Ep 143: Nothing in particular!

[00:00:10] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. And I'm Dave. Episode 143. Pushing that 150. I know. We're getting up there, right? At least I think it's 143. That's what I've written down. I could be wrong. I'm assuming you're correct. I've been wrong before. So what's going on? Our Halloween episode was just re-released. That was the last one that came out. Did you get a chance to listen to that one yet?

[00:00:33] I started listening to it last night and fell asleep.

[00:00:35] Well, I'm glad we can help you snooze. That is the goal that we have, is to help people sleep. I don't know how far you made it, but I thought that was a fun one when we did it. I enjoyed it.

[00:00:45] It sounded fun.

[00:00:47] If we can plan better next year, perhaps we can do it again. Has it been two or three years since we did it? I don't remember. Time flies.

[00:00:58] It was not last year because I wasn't on it. Right. So it had to have been at least the year before. The year before that one then.

[00:01:05] Has it been, are we going on, we're on three years now?

[00:01:10] I believe so. Wow.

[00:01:12] Okay. That's surprising.

[00:01:14] Because I've been at it a little over a year and a half now.

[00:01:16] Wow. Okay. So time flies. It sure does. That's surprising. That doesn't seem possible, but I guess it is. Anyway, what else we got going on? So Tommy is technically back. Yep. So that's good news. He's getting ready for his vacation with his wife, so we're not going to hear from him for the next couple episodes, but he is back in country. Made it home safely about a week or so ago, so all is good on that front.

[00:01:47] And also, so one of the first episodes, because he hasn't done much hobby related, obviously, since he's been gone. One of the first episodes we're going to do when he comes back, we have some listener questions that have been building up recently.

[00:01:59] Yeah, we need to get those up to date.

[00:02:00] That we need to answer and get to. So that will be the one of, if not the first episode we do back with him. So saying that, if you guys have any questions you want answered, or just send a message to Tommy to welcome back, or whatever, send them in to me, ron at rcplanelab.com, and I will get those compiled, and we'll answer them and read them.

[00:02:21] Can't wait. Whatever that episode is. Look, I love those questions. They're fun, aren't they?

[00:02:26] It's been a long time since we've done. We need to do it more often, because we have some built up that we just have not gotten to, due to reasons. I don't know.

[00:02:38] I don't know. You get 90% of them, so I don't even see them. Well, that's okay.

[00:02:44] I'm the main email listed on everything, so that's what everybody sees. What else? Did you see the Reno Air Races are trying to find a new home? There were five or six, I think, different places I saw that were listed, but unfortunately none of them are near us.

[00:03:00] Yeah, it's all got to be out on the west coast. In the desert. Yeah.

[00:03:03] So I think, if I remember reading something right, they were going to be taking next year off, and then trying to run it the year after that. Sorry, my phone's ringing.

[00:03:16] Nope.

[00:03:18] Nothing important. So, yeah, so they're going to be doing that, hopefully, taking a year off, and then getting back to that next, or the year after that, and having a new home, and getting back to it. But we'll see. I'm sure Tommy will know more than that, or know more than we do. Oh, absolutely. Because he follows it more than we do, obviously. What else? We've got a few things, actually, to talk about here. There's some new airplanes that came out.

[00:03:45] Yeah, looks like Hobby Zone's been busy. Actually, quite a few. Yeah, I haven't seen any Hobby Zone airplanes come out for quite a while, and now, all of a sudden, there are two new ones from Hobby Zone released in the last two weeks. Yeah, I think they're back-to-back, so the last two weeks. And there was also one that came out from Tower Hobbies.

[00:04:05] Yeah.

[00:04:06] So let's talk about those just a little bit. First one. The Apprentice STOL stole S700 millimeters, ready to fly with safe. So this is pretty much a trainer aircraft.

[00:04:20] Yeah, this looks very beginner-like.

[00:04:22] Skill level one for anybody just getting into the hobby. And it also comes with, so it says it comes with the Real Flight Simulator. It comes with a trial version of the Real Flight Simulator. So apparently, you get 100 minutes to fly this airplane. Don't forget and leave it on. Yeah. Don't walk away from it. Don't go to the bathroom. Don't do anything.

[00:04:42] But anyway, so you get 100 minutes to fly this airplane and a few other, I guess, trainer airplanes at one field, is what I saw on there. So, I mean, that's cool for somebody just getting into the hobby that doesn't know if they want to bite the bullet and buy the full suite of Real Flight before you get into it. And the price isn't really, it's a small airplane. So that kind of seems high to me. But when you figure that you get everything you need to fly.

[00:05:13] So it comes with battery, charger, Real Flight Simulator, trial, transmitter, airplane, I don't remember what all I said. It's $229.99.

[00:05:24] Yeah.

[00:05:25] So there's some value there. There is. Because I will say it's kind of a cool looking airplane. So they have the bigger tires on it, which I know does nothing for you, Dave.

[00:05:37] But I like the Bushwick. I've had big tire airplanes and we'll have another big tire airplane. Just not this one.

[00:05:47] So I think I like the bigger tires more than about anybody in our group, except maybe Daniel. Your brother really likes big tires, too.

[00:05:53] He likes loud motors and big tires.

[00:05:55] I'm more on the big tire thing than the loud motors. I don't mind a little bit of noise, but sometimes too much is too much. Yeah, he's real happy with that new engine.

[00:06:05] We'll talk about that later.

[00:06:07] We will. Make sure we make a note of that. So 700 millimeters, so it's under a meter. It's pretty small. It's almost like a bigger version of a UMX. What's the weight on this thing? It is very light, if I remember right, but I don't have the weight in front of me. I can continue to talk and act like I know what I'm talking about and not say anything.

[00:06:29] You talk, I'll look. Okay.

[00:06:32] It does say no FAA registration required. It's under the 250.

[00:06:36] That's what I was wondering. Is it under 250? It is. Well, there you go.

[00:06:39] See? I should have read through some of these beforehand, but I didn't. So anyway, it's four channel, which is nice. Gives you aileron control, too, it looks like. Pre-order now, $229.99. Like I said, it's a cool-looking little airplane. It doesn't look a lot like it would be difficult to fly. And it's made, obviously, for people just getting into the hobby. So how there's some airplanes that just look cheap? Yeah.

[00:07:09] This is not quite one of them, but it doesn't look overly impressive either. It doesn't look cheap, but it looks budget-friendly. That's, I like that wording. That's good. But, I mean, like I said, it comes with everything to fly. And the neck, go on.

[00:07:26] It keeps giving me timber vibes. I don't know why.

[00:07:28] When I first saw it, that's what I thought it was, too. Like, I thought it was another timber. It's like, really? Do they need another timber?

[00:07:34] Well, they…

[00:07:34] I'm so confused with all those. It looks like they did, but just with another name. Yeah. Although, there's not… I mean, I don't know.

[00:07:43] I don't know. It's going to be interesting. Definitely a new option for somebody getting into it. Not have to deal with their RFID and… Right. And it's two-cell. Runs on two-cell lipos. So it's not overly powered. It's going to be… It's a durable foam. It's lightweight. So when it does get doinked, and it will get doinked, it's probably going to survive fairly well. It doesn't look like it has wing struts. It probably doesn't need it.

[00:08:05] So that tells me there must be some carbon in the wing or something to keep it from folding.

[00:08:10] Yeah. But I mean, like I said, I kind of like it. Runs on a 2S300.

[00:08:16] Which is a nice little battery. Yeah.

[00:08:18] Not very expensive.

[00:08:19] Yeah, I've got two or three of them.

[00:08:20] I need to get a couple more of those, actually. What do you run those in?

