stuff in that nice backyard you got.

[00:27:13] I have flown so much. Like, it's exciting. Like, I've had a lot of fun. So, I've actually got to get a lot of flights on my UMX Radian. That was one I wasn't sure about. But I'm so glad I bought that because it's a fun little plane. This UMX stuff is so nice for the small field stuff. I know. And the batteries are small. Batteries are cheap. And flight times, like, I'm getting 20-ish minutes out of a battery on the UMX Radian. I think that's pretty good. That's…

[00:27:43] It glides really well.

[00:27:44] Yeah.

[00:27:44] Have you cut a thermal with it yet? Yeah. It's weird. Like, it does okay. Like, I'm not saying this is like a great glider. Don't take that out of context. But for what it is, for flying here, it's a lot of fun.

[00:28:03] So, I've gotten to the point. This is how lazy I am. Did you see the chair? I don't remember if we saw the chair that we got. Tommy and I both got one knit. Joe and Ulf. I've heard it. I have not seen them yet. So, it's a really… At first, I thought it was neat. And I kind of thought it was not neat. But I'm back to thinking it's neat again. Because it's like a hammock chair. So, you sit and you kind of can lean a little farther back. So, it's perfect for flying gliders.

[00:28:27] Yeah. Nice recline. It does. But I didn't appreciate it until I actually flew a glider from here. The little Radian. And I got to the point where I was so lazy I didn't want to get up when I was done with the battery that I was just like landing it on my lap and catching it out of the air. Pulling a battery out of my pocket, putting the old one in my old pocket, and just launching it right back up. It was so nice.

[00:28:51] I know.

[00:28:52] It's a lot of fun. But I've flown that. I'm trying to think. What else have I done? I've flown the Erratix a lot. That's another one that I appreciate that one for flying around here because you can… You've got your maneuverability. You can get around.

[00:29:08] You can practice a lot more.

[00:29:10] Like the Radian is great for just lazy, I don't want to think about anything and just enjoy flying. But the Erratix is one where I feel like I'm actually learning to fly a little bit better. So, I had a lot of fun with that. Piper actually decided she wanted to fly. So, she flew the Radian a little bit when she was here. And she's not like… She's doing okay. She's still… She wants to flip. She wants to do a whole bunch of different things.

[00:29:38] She doesn't just want to fly straight.

[00:29:40] She wants to fly aerobatics all the time.

[00:29:41] It's too boring for her, I guess. But my mom was out one time and she wanted to try it too. It's not for everybody. I mean, not everybody can fly. She tried it a couple times and just didn't understand up was down and down was up kind of thing on the sticks.

[00:30:00] Stick all over the place.

[00:30:01] Yeah. It's hard when you've never done it to really get the gist of what it's like to fly something. I guess that's what simulators are for. You can crash all the time on that. She didn't have any problems. We were on a buddy box thing. So, I told her, do not worry about crashing.

[00:30:20] But the first time I gave her control, I mean, she just nosedived it into the ground to where like, I was in shock how fast it was going down and we were probably 10 feet off the ground by the time I was like, oh, I need to fix this now. We're flying, we're crashing. Yeah, I know. But it worked out. Like I said, we got her calmed down and she got a little bit better at it. But then she, I think, got a little nervous and quit. But it was fun.

[00:30:43] It was good to actually, like I said, just have a relaxing night outside and just enjoy the hobby the way it should be enjoyed.

[00:30:50] Yeah. And the bugs haven't been too bad yet.

[00:30:52] But, I don't want to jinx ourselves. They're coming. They're coming. And also, like, we've not had a lot of rain. So, the grass hasn't been growing. So, instead of every four days or five days of cutting grass, now we're like two weeks.

[00:31:07] I've been a week and a half without cutting grass. Yeah.

[00:31:09] We've been, that's been almost a week.

[00:31:13] It doesn't need done.

[00:31:14] I don't think ours needs it yet. And we're almost a week. Mine needs it. Oh, well, that sucks. We got some rain. So, I think that's going to make it take off a little bit.

[00:31:23] I found two trash cans that are full of water. So, I need to get those dumped over before I start breeding bugs.

[00:31:29] Yes. That will do it. Do it quickly. Yeah. What else? Oh, in Toledo, I don't remember if you remember. I don't know if you remember. So, I bought up or bought the UMX Twin Otter. Right. I knew that it had a problem. Like, the guy told me that they put a two-cell lipo in it instead of just the single cell.

