Ep 164: Illini Jets, AS3X+ installs, maidens, and more!

[00:00:00] In this episode, we talk a lot about new airplanes that came out, and we also talk about some of the

[00:00:04] Cool jets that we saw at the Illini Jet Meet. For photos and links, head over to the rcplanelab.com website and search for this episode to see what we're talking about. Let's get started. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I am Ron.

[00:00:32] I am Tom.

[00:00:34] And I am Dave. We are all here. Dave sounds like he's a little farther away. Maybe we need to talk a little

[00:00:39] Closer into it. I thought I had it right there.

[00:00:42] Well, Dave's voice is absent again.

[00:00:45] Dave's. Stop, that's right. I don't know where that came from.

[00:00:48] It was hanging on the chair.

[00:00:50] Oh, there's a little flashlight hanging on the back of the chair, and I saw it fall down when Tommy reached for his drink, and I was corn-fused. What's up, fellas? Not much. How's everybody doing? Been a busy couple of weeks. It's been an exciting couple of weeks. It really has. We have done a lot. We have. We have a lot to talk about. We do. And I'm excited to start.

[00:01:10] Yes, let's get started, Dave. Let's get with it. All right. Let's get with it.

[00:01:15] I'll start. Okay.

[00:01:16] Oh, no, wait.

[00:01:16] You wanted to start. Go ahead. No, what do you want to? Oh. Well, okay. Let's start with planes I've bought. Sure, it's all about Ron.

[00:01:31] That's what our listeners really like to hear is just us buying stuff.

[00:01:35] Well, that's what I like to hear, to be honest. Nothing big. I'm teasing, of course. Exquisite, nothing earth-shattering. We talked a while ago about the X-Fly F-18 that came out that I ordered from Banana Hobby. I got that in. You did. It's a nice-looking airplane.

[00:01:51] It is. For what it is, it looks pretty good.

[00:01:53] Yeah. We'll talk about that in a little bit because I actually flew that and maidened it and had success.

[00:02:01] You did.

[00:02:02] Looks like it flies good.

[00:02:05] After it fell in the pothole.

[00:02:07] Well, it is small. It is small, but it's nice because it's easy to transport. Yeah, that is pretty handy. But anyway, I also bought the Freewing F-22, the 64mm, because I'm cheap and didn't want to spend the money on the big one.

[00:02:24] Yeah.

[00:02:25] But I ended up buying that from MotionRC. First time I've ever bought anything from MotionRC, I was impressed. Good experience? Well, they kind of lied about shipping times, but that's okay. So, I bought it Friday, like this past Friday. Today's Wednesday. Okay. Well, it doesn't matter to the people that are listening.

[00:02:45] Well, but to give them a sense of time.

[00:02:47] And there was a holiday in there.

[00:02:48] Plus, there was a holiday.

[00:02:50] Right. Labor Day. So, anyway, I bought it on Friday, and it said it will be delivered on Thursday.

[00:02:57] Oh, yeah.

[00:02:58] Coming from north of Chicago. Not the day before. I think north of Chicago. Not the day before, but yeah.

[00:03:03] What?

[00:03:04] I'm just being silly. Six days after I ordered it is what it said. I'm going to get it, which I was, that's fine. Like, I didn't need it. I wasn't in a huge hurry for it. Right. And then that Saturday, we ended up going over to Eli Field, and I got a notification that it was out for delivery. So, it took less than 24 hours from ordering to delivering. That's nice.

[00:03:26] That's very nice.

[00:03:27] But I wish they would have told me that. Otherwise, very quick service. I'm happy with it. I haven't done anything other than get it out of the box and fondle it and oogle on it and all that kind of stuff. It may have some of my drool on it as well. Ew. But anyway.

[00:03:45] It looks good. For what it is, I think it looks pretty good.

[00:03:47] Well, what…

[00:03:47] Even though the colors are not accurate.