[00:08:26] My UMX Jets. My MiG runs those. And the Piper Cub. Not the Piper Cub. Oh, my goodness. It's a completely option of a Piper Cub, the pits.

[00:08:36] I was going to say, I don't remember you having a Piper Cub. Wow. Yeah. Nowhere close. I mean, that's twice as many wings. But no, it's a good looking airplane, like I said, for what it is. Probably not something that speaks to me. Me neither. But it's an interesting option. But for the person that is in that area, that's a good one to start with.

[00:08:58] Moving on. Moving on. To the next one.

[00:09:00] They actually came out. And this is… So before when I said there are planes that look like they're just kind of like the cheap beginner planes, that's what this one is to me.

[00:09:13] And the price point's right there, too. Exactly.

[00:09:15] So the Duet S2, ready to fly with battery and charger, once again, they are re-releasing this with AS3X. So I've never had a Duet before. I've never flown one of you.

[00:09:26] No, I haven't, because I just can't bring myself to look at one long enough.

[00:09:29] See, it doesn't bother me too much. Like, it's kind of interesting looking. And so after having the UMX Radian that is also kind of ugly, but flies really good. I wouldn't say the Radian's ugly. Kind of.

[00:09:51] I don't like the bent wing, the molded bent wing that they do. Yeah. Go ahead.

[00:09:56] I think that's what reminds me of this one. So the little dihedral that's built into the wings, it's a small curve.

[00:10:04] It's a curvature, not a separate joint.

[00:10:06] Right. Which, that's what the Radian looks like, and that's what this one looks like, too. So that's the only thing that kind of draws me to this, to think it's not terrible looking, but it does look very, almost not hobby grade. Definitely looks cheapish. But it comes with everything you need to fly, also. Battery, charger, which this is a little 1S, 150 batteries, so they're nice because they're five bucks a piece.

[00:10:33] Yeah, those are little tiny six dollar ones, yeah.

[00:10:35] Yeah, the ones that you use, like, on most of these small, little UMX, like, small ones.

[00:10:42] I need to get one of those. I've got a use for that. I've got that, whatever that little yellow UMX thing is I got.

[00:10:50] What?

[00:10:51] You've got one, too.

[00:10:53] Oh, the SU-26? SU-26, yeah. Those are good flying airplanes.

[00:10:56] Yeah.

[00:10:57] But anyway, so you get everything you need to fly with what looks like a not hobby grade, I'll say, like, toy grade transmitter, for $79.99. I wonder how this thing would do indoors. I'm sure it would do great indoors. It would probably do better indoors than outdoors.

[00:11:16] Yeah, for 80 bucks, that'd be worth a shot.

[00:11:18] Well, so I saw this was the RTF version for 80 bucks, and I was looking, thinking, perhaps they would come out with a bind and fly version of it. There's nothing listed. So I don't think I've ever seen this, the duet, the first version or this version, doesn't seem to ever come with, doesn't seem to come in the bind and fly version, which I can't, like, I mean, if they had something like this for 40 bucks or 50 bucks, I would not think twice about picking it up.

[00:11:47] I'd have to repay it into something cool so I could live with it, but yeah, definitely.

[00:11:51] Yeah, and that price point, without any of the extra stuff, I would have no problem buying that, just as an extra night time, not night, but like evening flyer out here around the house.

[00:12:02] That's neat. But that's me.

[00:12:04] So yeah, comes with the motors installed. Once again, it's another Hobby Zone coming out. So that's two in two weeks for Hobby Zone, which you don't often see Hobby Zone stuff come out. It's kind of good to see something other than eFlight and all that stuff.

[00:12:19] I'm going to make a venture that we're going to see more and more stuff under the 250 weight so they can produce it without the RFID stuff.

[00:12:27] Yeah.

[00:12:27] I think we're just going to see a lot more of that stuff.

[00:12:29] Well, the price point is cheaper. You can absolutely fit more in shipping containers. So, I mean, when you look at it that way, there's, I mean, if you look at the cost per square foot, like a small box like this, as opposed to the, well, the big R, like the big jet. That kind of stuff, that box size. You'd fill a container quick with those. Exactly. I mean, it's probably the size of 10 or 15 of these small ones. So when you look at it that way.

[00:13:02] Your bang for the buck is a lot more. Yeah.

[00:13:04] Not bad at all.

[00:13:05] But anyway, it comes with batteries for the transmitter. It comes with batteries for the airplane, or a battery for the airplane and a charger. $79.99. But that's. Yeah, a retailer near you. Sometime, perhaps. I don't know when it's going to be in stock, because it just says pre-order only. And they do that a lot. And then you just wait. What's next? The next one. Okay, now this one's kind of cool. This is.

[00:13:29] This I can get with this. So Tower Hobbies.

[00:13:33] Tower Hobbies released what's called a Sea Wind 1.4 meter plug-and-play. Amphibian. With retractable gear. So tricycle gear, retractable. And you're going to have to do the, tell me what this is called. But the little motor pod that mounts. The motor pod. Okay, cool. So that mounts from the top of the rear. It's mounted on the top of the vertical fin. Yeah. So there you go. It's a different looking airplane. And that's kind of what draws me to it.

[00:14:07] So this one's a little bit more expensive.

[00:14:10] It's also much bigger.

[00:14:11] It is much bigger. It's 1.4 meters. And it doesn't come with a receiver. Or batteries. Or anything along those lines. And it's $279.99. But, and I say this about many airplanes. When you look at the video, it looks like it flies pretty good.

[00:14:27] Yeah. There's several other aircraft on the market very similar to this. Both in kit form and ready-to-fly stuff. And this plan form, for some reason or another, does seem to fly very well. You've got to watch your trims with throttle application because it will tend to push the nose down.

[00:14:47] Oh, that makes sense because it's from so high up. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:50] So there's probably a fair amount of angling of the engine going on. But these generally, this type, tend to fly fairly well.

[00:15:00] And because it's foam, one of the things it has to, that, and that's one thing. So I'm drawn more to some of these foam airplanes now because I love the navigation lights. I love the landing lights. I like the looks of them when they have just some sort of light on them.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:15] And you don't seem to see that nearly as much with any of the balsa ARFs.

[00:15:21] Well, and this one being amphibian, foam is a plus. There's no sinkage going on if bad things happen.

[00:15:26] True. I'm not sure, honestly, how they're going to seal the gear up. Like, I'm sure it's not sealed very well, but it's probably in its own compartment.

[00:15:36] So on the Icon, it had a separate nose wheel compartment set up that was sealed. It's like a boat hull inside the fuselage. It was well thought out. And I'm assuming this is set up very similar to that.

[00:15:49] I would think so, with just wires running through. Yeah. And then sealed with some glue or something.

[00:15:55] It was the little gasket, the bellows. Yeah, that's it. Bellows. Really? It had a little rubber bellows that slid on the wire to keep the water out. Oh, okay. And on the main gear, I'm not sure how they're pulling that off.

[00:16:13] Yeah, it goes up and down, but I don't know how it stores inside. But like I said, if you have a chance to look it up, look it up. It's a cool-looking airplane. It's different, which is what I like. And it reminds me of whatever that airplane was Tommy flew at Joe and All in the Combat. Okay. Except that was a lot bigger and it was Balsa. But this is smaller in foam. But this is the same general setup with the puller, whatever you call it, on top of the pod.

[00:16:44] The high-mounted engine. Yeah.

[00:16:46] Yeah. So it's, where is the, does it say on here what kind of battery it takes? Oh, yeah. 3S2200. So that's perfect. Really common. Yeah.

[00:16:54] Perfect battery for it.

[00:16:56] So who knows? We'll have to see what they look like.