[00:31:50] It had that lovely aroma.

[00:31:51] And it smoked it, which sucks. But, that's okay. I finally got the part to replace it and I got it to where it's flyable now. I was excited about that. So, when I came home for lunch today, actually, I came home just to do this. I came home from lunch, grabbed a battery, and maidened it out here on my lunch break. Like, that is a really impressive plane.

[00:32:13] Yeah.

[00:32:14] Like, it has the same power system as the UMX Ultrix. So, I forgot that at first. So, when I was going through doing my pre-flight.

[00:32:23] Why won't the rudder have worked?

[00:32:24] I didn't have a rudder. I know. And I was, like, not really freaking out. But I was starting to think, well, I thought this was fixed. I was kind of upset about it.

[00:32:31] To get you credit, you've got the bigger one, which has an operating rudder.

[00:32:34] Right. And you don't think about it because, there should be a rudder because of the way the whole airplane looks. But it doesn't need it. Like, it really does not need it. It flies great without a rudder. The differential thrust does more than is necessary for it. So, it's a fun little airplane. I was very impressed with it.

[00:32:52] Yeah, they are. They're very scale-looking UMX.

[00:32:55] I know. I wish it would fly a little slower, but it's no big deal. Like, it doesn't have much wing. So, it needs a little bit more speed to keep it aloft. Yeah. It doesn't fly as slow as an Alteryx, which is nothing but wing. So, I'm not too surprised about that. But that's okay. It's a good-looking, fun little airplane.

[00:33:15] Cool. Yeah.

[00:33:18] What else? Do you want to talk about RC Fest?

[00:33:20] Yeah. What did you come up with at RC Fest?

[00:33:23] So, RC Fest is fun. Like, we need to find a way to get you to RC Fest one day. I'm like, it sucks that every year it seems like Streeter and RC Fest is on the same weekend.

[00:33:35] Yeah.

[00:33:36] Like, I would like, I don't know who to talk to. Who do you talk to? Let's tell somebody to do Streeter on another weekend. It's like, move this around. Just one week. Either way. It doesn't actually know. It needs to be one week earlier. Because this coming weekend at Eli Field is the Eli Toe event. Oh, yeah. The Aero Toe. So, if anybody can make it to that, that's going to be a good show. I can't wait to go see that. There's a bunch of big gliders there already.

[00:33:58] Like, 30-foot wingspan, huge gliders. And it's actually kind of neat to see. I'm getting off topic, I know. But I do that. It's kind of neat to see some of these guys with these huge gliders have purpose-built trailers. Just for their gliders. Just like the full size. Exactly. They're so big that the best way to, I guess, transport is just in a trailer that's made for it. But there were a couple of the guys that came early. And they were flying demonstrations and stuff.

[00:34:23] And it was very cool. So, RC Fest was Friday and Saturday. I went Friday by myself. It was okay. Not nearly as fun as Saturday. Because Piper and Crystal came with me. So, Saturday is so much busier than Friday.

[00:34:45] Obviously, because most people are working on Friday.

[00:34:47] Yeah, but I didn't think about it. Like, I was thinking Friday was a good turnout. And then Saturday was like, you almost didn't have places to sit. Because there were so many people with their chairs and stuff laid out. It was pretty crowded. Like, I was impressed how they had stuff set up. Because they had a whole bunch of what they call the Try Me section set up. Where you could try RC boats, RC cars, RC rock crawlers. What else was there? The monster trucks. They had those.

[00:35:20] And Aero Scouts. Where you could fly Aero Scouts. A lot of fun for the kids to be able to go out and try things they wouldn't try other ways. So, Piper decided she wanted to try the little rock crawler things. I have no experience with rock crawlers. I've never done anything like that. Like, I've done the RC cars before. But I don't know what you would know.

[00:35:46] I love the crawlers. I've got a couple of them myself. Do you? I didn't know that. What do you have? I've got a TLT1 conversion. So, it was like when rock crawling first came along. And when would that have been?

[00:35:56] Oh, good. Because I don't remember ever hearing about rock crawling when I was in the cars.

[00:36:02] It was mid-90s. Oh. It's been a while. Anyway, it's a TLT1 conversion. I took it to my little truck and turned it into a rock crawler. And it works pretty well. And then I've got an Axial SCX2.