[00:03:49] Not completely accurate. I will not notice that. Dave, of course, the first thing he said had to be… Colors aren't right. I don't want to say negative. What's the word I'm looking for? Judgy. Critical? Critical. Of course, Dave had to be critical.

[00:04:04] Well, I have up close and personal. He does. With the real F-22.

[00:04:08] He's been up close and personal. All touchy-feely. Maybe I should give it. Dave has probably been closer to the actual F-22 than I have, and that's surprising. I have stepped over panels.

[00:04:24] There's jokes in there. Don't. Just don't.

[00:04:29] What do you mean, stepped over panels? I have been in a hangar where they've got one of these things completely stripped down.

[00:04:37] Into the front. You're twisted.

[00:04:39] I did not realize it was twisted.

[00:04:41] Maybe that's… There we go. I'll try and fix all the audio levels in post.

[00:04:45] Okay. So, anyway. I have been in a hangar with a stripped-down F-22, and they've just had the panels laying on the floor, and I've stepped over them.

[00:04:54] Did you get arrested afterwards, or was this a thing you were okay doing? They were okay with this.

[00:04:58] Nice.

[00:05:00] Is there more to the story that you…

[00:05:01] Oh, I have a lot, but I can't probably say a lot.

[00:05:04] Yeah, that's fine. So, Dave has a relative.

[00:05:07] Can we say that?

[00:05:08] Yes. Retired Lockheed. Yeah. Oh, okay.

[00:05:10] Retired Lockheed guy that may or may not have provided some level of access, because Dave, like me and you, likes airplanes, and we like to see them up close if we can. Nice.

[00:05:23] And it's just very nice to see something that not everybody gets to see. Right.

[00:05:26] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll be honest. Like, F-22, F-35, they were always cool airplanes, but nothing that I was really, like, drawn to until Oshkosh last year, seeing them fly and hearing them fly, it's something everybody should experience.

[00:05:42] F-22 will rip you apart. Just the sound.

[00:05:45] The sound. Oh, yeah.

[00:05:46] And full AB on a takeoff. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:49] Is it louder than the F-35? Oh, yeah. It's pretty loud.

[00:05:52] Because there's two of them. It's not as loud as an F-4.

[00:05:54] But it's not as big.

[00:05:55] But they're loud.

[00:05:57] See, I thought the F-35 was louder, but… The F-35 only has one engine, though, too. I understand. The F-22 is… That's what I want, too, is a F-35, one of these days. Buy one.

[00:06:08] I might.

[00:06:09] I mean… You just… You never know, okay? When I'm bored…

[00:06:12] It's just a spreadsheet.

[00:06:13] When I'm bored and looking… Yeah, my negative… Or my net negative for this year is not doing very good.

[00:06:17] We established that, like, I believe, in our very first episode. N plus one.

[00:06:23] I don't know if it was the first, but it was… It's one of the first episodes. It was early. One thing I will say, though, is I'm very proud of myself. I haven't bought airplanes for, like, a long time. It's been at least a couple months. I mean, honestly. That's pretty good, I guess. I'm patting myself on the back. But the thing that made this okay, in my mind, same battery as the F-18. So, why not? So, you already have… You already have the battery.

[00:06:46] You already have the charger. You already have everything. Go for it. Which is the same battery as the…

[00:06:50] The big F-18, not the new one.

[00:06:52] No, the new one. Oh, really? This is small. It's the same. It's the 4S 2200. Well, there you go. Perfect. It's only 64 millimeters.

[00:06:58] So, yeah. Nice.

[00:06:59] I know, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:07:01] The F-18 is what? Twin 40s?

[00:07:04] The what? F-18? Yeah. Yes. Twin 40s.

[00:07:07] And it sounds cool.

[00:07:08] It does sound… We'll get to that. Yeah.

[00:07:09] Okay. Cut me off. That's fine. Sorry.

[00:07:12] Well, that's about all I was going to say. Like I said, the battery was the same. So, when I saw that, I was like, oh, what the heck. Better, Sam, why not?