[00:16:58] Yeah, that's really nice. Interesting. It's a nice paint scheme. Yeah.

[00:17:06] So I was just looking. Sorry. So the main gear retract servos are 36 grams. There's five 9-gram micro control surface servos. And then a 17-gram nose wheel retract servo.

[00:17:20] Ooh, I just saw on here it has Fowler flaps. Oh, really? That's nice. Not just plain flaps, they're Fowlers. Yeah. They make them nice and efficient.

[00:17:27] So those are the same as what's on the air tractor I have.

[00:17:33] Is that an air tractor?

[00:17:34] It's not an air tractor. What is that? The yellow one. The yellow one, the air tractor. Air tractor. Why did I get confused on that one?

[00:17:42] Anyway, but yeah, so that's kind of cool. A retractable water rudder? That should work. Yeah.

[00:17:49] Obviously, we haven't looked too much at this yet because we didn't have a lot of time before we sat down. But cool, huh? Yeah. This one's interesting. Might have to be under the Christmas tree.

[00:18:00] Yeah.

[00:18:01] Might not. I don't know. We'll see.

[00:18:03] My wife has not bought me anything hobby grade for 25 years.

[00:18:07] Well, it's time to buy it yourself then. We could do that. So the other thing I did, now we'll move on. This is no longer things coming out. This is things I bought. So, I had the simulator. I had the, is it the AS? No. I don't remember what the WS3000 or whatever the dongle, the little USB thing that plugs in, then you connect your transmitter to it.

[00:18:30] The cordless, wireless, how easy does it get?

[00:18:32] Yeah. So that was too difficult for me.

[00:18:36] Of course it was. No, like, okay, so I'm going to be honest.

[00:18:39] Before Tommy left, he ended up buying the real flight with the Interlink DX transmitter. I think that's what it's called, right? Interlink DX simulator controller thing. And he really liked it. Like he said, he used that a lot. And it was nice that everything came together. He didn't have to worry about taking his transmitter with him. He didn't have to worry about keeping a battery charged on that.

[00:19:01] He didn't have to worry about a lot of stuff that lazily on my part, when I'm sitting at the computer, I sometimes get too lazy to go or to want to walk in and get my transmitter, turn it on, change all that kind of stuff. So I ended up buying the same Interlink DX transmitter thing that he bought. And I'm going to tell you what, I've had it for about a week and a half now, two weeks. I have flown quite a bit with it. And the ease of use is nice.

[00:19:35] It does have a cable, which I don't necessarily like compared to the other one. The other one's wireless, but this one has a cable on it. It's nice and long, so you don't have to worry about being right up on it. But what's cool is there's no batteries to charge. I don't have to worry about keeping anything charged on that. It sits next to my computer. If I decide I want to plug it in, just plug it in really quick, fire up RealFlight and start flying.

[00:19:56] And then the other thing that's nice is you can control everything on RealFlight. You can change where you're flying, change the airplane, reset the airplane, change wind direction, change all that stuff just on the transmitter, which I could not do using my own transmitter with a wireless dongle. Nice. So with that interlink DX thing, you have full control over resets and all that kind of stuff on it, which does, for the lazy person, myself, make it much easier to use.

[00:20:26] Two things I see on that is not having to deal with the battery maintenance and just lack of wear and tear on your main transmitter.

[00:20:34] So that was, I've talked to a few guys about these things, and originally my thought was I want to fly with my transmitter so I know it's feeling, I know it's weight.

[00:20:46] Your muscle memory builds up on it.

[00:20:48] Oh, right. Like I know where the switches are. I know where all that kind of stuff is. But honestly, I was, in conversations, I was told that it's good to not necessarily have the wear and tear on your transmitter. Because I will admit, I fly more on the simulator longer and all that kind of stuff than I do in real life.

[00:21:10] Right. Yeah. We fly five or ten minutes at a time.

[00:21:13] Whereas, like, I will sit down in front of the TV if I'm watching something or if Crystal's watching something on TV and just fire out the laptop and just fly for a while and listen to stuff in the background, not worried about anything. Like, actually, just, I don't care if I crash. I don't care. But, just practicing, just getting more, getting things down better. So you get more time in. Without stress. Without the wear and tear. Right.

[00:21:39] And if, for some odd reason, I set it on the table and I knock it down, I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about if the dog knocks it over. I'm not worried about the cat knocks it down. I'm not worried about any of that kind of stuff because it's not my good transmitter. So that was, I was kind of, I changed my mind on wanting to fly with my actual transmitter versus that and wear and tear and all that kind of stuff.

[00:22:02] Then the other thing that really made it kind of a no-brainer for me afterwards. The guy I was talking to said something about, have you ever not been able to fly a plane because it was a different transmitter?

[00:22:18] I fly so many other people's stuff.

[00:22:20] Right. And I was thinking, I was like, what? That's true. Like, you can pick up pretty much any transmitter, any hobby-grade transmitter. Let's put it that way. Not some of these cheap ones where the gimbals are really weird. But any decent transmitter, you're going to fly no problem. So what's the difference?

[00:22:37] You're not going to get the precision on a simulator that you're, that you would notice a difference.

[00:22:43] Right. And simulators are so different because, yes, you get the basics down, but they don't fly exactly like real airplanes fly. And the other thing that's annoying is like just the zoom. Everything is weird on a computer screen because you don't have the periphery. You don't have, it doesn't work site-wise as well as it does in real life. So it's, you can still practice, you can still do what you're wanting to do, practice whatever skill you're working on.

[00:23:10] But it's just, it's not the same.

[00:23:12] Yeah. That absolute precision is not there.

[00:23:14] Right. Landings are different. Takeoffs are different. I mean, I don't know.

[00:23:20] I can't hardly land on a simulator.

[00:23:23] And I have seen many people have issues landing on a simulator that are great pilots. And it's like, okay, well, I don't feel so bad because I can usually get it down. I can't even find the field. Well, I can usually like with practice and stuff, I can get it down. I can get it landed, but I'm not ever landing exactly on the runway where I want to. You're not hitting the center line. And I'm not centered on it either. Yeah.

[00:23:48] Like I'm farther back or farther forward when I land than I want to. But in real life, I never have a problem whatsoever. It's all about that. Something is just off with a computer. I mean, you get the basics. Don't get me wrong. But your depth perception, your visualization, something is just off.

[00:24:05] Yeah.

[00:24:06] So for those reasons, it's much better to have a cheap interlinked DX to just play with and not worry about. When it falls on the floor, so be it. Exactly. So I'm glad I did that. Like I said, I've been doing a lot of flights on that. I don't think I'm, I'll admit it right now. I don't think I'm going to make my goal this year of averaging one flight a day.

[00:24:29] No. I mean, I. Flying weather's getting few and far between.

[00:24:35] And the, the problem is like the last three weeks, almost full month have been windy, windy or rain, like unseasonably windy. And the last few days have been unseasonably extremely cold. So, actually they said we're going to set a record for the low tonight. And I think we're supposed to get down to 25, which is unheard of for here.

[00:25:04] Yeah. the car was frozen up this morning. Yeah. I mean, it's sad. the, the remote lock wouldn't unlock it cause the locks were frozen. I could barely turn the key.

[00:25:14] Oh no.

[00:25:15] When I got the key turned, gaskets were frozen.

[00:25:19] Oh man.

[00:25:20] So it felt like February.

[00:25:21] Well, that was the other thing. It rained all day yesterday and it was high thirties yesterday and then just froze overnight.

[00:25:29] Well, this is the Mustang too, which I never drive in the winter. So I don't know how it does in the ice and snow.

[00:25:33] Not good. No. No.