[00:36:18] Okay. Excuse me. See, I'm starting to kind of learn these things. So, Piper got an Axial Cabria? Capra. Capra. That's it.

[00:36:32] So, a little bit about these things. Hers is kind of like the buggy style.

[00:36:35] Yeah.

[00:36:36] Whereas both of mine, well, one's kind of a comp truck and the other one is more of a trail truck. It's more scale. It actually has a port-a-patrol body on it. Oh.

[00:36:47] Oh, that's kind of cool.

[00:36:49] It's got lights and I made some boards.

[00:36:51] Yeah. Hers has lights on it and all that kind of stuff. Which is kind of neat. So, she did the Try Me thing on that. That seemed to have been what she liked the most. Which actually works out good because she's not, she's learning still. She's still trying to figure, coming at you left is right, right is left kind of thing. And that's hard to get. That's the nice thing about crawlers is they're generally slow. They're so slow.

[00:37:17] Not only are they slow, but the cool thing is you don't have to worry about brakes because when you let off, it automatically stops. At least that's how this one is set up now. You can change it.

[00:37:26] Yeah. My axle truck, if I let off the gas too fast, it does a wheelie in reverse.

[00:37:31] Yes. I've seen people doing that, but I don't want to talk too much about the crawling thing because this is an airplane podcast. I get it. I don't want to go too much off topic, but it was good to see all the different segments of the hobby represented and to give kids a chance to get into different things that they're into. So like I said, because of that, she wanted to crawl her. We got her a crawler.

[00:37:54] Our meeting at Eli Field was what is the, was last night, Tuesday night, and she actually wanted to come with me. So I was able to let her come to the meeting with me. We had our airplane stuff. She was back off behind the barn thing, whatever, on all their crawling courses. She had a blast. Yeah. Kept herself busy with the Capra. And then she decided she wanted to leave because we were trying to think how she worded it.

[00:38:18] Something about she had fun the whole night, except for the meeting where we talked about airplanes was boring. So I've lost her to that. Like I'm, I'm still hoping to get in airplanes, but just getting her out, getting her to do things with me on that side of things is kind of cool. I like that she wants to come over there.

[00:38:37] At least she's getting out of the house.

[00:38:38] I know. Something different. Right. And she's, like I said, she's excited to go. We're going back Saturday for the, the Eli 2 event. She's ready to go back to that. She wants to go. So I ended up buying, since I have a lot of the G2 batteries and stuff, I bought one of the, the Gen 2 batteries for the Capra. Capra, right? Capra. Yeah. Capra. It's going to take me a while to get used to that because I don't, that's a weird name to me. I don't know why.

[00:39:03] But anyway, so I got her a little bit bigger battery that fits in there and should last a little bit longer. They last quite a while. Yeah. I run my big truck around on a 1300 milliamp and I'll run it until I'm sick of it. That pretty much is what she was doing too. And with that, I can charge that little battery in nine minutes. Yeah. Like it's, it's amazing when you're, you're putting so many amps in it, how quickly they charge. let's see what else.

[00:39:31] I don't know how much else I have to talk about. We had, okay. So the other thing with RC Fest is that this year was a little bit different. Normally they do, it was like an open fly-in type thing where anybody could come and fly. They closed the flight line down this year to where it was all demo flights. which to me is fine because I'm not a huge fan of flying in front of people, but I like to see people fly.

[00:39:58] Like I, going out to the field, I will sit and watch and enjoy that just as much, if not more than when I fly something myself. I'm weird like that. Yeah. But I like to fly. I like to fly when I'm not around a bunch of people. That's just how I am. Like I, I, I enjoy smaller groups. I'm better in a smaller group. especially with people I know, but watching, once again, you get some of the best pilots out of that place.

[00:40:27] And there were a lot of cool, even helicopters, 3D helicopters and all that kind of stuff were cool to watch. They have the jets. I got to see the MB339 fly again. It's a really good show and I enjoy it.

[00:40:39] It's great. Yeah. Sounds like they're doing a really good job with that.

[00:40:41] And it's going to be the same weekend next year. They already announced that. So clear your schedule and hopefully change.

[00:40:48] I'm pretty sure I'll be in Streeter. Hopefully change Streeter's mind to be a different day.

[00:40:52] Well, actually it might work out okay because, so like Saturday is when RC Fest ends. Sunday would have been a good day to go up, like for me to go up and see you. Except this Sunday was, or this past Sunday was just ridiculous.