[00:07:18] Yeah.

[00:07:19] That's a big thing when it comes to what airplanes to buy.

[00:07:23] Especially with the Spectrum chargers. They charge so fast. They… Very fast. So…

[00:07:30] Yeah.

[00:07:31] It makes sense.

[00:07:32] Honestly, two to three batteries of the exact same thing is all you need pretty much for back-to-back-to-back-to-back plates. I mean… For sure. Honestly. Yeah. I concur. It's nice. It makes it cheaper, too.

[00:07:45] It does. In the long run.

[00:07:46] Yeah.

[00:07:47] I mean, the initial outlay for the chargers can be kind of…

[00:07:50] Yeah.

[00:07:51] But I already paid for those, so I don't think about it anymore.

[00:07:53] I just like not to have to take…

[00:07:56] 50 batteries?

[00:07:57] Yeah. Like Reggie, when he went out last time, what did he say? He had like 13 or 14 of the exact same battery.

[00:08:03] Yeah. How long does that take to charge? I mean, like, let's be honest. That takes a long time at 1C.

[00:08:09] I think that's what he charges out on those, right?

[00:08:11] So anyway, I like being able to go up to 5C very fast. That's just me. Yeah. So those are the only two new ones I bought.

[00:08:24] Cool. You guys get anything? No. I got something. I ordered it back in May and just got it.

[00:08:29] It's okay. Yeah.

[00:08:29] It's the… Oh, did it finally arrive?

[00:08:31] Yeah, I flew it. You saw it.

[00:08:33] Oh, no. I thought you were… Didn't you order a… I thought you ordered like a…

[00:08:38] Something from Hobby King or is this what you're talking about?

[00:08:41] No, this came from our friends at Horizon.

[00:08:44] Oh, that's not what I'm thinking of then.

[00:08:46] No, I got the 1700 millimeter FMS Super Cub.

[00:08:51] Oh.

[00:08:52] I ordered that back in May and it finally showed up. That's right.

[00:08:55] What am I thinking of though?

[00:08:56] That's what you spent a gift certificate on. Yeah.

[00:08:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember now.

[00:09:00] Yep.

[00:09:00] Yeah, you did. I thought he was waiting on something from Hobby King too though. No, no, no. Were you waiting on something to come in stock at Hobby King?

[00:09:07] Oh, one time ago we were waiting on the gyrocopter to come in. Oh, that's what it was. Yeah. And that did come in and you've flown it. Yes. And we talked about that already. Jeez. And what? And I've wrecked it. And repaired it.

[00:09:21] Yeah. And flown it again.

[00:09:22] Yeah, it's been flown four or five times now.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:24] So Dave finally got his… Super Cub.

[00:09:28] Nice. Very happy with it except for the tires. The tires are garbage and everybody says the tires are garbage.

[00:09:34] Yeah. And I agree after saying it. But we will talk about that in order when we get to it, correct?

[00:09:41] Nothing new for me. So there, we can move on.

[00:09:44] Okay. So the next thing, I think we have several new airplane releases. Lots of new stuff to talk about. To talk about. Yeah. Some of them are actually like pre-orders. Some of them have been out. Some of them are ones I've just seen for the beginning or for the first time that I'm not sure about. The first one that I'm not sure about. So if anybody has ever dealt with or knows anything about minimum RC, let me know. Yeah. I'm very intrigued.

[00:10:16] So Facebook must be doing a much better job, by the way, of showing me ads for airplanes because that's where like a lot of the stuff that I've seen has come from recently. But there is a, it's called a Savannah Jet. It's a four channel, 30 millimeter EDF.

[00:10:32] Neat.

[00:10:33] It's a cool looking little airplane. It's a little pocket rocket.

[00:10:35] You sent me a link. I think it was on, however you sent it to me.

[00:10:40] Messenger, I think.

[00:10:41] And then I clicked on it and now I'm also thinking. Well, it's cheap. Like, yeah.