[00:25:35] As far as being frozen, my truck freezes up. That's just what it does.

[00:25:39] Yeah.

[00:25:40] But I've never really had the Mustang out in the wet and cold and it doesn't like it apparently.

[00:25:45] Well, it's still not even November, by the way. So we're recording this a little bit earlier this week. Not even November. This is Monday night the 30th and this is, we're already before November dealing with these temperatures. Yeah. It's not going to be fun. And we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about cold temperatures here this past weekend. other thing I wanted to talk about. So I finished the Cree Cree. So you've got some stuff done. Doesn't that look nice?

[00:26:10] It's such a goofy airplane, but it's so cool. I was asking for a compliment, but thank you.

[00:26:15] It's so cool. I mean, for what it is, like, I like the shape of it. But I like the look of it only because it's the ugly duckling. It's the platypus of airplanes. Exactly. It is not. It's the face only a mother could love. It's kind of like the lazy bee. They just look so neat. But I'm hoping this is more in my wheelhouse. Like, I hope I like this one more. I haven't flown it yet.

[00:26:35] You need to paint an eyeball on each of the spinners. Oh, dang. Don't do that. Oh, that might be kind of funny. I don't know. It does. It looks like the, what was that little cartoon monster that held his eyeballs in his hands? Oh. what I'm talking about.

[00:26:50] I know what you're talking about, but I couldn't tell you what.

[00:26:52] It kind of reminds me of that, the way the motors are set up there.

[00:26:54] Well, and it's red, too, so that's the other thing, that the whole, it's a funny-looking airplane. But I will say, I don't remember who made this ARF right offhand, and even if I did, I don't think I'd want to say who it is, because what I'm about to say, there's a big difference between the build quality and name brand ARFs, I guess I will say, versus the… Major market ARFs.

[00:27:21] Okay, I'm trying to think of better ways to say this, because I don't want to say cheap, because this wasn't, like… It wasn't cheap. It wasn't cheap. Versus the lower quality Chinese imports. Yeah. Is that…

[00:27:36] The non-mainstream. Is that okay? Yeah.

[00:27:38] There was a lot of things with this that gave me pause. Like, I was not happy with… A lot of the panels, like, didn't even line up to fit right. Where you put the rear stabilizer in, it has an actual slot that it sat down in to the fuselage before you glued it in and screwed it in. Wouldn't fit.

[00:28:02] Like, it literally did not fit in the slot. Just alignment tabs were off, or…?

[00:28:06] No, I mean, like, it literally had… I'm trying to think how it was built. So there was a piece cut… Like, it actually was cut out for that whole vertical stab to sit in. So there was a pocket that it sat in, and there was another piece underneath of it that gave it a floor. And it was… Maybe… 3.30 seconds deep. So it wasn't a lot. But there was enough to where I had to trim that out before I could actually get that to sit in it. Just wouldn't fit.

[00:28:39] Which is a pain, because it was pre-covered. So there was covering in that already that I had to get… I had to pull it back a little bit so I could actually get it cut out. And it just… I was not happy with how any of that sat together.

[00:28:50] I think it kind of ran across the way ARFs used to be. Is that how they used to be? Yeah. There was a lot of little things like that back in the day.

[00:28:59] So I haven't done a lot of ARFs recently. But the Seagull ones that I've done, the Hangar 9 ones that I've done, have been much nicer. Fittings have gone together better. The… Well, like, even on those, the manual leaves a little to be desired. The manual on this one left a lot to be desired. Yeah. Like, it gave me two CG markings.

[00:29:31] Yeah.

[00:29:31] Choose one. One was about two and a half inches back. And the other one was four and a quarter inches back. Yeah, they're close. Is what it told me. I mean, like, nowhere near right. Now, obviously, I picked the two and a half inch one back because when you measure that, that's right near that's the spar.

[00:29:48] Or not the spar. That puts you about the 25%.

[00:29:50] Yeah. Right near the joiner. Yeah. Carbon tube. The carbon, yeah. So, four and a half inches back or whatever it was, four and a quarter was way, way back. So, I knew that wasn't right. But that was the same page. I mean, the same page in the manual had that listed.

[00:30:09] So, not proofread real well.

[00:30:10] Not even close. It was ridiculous. The mounts for the motors had to have pieces cut out of them because there, I mean, there was no, or no room to run the wires. There was pieces that you were supposed to put on, on the, the motor mounts to the, whatever you call the pieces that go up to the motor from the fuselage. That, the little.

[00:30:33] Pylons.

[00:30:33] Yeah.

[00:30:34] Whatever you want to call those, yeah.

[00:30:35] There were pieces I was supposed to put on the bottom of that to hide the wires. There was no way to mount them. So, I had to cut balsa blocks to go underneath of it to have something to screw it to. Otherwise, I don't, I mean, and they didn't tell you anything in the manual about it.

[00:30:49] Eh, figure it out on your own.

[00:30:50] There was a lot of that. Like, this is not one that you would start with if you have never put one together before. Because even, like I said, I've done a few of them and this one frustrated me very much. And that's what took me such a long time to do it, too. It's so cute. Now that it's done, absolutely. Absolutely. And, like, even the cockpit. Like, I thought I was, I was done.

[00:31:12] Like, I had everything, all I had to do is put the, the windscreen on, whatever you want to call that, big bulbous beluga whale looking thing on top. I couldn't get it to actually, because the, so the front of it just slides in underneath the fuselage. And then the back has a latch, a little latch you pull back. It would not line up with the actual piece that was on there. So, in order to get that to line up, I had to break the tab off of the bottom of the canopy.

[00:31:45] I mean, I guess that's the easiest thing to call it. And realign that, re-drill the hole, had to re-epoxy it back on and stuff. And even then, it was still a pain to get on. You have to get it on there just right in order for that latch to hit, or else you're not getting that to latch.

[00:32:01] I've had to rework a lot of latches on ARFs. They just…

[00:32:05] Really?

[00:32:06] Yeah. Well, that makes me feel a little better. Seems to be a little finicky point on a lot of them.

[00:32:09] Well, this was a big finicky point, because it was ridiculous. Like, even the hinge slots for when you're supposed to, put the, the ailerons and stuff on, none of those lined up. And it's not like they were right to left or backwards, because it's color. I mean, like, there's, it's white on top, red on the bottom, so where it's supposed to go. None of them lined up. So I had to re-cut the hinge slots.

[00:32:32] The hinges that came with them were kind of junky.

[00:32:34] I was going to say, how was the hardware in that? Because back in the day, ARF hardware was just absolute garbage.

[00:32:39] Well, it was not terrible, but not the best. Is that, I mean… Usable, but not great. So, some of the things that came with, like, there were probably, like, I'm going to be honest, there was probably enough hardware in there to do three of these airplanes. They gave you a lot of extra stuff. Like, they, almost like they didn't know what went in, so they just threw everything in

[00:33:07] For, like… It was like a generic hardware pack for all their airplanes?

[00:33:10] Yeah, and maybe that's what it was. Like, okay, so there's, we make ten different airplanes that take all this different stuff. We're going to throw it all in one bag, and then one bag goes in every airplane. It's quite possible that that's how it was packed. I don't know. so there was a lot of extra stuff, a lot of stuff I didn't use, but then there was also a lot of stuff of my own that I used instead of what came with it.

[00:33:29] Yeah.

[00:33:29] They had the, the quick connects and stuff for the servos and all that, and I, I don't like using those if I can get away with it for something like this. Just because it's a balsa, it's bigger, it was a little bit more expensive. so I did the Z-bend and actual links, the quick links and that kind of stuff on the end. So the stuff that it came with wasn't bad. The screws, actually, I was impressed with. They were better than some I've seen.