[00:41:07] First rain we've had in a month and.

[00:41:09] And it was cold. Yeah. Cold and windy. Like I don't remember what the high was, but I think Saturday was the high of 85, 86, something like that. And Sunday was.

[00:41:19] It was very warm Saturday.

[00:41:21] Yeah.

[00:41:21] And I think it got maybe 65 on Sunday.

[00:41:26] I was going to say it didn't even get to 70. So it was windy and rainy and just a all around kind of crappy day. Cool damp day. But no, that was, that was pretty much, pretty much it. They did the ring of fire again. I think, like I want to try my darndest to do that next year. That just looks like so much fun. I'd find a plane, see if I can get in with the guys and actually fly through the ring of fire.

[00:41:52] Oh, the other thing they had that was kind of cool was the, they do fireworks Saturday night. They actually had a pretty good show. It was a good long show. And they had three night radians that were like, I don't know if they were trying to get shot down or what. They were playing with the danger there. It was pretty cool. It was a good show. Like I said, it was a lot of fun. I plan on going back next year. Sounds good.

[00:42:16] Yeah. Yeah. It looks like you had maybe some brush with some celebrities while you were there.

[00:42:22] Oh, RC sailors were there.

[00:42:24] Yes.

[00:42:24] I got to meet them.

[00:42:26] One of the Andersons from the Gravedigger.

[00:42:27] Oh, I forgot about him. Ryan Anderson was there. Yeah. That was so neat because like I kind, I don't want to say I follow monster trucks, but I know monster truck drivers and I, I know the faces. I know the names on a lot of them. And it was so cool to see him there with his kid because it was just like just anybody else. He was out there racing. Obviously, son of a digger was the truck they were driving. But I mean, he was taking videos of his kid.

[00:42:54] He was out cheering him on. His kid was doing a really good job on freestyle. It was a lot of fun to watch. It was pretty cool. It's neat. Yeah, it really is. It's, it's amazing. Like, so the airplane guys have their top of the line guys that fly. The monster truck guys have their top of the line guys that, will come and put on a show. All these different clicks within this whole group of, I mean, thousands of people that showed up to this thing.

[00:43:23] And each place has its own feel. It's, it's, it's just different. And it's kind of cool, like I said, the way things are set up because you get to see not only top of the line stuff, but you also get to try your hand at boats or cars or whatever you want to try. And they have, I mean, it's just all inclusive and it was, it's a really cool event. I really enjoy having it this close to us, especially. Yeah. It's not a far drive. The distance is really good for us.

[00:43:52] It's closer for me to do that than it is to go to Streeter.

[00:43:55] Oh yeah. Streeter is 125 miles for me.

[00:43:58] I think from door to, from my door to Eli Field is 53 miles.

[00:44:03] Yeah.

[00:44:03] So not even an hour. Yeah. Less than an hour on the interstate. But no, it was like I said, a lot of fun. Do it again next year and we'll just see how things go.

[00:44:13] All right.

[00:44:14] What else? Anything else you want to talk about? Are we pretty good? This is weird without Tommy. Yeah. We're going to have to get our groove in. And this is, this is odd.

[00:44:22] And I haven't done one of these for over a month. So.

[00:44:24] I know. We did a lot of them in the, in the camper. We did a lot of them at Joe and all. And I'm a little out of practice too. We got the dog annoying us, but this is not my wheelhouse either.

[00:44:35] I'm usually the filler.

[00:44:36] I know. We'll get it figured out. It'll be okay. We're going to plow through this and come out fine on the other side.

[00:44:44] All right. Well.

[00:44:46] You ready to call it quits?

[00:44:47] I think for our first attempt at doing this as a semi-solo show.

[00:44:53] It's like we started over. It's like it's episode one, but that's okay.

[00:44:57] Episode one, part two.

[00:44:58] There you go. We'll, we'll get it. We'll be fine. So we'll find then until next time. Thank you for listening. I'm Ron. And I'm Dave. You almost said Tom. Yeah. I, we miss him so much. I know. Like I, I heard I'm Tom in my mind when you said that. And I was like, oh, one of these.

[00:45:15] And I'm Tom. There you go.

[00:45:17] And I'm Tom.

[00:45:20] Good night. To be fair. To be fair. Good night.

[00:45:24] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Claim Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.