[00:10:46] I mean, like relatively.

[00:10:47] It's cheap.

[00:10:48] It's cheap. It's, I mean, relatively or not, it's cheap. So it is small. It is, you have to put it together. So that's what has stopped me, honestly, from ordering it. If it was an RF or something where you didn't have to do any modeling of it or any gluing or anything like that, I probably would have ordered it already. But I'm not sure how any of these go together. I haven't spent a lot of time researching it either.

[00:11:11] So if anybody, like I said, knows anything about this company or has one, let me know what you think about it. Because I'm curious. But this one that has my interest peaked, like I said, it's a four channel Savannah Jet. 30 millimeter EDF. Wingspan of 16 and a half inches. So we're talking small. Very small. Length 13.3 inches. I did all the conversions from metric because that meant nothing to me. For our metric buddies, though, length is 340 millimeters.

[00:11:44] Wingspan of 420 millimeters.

[00:11:46] Very small.

[00:11:47] And the weight is under two ounces. That's crazy. That's like, it's like nothing. It's like nothing. And what I love, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go on. Clear cockpit. Clear cockpit. I mean, that's big for you guys. That's huge.

[00:12:01] Yeah. It's cool. And four channel.

[00:12:04] I think that's kind of neat, too. Actually, it has rudders. Yeah.

[00:12:08] Or rudder.

[00:12:09] Aileron, elevator, rudder, throttle. You can either do it in a 1S or a 2S configuration, depending on what electronics you buy. Don't know why you'd want to do a 1S because, obviously, twice of one is better. It's got to be. So, 2S is what I would probably go with. And you can get the servos and all that stuff and batteries through them. You can even get a charger. You can get the receiver. You can get transmitter. But,.

[00:12:33] I got on the website and I priced it all out for Spectrum. you can get their, air quotes, Spectrum receiver. Which is just probably a knockoff.

[00:12:42] Yeah. Like LemonRx or something like that.

[00:12:44] But, to purchase everything, a couple of extra batteries and their little USB charger thing was, I think, $120 for everything. That's not bad. I didn't think so. Like a complete, like all you do is bind it to your transmitter. So, that's like a bind and fly plus.

[00:13:06] With batteries. Right. With a charger. Yeah. That's not bad at all. I didn't think so.

[00:13:09] Less than UMX. Right.

[00:13:10] Well, because it comes with batteries and charger. Yeah. Except UMX is actually, like, together. Yeah. Like, it's ready to go. It comes with a box. Yeah, these you have to build.

[00:13:18] But, I mean. And what's wrong with that? And one of the YouTube.

[00:13:21] Nothing's wrong with it, but that's something taken into consideration. Sure. When everything is done for you.

[00:13:26] And I'm not sure if this is accurate or not, but one of the YouTube reviews I watched on this one, the one you like. The Savannah. Yeah. Even the glue. There's a couple of different types of glue that's required. One for the wood parts, I'm assuming, and the other glue for the foam.

[00:13:46] Yeah. Comes in the box also. Oh, that's cool.

[00:13:48] So, I mean. I may. That may be a Christmas present to myself.

[00:13:54] Well, I hope you do. Let me know. Like, would you get this one or a different one?

[00:13:57] No, I'll get a different one because you like that one. I don't care if you get the same one. It doesn't bother me.

[00:14:01] I figured you would like this one, though. I do. Because, honestly, it's Viper-ish. Yeah. It looks like a Viper and it's red, white, and blue. Yeah. I mean, that like knocks off every, ticks every box for you or whatever. But, yeah.

[00:14:13] No, I would get a different one just so we'd have two different ones.

[00:14:16] Well, once again, don't feel like you have to do that for me.

[00:14:18] But, anyway, very intriguing.

[00:14:20] Yeah. That's all I want to say on that one.

[00:14:21] Especially for the price. A little sport jet for under 150 bucks.

[00:14:25] Yeah.

[00:14:25] Right?