[00:33:54] Oh, I've seen some awful screws. So have I. I didn't use them because I ended up using, like they came with a lot of the, the flathead stuff. And I, I don't like using flathead stuff at all. So I used some, Allen head, like socket screws and that kind of stuff. so like I said, build was kind of not as good as it could have been, but now that it's done, I can put all that behind me and I'm happy. Now I just want to see what it flies like.

[00:34:26] I say, let's see this thing fly. I'm a little apprehensive because, well, I'm just not sure. I mean, like I said, it's a neat looking plane. I've got it all set up. I've got the CG set to where I think it's supposed to be based on one of the figures in the manual. And we're just going to have to fly it and try it.

[00:34:45] And it doesn't have any dihedral that I can see. So I wonder how stable she's going to be.

[00:34:51] We're going to find out. I almost put an AX3S or AX3S receiver in it, but I didn't. I originally was going to try and run it off of a six channel, but I ended up going with an eight channel. So I didn't have to use any Y harnesses. It had, the motors obviously are separate because it's two motors. And then the rear, steering servo that goes on the, the rudder is a separate or a separate servo than for the front gear.

[00:35:19] So, and this was also supposed to run on sub micro servos or really, really small ones.

[00:35:25] This is a 40% airplane.

[00:35:27] Yes. Well, you say 40%, which makes it sound huge, which is not, it's still not tiny. No, it's not. I don't know what the wingspan is on it, but, I, I, I didn't like, I, sorry, I, I couldn't use the tiny servo. So I ended up going with a micro, is it mini or micro? I don't remember. I think HS81s, whatever those.

[00:35:49] Yeah. To me, I'd eat for the most part. I use full size servos and it is big enough with no problem.

[00:35:55] That's what I bought originally. Like I bought full size servos thinking that's what it was going to take. And I didn't think anything about it. And then as I started putting the, the wing was the first thing you had to do. So you had to hinge the stuff on the wing and then you cut out, around where the servos went. And I was like, wait a minute, what is this? Like, seriously, how? These tiny little holes.

[00:36:14] Well, and so then I, as I cut it out, I saw the size and I was like, all right, micro servo, whatever. So I went ahead and bought the HS81s. those came in and then I got back to it and I was like, wait, these are even too big. Like, what is it supposed to be? So I went through my little, all of my servos that I have back there, just my box of servos and found those little, I think I had some MPI that we picked up from Toledo last year.

[00:36:40] The sub micro, whatever those are called, the smallest ones fit perfect. That's what it was supposed to be.

[00:36:45] I don't think so.

[00:36:46] And I was like, no, there is no way.

[00:36:48] And especially because they were using that. Those gear trains are not going to hold up.

[00:36:51] Well, and they were using that on the, even on the steering servo on the front. I was like, no.

[00:36:57] Even with the servo saver, those are never going to hold up to that. But no, not at all.

[00:37:01] So it has decent servos in it now. So hopefully it will last me for quite a while.

[00:37:07] Let's hope so. Let's hope it flies decent. Cause it is kind of cute.

[00:37:09] I know it's, it's, it'll be something else I have to take to like the scale fly-ins and that kind of stuff, which will be kind of neat. but I honestly don't think I'm going to end up flying it until next year. There's just, the weather is coming fast. The winter is coming fast. Unless we have some really nice.

[00:37:26] Yeah, we might get a 60 degree day in December. You never know.

[00:37:28] You don't, and I'm kind of hoping so, but the way things are going, yeah.

[00:37:34] We went from, our high, I think on. We went from 75 to 45 in 24 hours.

[00:37:40] As highs. As highs.

[00:37:41] Yes. Sucked.

[00:37:44] So. That was fun. what else? Oh, before we get to that, I fixed the slow ultra stick. Do you guys remember me crashing that into the tree? Yeah. Cause you were chasing your child. I was not chasing my child. I was giving her something to play with. Okay. Maybe I was chasing her. I don't know. But anyway, I succumbed to peer pressure, to childish peer pressure, flew into a tree.

[00:38:15] I did, okay, so I found, last time we talked, I, I had found, Thingiverse had some fuselage, or fuselage joiners and stuff that you could print. so I tried printing a few of those because the sizing wasn't quite right. So I tried printing it 5% smaller, 10% smaller, 5% bigger, 10% bigger, because there were pieces that went on the outside of the, of the stick. And there were pieces, or a piece that went on the inside of the stick. Finally got it to where it fit okay.

[00:38:47] It wasn't great. I wasn't thrilled with it. but it fit. I didn't really care for it. Like, I mean, I just, I wasn't. Just not digging it. Didn't get the warm fuzzies about it. and then luckily they came back in stock on it, on Amazon, shucks, on Horizon's website. So I ended up ordering those, got a couple sets of those. Cause I had to have the propellers too. ordered another two propellers, two of the fuselage joiners and two of the battery holders.

[00:39:18] Cause that is what all broke on my incident. but like I said, so I got the new fuselage joiner from Horizon. Installed that. I mean that I'm much happier with that piece, how it's designed and all that stuff. But one thing I found interesting that I'm not too fond of, the new replacement part is black. Oh, they changed the color up on you? The original one is white.

[00:39:49] So anybody that knows what they're doing or knows anything about it, when they see that airplane will know I had to have something replaced and it is not the original part.

[00:39:59] I got a can of Rust-Oleum.

[00:40:02] I never thought of painting it. That's actually not a terrible idea. But what I mean? Like it would be nice. Everything else on it is white. It would be nice if that piece was white. And maybe it's just me being weird, but I, I just wish it would have been the same price. What I found interesting though, on this one, it has a little V2 on the side. So it's version two of whatever. I found there's an issue.

[00:40:23] So there was something apparently wrong, which I don't know what, because it looks almost identical. Like from what I could tell with the pieces I kept, it looked identical. It's possible to change the material. Oh, that could be too. Although I'm not upset that it broke. Like I would prefer that to have broken where it broke.

[00:40:42] Yeah. Have it let loose where you, where it's an easy fix.

[00:40:44] Right. Then to have anything happen to just the entire back end would have been more expensive to replace. But I'm digressing. I understand it's fixed. I did fly it and it flies great. So they were out of the battery holders still. I didn't get that yet. I have it now, but when I flew it, I didn't have it. So I did 3d print one of those that worked flawlessly. I mean, that was perfect. Whoever designed that and loaded it on the thingiverse did a great job. Perfect.

[00:41:13] So yeah, flown that one. and it's, it's one of like, it's my plane of the month, my plane of the two, whatever it is, my plane of now.

[00:41:26] That is such a fun plane to fly. It's so simple.

[00:41:30] Just grab it and go.

[00:41:31] It fits anywhere. The only complaint, if I had to pick something about it, the thumb screws that hold the wing on are about four times longer than they need to be. You just, you're sitting there and just screwing and screwing and screwing. You own a Dremel.

[00:41:45] It's not. Well, I thought about it.

[00:41:48] But never when I'm able to do it. what I mean? All right. Like, I don't think about doing that until I'm taking it off or putting it on, which is when I'm ready to fly or come home. But anyway, so it's got the thumb screws, so you don't need tools, which I like that. But it just takes forever because really it's four times longer than it needs to be.

[00:42:06] But other than that, it flies so good.

[00:42:08] Such a fun airplane. Everybody needs one. Like, if this is how all sticks fly, I fully understand Tommy's… Affliction for sticks. Fascination with sticks. Yeah. So, I don't know. It was pretty cool. I enjoyed that. So, when I flew it, though, we'll get to this now. The EAA fly-in at our local field. It was… The frozen finger fly? That was very… I mean, and who knew?

[00:42:34] I mean, like, honestly, when this was scheduled last week, when I first found out about this, I didn't think it was supposed to be that bad this weekend. We had… I think when I got to the field in the morning, and you even beat me, I think when I got there, it was 41? My truck said 43 as I pulled in. Okay. So, it was bouncing back and forth, though. Low 40s with 15 mile-an-hour winds?

[00:42:59] They were weird, though. They would blow, and then calm. Blow, calm.

[00:43:03] Yeah. It was just not constant? No.

[00:43:07] Because I got in a couple flights with a lightweight foam plane, and it didn't get bounced around at all.

[00:43:12] Well, yours was… So, you flew… I flew my home-built F-14. Which is a little bit faster of an airplane than the slow ultra stick. Yeah. It definitely penetrates better. Right. So, I ended up… I waited it out to see if we were going to get warmer weather, which we did not. And I waited there for probably an hour or so talking to people and stuff. It was so bad. Like, as I'm getting older, I am disliking the cold much more.

[00:43:38] Like, I understand these people that go to Florida for the winter. Like, it fully makes sense to me now. I was standing out there in the 40 degrees. Okay? So, this isn't even freezing yet or really, really cold. I could not get warm. I even had my little hot hands thing. those… The hand warmers that you open up to air, and then they get hot. I had those in my pocket. I was, like, holding on to those for dear life, just trying to get warm.

[00:44:03] Finally got it to where I felt comfortable flying. Flew for about four minutes. I had to land because I was just frozen. Yeah. And it was just uncomfortable.

[00:44:17] To give you credit, though, it had been in the upper 70s, low 80s all week.

[00:44:22] Yes. It was hot. Like, we had the air on last week.

[00:44:25] So, it was a major shock to the system. I mean, in a few more weeks… Maybe….low 40s are going to feel wonderful. Yeah.

[00:44:34] Hopefully. I don't know about that, but we'll see.

[00:44:37] We'll see. But it is what it is. It's Illinois, and…

[00:44:40] Which, with this weather, is why I don't think I'm going to hit my goal this year of 365 flights. I'm ahead of what I was last year. I don't remember what my actual number is for flights yet, but I'm ahead of last year by quite a bit. So, that's good, but I'm going to have to…

[00:44:58] Well, you're way ahead of me. Last time I checked, I was at 50-something.

[00:45:02] No, I'm close to 200 or over 200 or so, but I'm just not quite.

[00:45:09] You don't have enough time left to get that extra third. If we had, like, three or four weeks of beautiful weather to where I can just come home from work and do four or five batteries a night… Just hammer out UMX flights.

[00:45:21] Yeah. Which is fine. I mean, that's fun, too. But I'm not counting on having that kind of weather. It sucks. But anyway, so what did you think of the fly-in?

[00:45:31] It was fun. I actually just threw the F-14 in real quick because I didn't even think I was going to fly.

[00:45:37] Yeah.

[00:45:38] Because the weather was saying it was going to be cold and wet and breezy. And it's like, oh, I just grabbed the F-14 because it folds up so nice and neat. Takes up no room in the truck.

[00:45:48] Yeah.

[00:45:49] And got there. I wish I had more stuff to fly. I mean, you handled the cold better than I did. Full-size decathlon came in. That was kind of cool. Yeah. A little bouncy landing. Hey, it was windy. And it shows my brother that having duct tape on your cub is not all that a bad thing because he had duct tape on the door of that one, too.

[00:46:09] I didn't notice that, really.

[00:46:10] Yeah. He had white duct tape on it. Oh.

[00:46:13] Let's see. It shows how much I pay attention. Yeah, so honestly, the weather affected turnout and made it much worse than last year's EAA flying. We had a much bigger crowd last year, and we had many more full-size airplanes, too. I think there was four or five or six, maybe. That would be nice. The weather was just uncomfortable. Yeah. It just was not. And I forgot my flannel underneath my jacket, so I was a little.

[00:46:43] I should have worn long underwear because it was like blowing through my jeans so much that I just, like I said, could not get warm. Now, I did, and I didn't think about it until I got out to the field, unfortunately. At one of the swap meets this year, I did buy one of those. The hand. The hand things that you put your transmitter in that's supposed to be warmer.

[00:47:02] I don't even know what you call them, but I did buy one of those this year that I want to try, but I forgot to bring it with me.

[00:47:08] Yeah, I was wondering about that. You were complaining about your hands being cold. It's like, he's got that nice transmitter muff. I wasn't prepared.

[00:47:14] Like, I wasn't even thinking that it was going to be that bad.

[00:47:16] Did you throw a couple of those hand warmers inside there?

[00:47:19] That would be nice.

[00:47:20] Yeah.

[00:47:21] Like I said, I keep those in my box, like my transmitter box, so that's why I had those with me. Like, for some reason, they've been with me all summer, and I'm glad they were in there because I used them.

[00:47:33] I found myself pushing the F-14 a little bit harder than I normally do towards the end of the flight just to heat the battery up.

[00:47:38] So you can come in and land? Well, like I said, it gets to the point where, like, I just don't feel like I have the control over my hands that I am comfortable with.

[00:47:47] Right.

[00:47:47] Like, it's to the point where they're just so cold, and just all I can think about is, oh, it's cold, so I don't feel comfortable.

[00:47:54] This isn't fun, so why are we doing this?

[00:47:56] Yeah. Just not comfortable enough flying it. I don't want to do anything stupid. And that's why we didn't run Daniel's engine much.

[00:48:02] We were trying to get that big cub engine to run.

[00:48:05] So the cub that he bought in Toledo last year, or this year, was the third scale, right? Third scale, yeah. Big cub, nice-looking cub, but older. It's an older plane.

[00:48:19] It's been around for a while. And you figured out what the motor is. We did. He tore into it pretty good. We have figured out it's a Sachs Domer, 4.2 or 70cc conversion.

[00:48:31] Which that means nothing to me. But Tommy apparently knew what you were talking about, so I'm guessing it was a thing back in the day?

[00:48:38] It was a very popular engine, late 80s, early 90s. Okay. Apparently they used a lot of this engine in the Byron aircraft.

[00:48:46] Oh, okay. And it's noisy. That's what I was just going to say. So just like his big stick, it is a very loud engine. Like, I only heard it run for a few seconds because batteries weren't charged and all that kind of stuff. It was just a day that was too cold to enjoyably do anything.

[00:49:07] Yeah. Too cold to tinker with a carburetor. It needs tinkering.

[00:49:10] Yeah. But like I said, we did hear it run, so we know it's going to run. It'll be fine once it gets adjusted and stuff. It's just going to be loud.

[00:49:18] Yeah. We're going to need ear protection.

[00:49:21] Maybe not when it's far away. But, yeah, when he's running it up on the table and stuff. So I'm assuming then the goal is next year for this one.

[00:49:30] Yeah, looking that way. If we get a nice warm day here, we can play with that engine and get it going. We really wanted to get it flown this year, but time has just gotten away from us.

[00:49:37] This has been a, not to make excuses, but just a weird few months recently.

[00:49:42] Yeah, we've just not got a lot done. No. I mean, I had a fish tank explode on me. I had 20 gallons of salt water on the ground.

[00:49:48] Oh, that sucks. That was one reason we got rid of our fish tank. I was just so paranoid that that was going to happen one day.

[00:49:56] Apparently, the seals on a tank are only good for about 10 years, and I got 16 out of this one. Really?

[00:50:03] I mean, I guess that makes sense, but I never thought about that. But, yeah, it's just silicone on it.