[00:14:26] I mean, I would like to try one.

[00:14:27] That you could like fly at a baseball diamond if you wanted to. Or here. Or here at the house. Or at my house, even.

[00:14:32] Even. Maybe it's. Fly it somewhere else first to get used to it. But then here. Or your house.

[00:14:37] When you fly to my house, you run the risk of flying it into a maintenance shed.

[00:14:40] But I digress. You've been there. You've done that.

[00:14:43] Yeah.

[00:14:43] Speaking of new jets. Mm-hmm.

[00:14:47] Yeah. So, a new one from FMS. A 18th anniversary edition of the Avanti. Which, hard to believe the Avanti has been around that long. But I guess it has, because this is the 18th anniversary.

[00:15:00] Unless they're lying.

[00:15:01] It's a 90mm, 51-inch span. An 8S upgrade that you can get for it. It comes equipped for 6S. But apparently, you can upgrade it to an 8S, which, holy smokes.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:16] Just more money, though.

[00:15:18] Yeah.

[00:15:18] The plug-and-play version, $570. I remember a time.

[00:15:24] Yeah. That's 90mm, though.

[00:15:26] It hasn't been all that long ago. That I know for sure I'm guilty, and I'm pretty sure you're guilty as well, Ron. That we would have saw that price, and we would have spent the next 30 minutes on the episode

[00:15:38] Complaining about spending, $570 on a chunk of foam.

[00:15:43] Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, that's just sort of the nature of the beast right now, and how opinions have changed.

[00:15:50] It's funny how we have grown. I think we have grown or indoctrinated ourselves into making it okay. Yeah. To do that.

[00:16:00] But I'm going to be honest.

[00:16:02] I'm kind of a fan of some of these. Yeah, me too. Weird little foamy. Yeah.

[00:16:06] Like, I cannot say enough good things about that stupid little 70mm Viper that I got from Dave. That's not a little. That got from you. And who knows how many hands it's been. But I love flying it. It flies awesome.

[00:16:20] Once again, had I had the right battery, I probably would have kept it.

[00:16:25] But anyway, typical Avani look to it. New color scheme with the red and yellow. It's really sharp. I'm not sure if they're available yet. But if they're not available by the time this airs, they will be available soon for $570. I like the color scheme. Which I'm still going to complain about that, the price. But I'm sure it flies awesome, especially with 8S. If you have like a couple of 4S, 5,000s, I think they are.

[00:16:52] Then you're getting a whole new power system. So, you said it's upgradable to that? Or is it? So, the marketing materials, I'll just read what it says right here at the bottom of. I'd love not knowing what we're talking about when we talk.

[00:17:06] Well, I saw it in passing. And the pages are cut off that you printed. 8S power upgrade advanced performance. And then it cuts off there at the bottom right. You can see.

[00:17:15] Oh, so it sounds like it.

[00:17:17] Yeah.

[00:17:18] 8S capable out of the box. Yeah. Right. So, you can apply a 6S or a.

[00:17:22] Yeah. It's not like what Dave had to do on his F-15, right?

[00:17:25] Exactly. Like, you changed. I had to change the speed controlled motor.

[00:17:27] Yeah.

[00:17:28] And, well, the fan unit's the same, but so, speed controller motor.

[00:17:31] Yeah.

[00:17:32] Yeah. Okay. And this has, according to the specs, I'm reading it right now, it has a 120 amp ESC in it. That's what my F-15 runs at 8S. So, it should be able to, I would think.

[00:17:42] Well, if that's the case, I take back what I just said. And that's pretty cool.

[00:17:45] That's very cool.

[00:17:47] So, like, what did you spend, Dave, just on the.

[00:17:50] I have almost $1,000 invested in the F-15. See, I'm sorry.

[00:17:54] I will still, I will still say that's a lot of money for that.

[00:17:57] I say it's a lot of money. I was already that far down the rabbit hole, and it's like, in order to fly it, I have to change this. Yeah. It was not grass capable on the 6S.