[00:50:07] Yeah. Or whatever they use, but it's… Ouch. Ouch, yeah. So it was the worst possible time for me to come home and find salt water all over the floor because I had dog stuff I was having to do that weekend. And it actually took an entire week to get this thing cleaned back up, sealed, and dried, and tested. So I had all my salt water fish and corals just living in a tub on the floor. Oh, gosh. as far as I know, no one's died.

[00:50:36] Some of my corals are a little cranky, but… Well, good. They all appear to have decided to stick it out.

[00:50:42] Yeah, that's good. Good for you. I'm glad to hear that.

[00:50:45] So, who needs a high-dollar tank when you can just $11 tub on the floor?

[00:50:50] You don't see through it as well. No. It doesn't present as nicely. Yeah. Little didn't Menards know they sell aquariums. So, I have one more thing I want to talk about. All right. Is there anything else you want to get to before that, though? You said you made it out flying once without me.

[00:51:08] Yeah, I made it out flying without you, and I have a little bit of a Halloween creepy thing to talk about. Oh, no, what happened? Oh, so, had the electric streak out. It was flying. It was one of the beautiful days we had the week before last.

[00:51:21] Yeah, because the weekend before this previous weekend was gorgeous. Yeah, I was out there five-plus hours. I was out of town, or else I would have.

[00:51:30] Anyway, so, I sit on the end of the warm-up benches, or startup benches, to fly. That's just my thing. And I've had the e-streak up and flying around. And it's, it's not the fastest thing I've ever flown, but it's fairly high performance. And I took it up way high, 399.99 feet, and pushed it over, and was building up a fair amount of speed. And all of a sudden, I feel something drop into my left ear. And then I feel it move across my face.

[00:52:01] And then I see what appears to be a massive spider walking across my glasses. Left lens to right lens. Gets off my glasses, hits my right ear, and disappears. And it's got a web stringer coming out after it. And that drops into my mouth. So, I got spider web in my mouth. I got, a hundred-plus-mile-an-hour airplane screaming out of the sky. And I'm yelling for Daniel, come take this thing.

[00:52:29] So, when a spider walks across your glasses, I don't care how small it is, it looks like a tarantula.

[00:52:36] Yeah, I guess it would.

[00:52:38] It's really, really hard to pay attention to your aircraft. Oh, my gosh. So, I wanted him to come take this thing so I could get rid of it. And the worst thing is, when he did take over, I couldn't find the spider.

[00:52:49] So, who knows where it went.

[00:52:50] And I felt that thing crawling on my back all the rest of the day.

[00:52:54] When, in reality, it was probably gone. It was probably…

[00:52:57] It blew off into the wind. Yeah, it was gone. That's funny. It's like, man. Well, happy Halloween on that one, huh?

[00:53:04] Yeah.

[00:53:04] God, creepy crawlies. That would… Spider web in your mouth.

[00:53:08] Oh, God. I think if that would have happened to Tommy, that he probably would have crashed his airplane.

[00:53:16] Yeah, I forgot he's got a spider thing, doesn't he? He feels about spiders the way I feel about snakes.

[00:53:22] And with me, as long as they leave me alone, I leave them alone. I got no problems with either of them. No, I, like, not to get too much into it, but whenever I see a snake, I just freeze. Like, I mean, I just… Oh, anyway. So, yeah. Spider on your glasses. That's nice.

[00:53:38] Yeah, that's a way to add some excitement to your flying day. It sure does. And he comes wandering up. What do you want?

[00:53:47] Take this thing! Why do you want me to do that? Funny. So, he did help you out, though?

[00:53:53] Yeah, he took it so I could shake my hat out. And I had my hood up, too, because it was… So, I was able to shake my hood out and my hat and brush the spider web out of my mouth. That's funny.

[00:54:04] So, like I said, we went to a pumpkin patch that weekend. I think it was the same day you were flying. And it was an hour and a half north of here. But anyway, it was so weird because I had never seen so many spider webs…

[00:54:18] Just drifting through the air.

[00:54:20] Just drifting through the air as I did that time. I'm like, literally, if the sun caught people right as they were walking by, you could easily see five to ten of these long strings that were probably… Like, I'm not kidding. Probably 20 to 30 feet long. Just dangling off of people as they were walking. It was just the little silky stuff. And it was just funny.

[00:54:44] Like, spiders like that don't bother me.

[00:54:46] Walking across my glasses wasn't the bad part. It was this web in the mouth.

[00:54:50] Yeah. I wouldn't like that either. And, of course, it went ear to ear, so it would take a hole in the ear.

[00:54:56] Are you sure it's still there? It might be. I've had some hearing issues lately. What was that?

[00:55:03] Okay. So, now I want to talk about my excitement.

[00:55:07] I don't know how I'm going to… I can't drag this out at all.

[00:55:10] Christmas came early. Christmas came early. I got my jet. It's here. My MB339 is finally in the garage. I'm trying to behave. Like, I'm trying so hard to not get it out, to not look at it, to not put it together. I just… There are things I need to finish before I get to that, but I don't know how much my willpower is going to keep me in that same mindset.

[00:55:36] Yeah, well, winter's coming.

[00:55:38] I know. The Kree Kree is done. That was one of the things on my list. I wanted to get off my list. Yes, I know. You're pointing to the Telemaster. That is another thing I want to get done before I start on this. That way, it's off of my list. And the other thing… The other one I want to do is I have that Assassin Wing that I bought. I finally got everything I need for that. Motor, servos, speed controller.

[00:56:04] It's not going to be much at all, but it depends how I decide to paint it. That's the one thing I don't know. Oh, you didn't get the pre-painted one? No, no, this is just a piece of white foam that's cut. I'm thinking I might just do this simple as white foam with tape on it.

[00:56:19] Just use your vinyl. Yeah, I guess I could do that too, couldn't I? I didn't even think of that.

[00:56:23] That's a good idea. Thanks, Dave. So yeah, I'll just cut some stuff out of vinyl and make it look good. That's actually easy. Why did I not even think of that until now? That changes things. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. There you go, buddy. So anyway, I want to get that one finished too before I start on the jet.

[00:56:43] Biggest thing with the jet is even if I got it done right now, I'm not going to be able to fly it until I get help with it because you can't just fly turbines everywhere. And I don't want to fly it by myself. Like, I want help from people that know. Know what the heck is going on. That know how to fly and that know all the stuff. So I have the ARF already. And that came with the gear, came with the brake controller, came with all that stuff. Came with the gas tank.

[00:57:14] I have ordered the UAT tank, which is pretty much the separator. It takes the air bubbles out so you don't get any air bubbles going to your turbine. I got all the servos and I got some of the servo extensions. I got pretty much everything Brian had in stock. And then I had to order from Horizon all the other ones that I needed. The one thing they were backordered on, which I hope they get soon, which I actually might have one now that I say it. I got to look.

[00:57:47] 48-inch heavy-duty extension. It was the one they were backordered on that they didn't have in stock, obviously, backordered. So that's the one thing that will prevent me from finishing it if I don't find one. And then the turbine is now in at Brian's. So I got to make another trip up this weekend to pick it up. But that will give me everything I need except batteries. I'm probably going to wait until spring to order the batteries. Do you have nice and fresh ones?

[00:58:17] Just so I have fresh ones. Like, I have enough batteries here to do everything I need on it. Yeah, I've got the—they're not the right size ones, but they're 2S. I mean, there's all that stuff that'll work just fine for it. The turbine itself takes a life battery, like a 3S life battery. This will be my first time using a life battery.

[00:58:39] So we'll see. Yay. Yay. New stuff to learn.