[00:18:09] Yeah.

[00:18:09] So.

[00:18:10] I get it.

[00:18:10] I've got this money invested. I've got to go this much further.

[00:18:13] Might as well. Found it.

[00:18:15] Well, you upgrade the 90mm Avani with the FMS 90mm Pro Metal EDF and 8S battery to elevate your flight experience.

[00:18:23] So, apparently, you upgrade the EDF. So, upgrade the fan unit. The fan unit.

[00:18:27] Just the fan unit? Oh, yeah.

[00:18:30] Okay.

[00:18:32] 210 plus kph, it says. What is that in American? I don't know. That's a big American. Also, the Avani. 120-ish. It has reverse thrust. So, catching on to the Avian bandwagon, you can have reverse thrust in this. And lights. It has five. I see. I like the lights. I do, too.

[00:18:52] That's one thing that I really like about that Singer 90 is the lights on the nose gear. Yeah. It looks awesome. Very cool. Or the light, just a single one. 210 kilometers per hour, by the way, is 130.488.

[00:19:05] That's moving a chunk of foam and a pretty good clip. It is. It's a very fast cooler. So, anyway. Yeah. A very fast vacuum cleaner. But, yeah. 90 millimeter. Vacuum cleaner. Because that's kind of what they sound like.

[00:19:20] Oh, the sound. Okay. Yeah. He was making fun of what it's made out of. Yeah. A cooler. And then I was trying to figure.

[00:19:26] Although, I will say, some of the newer 12-bladed fans are getting pretty close to sounding like an actual turbine. Closer than they have ever been.

[00:19:38] Yeah. But they're never going to get there.

[00:19:39] They still, I mean, they don't sound like a hairdryer anymore.

[00:19:42] They don't, they don't have.

[00:19:43] That high pitch wine is gone. It's got more of a crushing sound. Yeah.

[00:19:46] Yeah.

[00:19:47] So, anyway. New 18th anniversary, Yvonne. Sharp. I like it.

[00:19:51] I do, too. What do you got, Dave? I have got from, let's see, a free wing again, or not again, but free wing. I've got the 80-millimeter free wing Gripen in a gray paint scheme. So, this one's been out before. And this one is just in a straight line jet gray. And it comes with four different livery sets. So, you can change your paint job depending on what you want or have something custom made. Cool. It comes with four European Air Forces.

[00:20:28] And that is Hungarian, Swedish, Swiss, and Czech. Neat. So, I'm kind of hungry based on that. Yeah.

[00:20:35] So, it's basically gray with your flavor of roundels or other markings. Okay. Yeah.

[00:20:43] What size is it? It is 80-millimeter, 1-9th scale. It's got a 35-inch wingspan, and it is 63 inches long. So, this is a long, narrow guy. Yeah. Long and very narrow. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It has fully functioning canards, both in pitch and roll. So, those are fun. Little guys. Interestingly enough, it has a 12-inch long removable nose cone for transport.

[00:21:14] That actually is kind of handy.

[00:21:15] Yeah. 12 inches. That's a long one. That's out there. It comes with 100-amp ESC and a 3658 21KV or 2150KV motor, 12-blade fan. So, it's going to sound cool. It's got an LED light system. 70 millimeters. Is that big enough for retracts? 80-millimeter. Oh, yeah. Or 80, rather. Yeah. It's got retracts. It's got full retracts. I don't see them here, but I'm guessing they're fully shock-absorbing like everything else. Polio or whatever it is called.

[00:21:47] Polio. Polio.

[00:21:50] And another jet. Very, very nice-looking jet. And the price is very reasonable.

[00:21:56] Okay. Hit me with it.

[00:21:57] Well, for a cooler, anyway. $439. Well, that's more than 570, I guess.

[00:22:03] That's the cheapest of all of them so far. Well, no. Your little $120 one.

[00:22:07] I don't count that, because that's a 30-millimeter EDF that you build.