[00:58:43] Yeah. So I'm excited for that. It looks like it should go together fairly easily. I've looked at builds and all that kind of stuff. I've read the manual. It's going to take some time, but it doesn't look like there's anything difficult. Like, installation of the turbine looks like it's going to be a lot easier than installing any other—

[00:59:00] Just make sure you route stuff so it doesn't get ate or melted.

[00:59:04] Mm-hmm. And all that stuff is already laid out, so we should be in good shape. But yes, I finally got my turbine. Everything is paid for. Everybody—or everything is in. I got my Jersey Modeler fuel tank. I ended up buying the five-and-a-half-gallon battery-powered fueler from them for diesel because I'm going to run diesel in it. I've got the oil, the King Tech oil. I've got a gallon of that, so I'll be able to mix that in, but we're good on that.

[00:59:33] Only thing I still need to order that I haven't done yet is the CO2 extinguisher.

[00:59:39] Yep, definitely need one of those around.

[00:59:41] But I will do that, obviously, before I fly this or even start it up here. But yeah, exciting. Everything is going to be here this weekend that isn't here now, and we'll be good.

[00:59:53] So yeah, I followed you up this weekend. To Brian's, yeah. To Brian's, picked that up. So it's 125 miles from here to Brian's and 125 miles back. So I used about half a tank of gas. Yeah, it was an expensive trip up there. I spent $1.89.

[01:00:09] Oh, God. I wish I could say that. I spent 2,000 times that much. But that's okay. This is part—this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Like I said, my original goal was next year to have a jet. And it looks like, really, I bought it early. But it looks like next year will be when I fly for the first time and do all that stuff.

[01:00:37] Yeah, because it was backward and everything. So that kind of blew the summer's plans. It sure did.

[01:00:41] Like, I was hoping to get it. But that's okay. Like, now—I feel like if I got it two or three months ago, I would have been in a rush to get it done. Now you've got all winter to chill and stare at it. And do it right without missing something or doing something silly. So I feel like I'm happy on that.

[01:00:59] Yeah. Oh, sounds good.

[01:01:01] So that's the plan. And I've got to try and get Reggie to buy one still. And I don't know if he will or not.

[01:01:07] I've got to thank Reggie. He was able to come through and get me some parts that have been unavailable to me in one piece.

[01:01:15] So thank you, Reggie. I really appreciate everything you've done. And so this is your—we can talk about that. Your tower hobby. Was it tower?

[01:01:24] It was tower hobbies. Yeah. They've got this affliction for sending very small, fragile parts in padded envelopes.

[01:01:31] Mm-hmm.

[01:01:32] Over and over and over. To the point where I have completely deleted my account with tower.

[01:01:39] Yeah.

[01:01:41] I finally—they finally gave up. And I just told them, forget it. Just give me a refund. Never mind.

[01:01:47] Yeah.

[01:01:48] Ten days later, I still haven't got my refund. But, we won't go into that. But Reggie has some contacts through his personal sales rep, I guess we could call it.

[01:02:00] But so Reggie—and I actually just joined this, too. I wasn't necessarily going to talk about it because I don't know what good it's going to do me yet. But they have an elite club membership, which gives you free shipping on all your orders, gives you, yeah, a personal contact there that you can call and get in touch with, email and all that kind of stuff you can do, too, if you don't want to call and talk to them. You get a few other perks.

[01:02:30] One of them, I think, is you get a $30 coupon on your birthday. You get extra points on stuff you buy. A flight sim. You get the flight sim for free, which I already bought that, which stinks. And that was the reason, too. So when I bought the interlink transmitter, I got that for half off. So that was $50 instead of $100. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have done it. And then you also get the expansion packs. That come with real flight.

[01:02:59] You get all of those for the entire year. So, I mean, when you look at pricing and stuff, it is advantageous to do that. But I'm going to be 100% honest. I don't know how I feel about paying for customer service. And if you don't look at it that way, like I said, with all the other things you get, that's just an added perk. Sure.

[01:03:25] But you should get perfect customer service regardless. Yes. Whether you're buying a $10 item or a $5,000 item.

[01:03:36] And now, having said that, I will also say that any time that I've had a problem with them before or had a question and used the chat, I have always had that question answered.

[01:03:50] The only time I ever get anything is I get the robot. And then the robot says, I don't know. Send us an email.

[01:03:59] Well, that does me no good. But do you do that, though? Like, do you actually do what it says or get whatever?

[01:04:06] And they keep sending me things in padded envelopes.

[01:04:09] Well, okay. See, I haven't had that kind of issue with them. I don't even remember the last thing I had to ask them or what it was. But through the chat, it actually ended up talking to a real person or chatting with a real person and had my questions answered.

[01:04:26] Never can get a real person, ever.

[01:04:28] Maybe it's timing when you do it, too. Like, I will do it while I'm at work. Like, honestly. So I have that ability to do that. And I'm not doing it late at night or something like that. So maybe that has something to do with it, too. I don't know.

[01:04:44] Yeah, I tend to do it 4.30, 5 o'clock at night. Like I said, never get anything but the robot.

[01:04:51] Yeah, I think by that time, by the way, you're dealing with people in California. Because they've got, I mean, they,. Yeah. That way it's not 7 o'clock here where somebody's working. It's 5 o'clock in California still. And they end at 7, I think, because they're customers. Right.

[01:05:05] But like I said, never had a problem with it that way. But not going to be a problem anymore. Hopefully not.

[01:05:11] Not for me. Oh, that's true. Not for me either, because now I also have somebody like that. But yeah, so Reggie reached out to his guy and somehow got you a box.

[01:05:22] Well, they originally sent him a padded envelope and same thing. Aye. So, but then he got a hold of the guy again and this time we got a box.

[01:05:32] And so this was, what did you order? Twin Otter spinners for the UMX. That's right.

[01:05:36] And it now finally has spinners on it again.

[01:05:39] Good.

[01:05:40] It's not a big deal. It's just cosmetic. But darn it, you're ticking me off.

[01:05:44] Yeah. I get it. It's unfortunate, but. Yeah.

[01:05:48] And I've been a customer of theirs since the late 80s. Not anymore.

[01:05:53] Ah, give them another chance. It happens. I gave them five chances. Yeah. Well, I'll give them a six. There's not that many companies out there yet, so we're going to have to deal with somebody.

[01:06:05] Yeah.

[01:06:05] Well, A-Main does a heck of a job and their shipping's cheaper. Well, there you go. It's the same thing anyway, so. Yeah. Okay. Anything else or you want to get off here for tonight? Get off of here while I'm in a bad mood. There you go. At least we ended on a low note.

[01:06:20] I really need to get going on some sort of fun project. I just. Yes, you do. I've just been stuck in this rut of dealing with household stuff. Yeah. I had the roof in the garage and the leaking water tank and dog stuff. Well, dog stuff's not bad stuff, but.

[01:06:35] Yeah. It's just something to take you away. And one of, like, I have said something to Tommy. I don't know how, I don't know how this is going to work or if it's going to work, but I told him we need to get going on that tri-motor project. Like, there is honestly nothing stopping us now except time and just doing it. Yeah. So, maybe that's something we all need to come together on and finish or start before we finish.

[01:07:02] But, at least have the discussion, talk about what we're going to do, what we need to cut, what we need to start on and make the first step.

[01:07:10] Start somewhere.

[01:07:12] Yeah. So, we'll see. Maybe that'll be a winter thing.

[01:07:16] Okay.

[01:07:17] Okay. So, end on smiles.

[01:07:19] Yay!

[01:07:20] Happy. All right. All right. We're done. Thank you for listening. Until next time, I'm Ron. And I'm Dave. Good night. Good night.

[01:07:28] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.