[00:22:12] Okay. Very scale-looking. Very nice.

[00:22:15] Yeah. Dave has, ever since you handed him the sheets with the pictures on it, he's been saying, hey, this looks pretty good. Yeah. I'm wondering if maybe this might not be one of Dave's next airplanes.

[00:22:30] I'm working on that radio thing first. Gotcha. Boo. I need to thin the herd, too. I have no storage room. We all need to do that. The Super Cub is in the way right now. I may have.

[00:22:44] Like, I got rid of a bunch of stuff.

[00:22:46] I have, too, and I have more to get rid of.

[00:22:48] Well, but you've also acquired stuff.

[00:22:51] Maybe.

[00:22:52] I mean, you just said you have the two new ones that you just got.

[00:22:56] Yeah.

[00:22:57] I'm not going to make room for them.

[00:22:58] And there's one other thing, and I think it's available for this. I'm not sure. It's not on the paperwork here, but I'm pretty sure I saw that it has an optional vectoring tail cone. Cool. That would be cool. Oh, yeah.

[00:23:09] That I would like to try. Yeah, me, too.

[00:23:12] Neat.

[00:23:13] Neat. Neat.

[00:23:14] I dig it, too. It's pretty sharp.

[00:23:16] Get some stuff moved around and some other priorities changed.

[00:23:19] There you go.

[00:23:21] I like this and the Eurofighter both, so.

[00:23:24] I'm not a big fan of the Eurofighter. I mean, I prefer the, actually, I prefer the Viggen over all of them. So do I. But the Gripen is pretty sharp. The functional.

[00:23:36] Canards.

[00:23:36] Yeah. Yeah. Which are like Elevons, but just in the front.

[00:23:41] In the front. Yeah. So functional canards with thrust vectoring.

[00:23:44] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:44] That could make some interesting maneuvering.

[00:23:46] That'd be fun. I think so, too. I would love to. I would love to see that.

[00:23:52] It looks like the doggies are down. Or doggie is down. Hi, dog. Let's see. What do you got? So the next thing is just a, it's an update and a different color scheme available through Motion RC is the Freewing F-16. It is a 90 millimeter EDF jet from, obviously, Freewing. Recolor or a new color scheme and stuff. It's got the 64th Aggressors camo livery, library, whatever you want to call it.

[00:24:26] Yeah. I mean, it's cool. It's different. It is different. But I'm just not a huge fan of blue airplanes. They are hard to see. And then especially blue and gray airplanes.

[00:24:37] I mean, honestly, this is like the perfect airplane for Dave being blue, gray, and white.

[00:24:42] It's all the colors he loves.

[00:24:45] So he just scared me for some reason. Hi, puppy dog. I'm sorry. I think I was expecting a cat and I looked down and just saw. A big face. Oh, gosh.

[00:24:56] I mean, it's a good looking airplane. It is. Otherwise. They've added a lot of scale details to it. Yeah. I'm just not a huge fan of the colors.

[00:25:03] I get it. But I think it's neat. Something to keep your eye out on.

[00:25:07] A few upgrades on it.

[00:25:09] Yeah. What do we have? Yeah. Go look it up on your own.

[00:25:14] There's a bunch of things.

[00:25:16] There's air brakes, scale, servo air brakes, servo-driven, larger battery compartment, spring-loaded cheater holes. I'm just reading everything off this piece of paper.

[00:25:27] What else?

[00:25:28] Oh, 37.6-inch wingspan. It's a one-tenth scale and 57.4-inch in length. So, yeah.

[00:25:37] And then?

[00:25:38] 90-millimeter 12-blade EDF. Mm-hmm. 6S. 5,000. Mm-hmm.

[00:25:44] And they typically offer those down the road with a high-performance eight-cell setup. And the price? Oh, what was that? Because it was expensive. Yeah.

[00:25:55] 599. Yeah. No 99, though. It's just 599. Even.

[00:26:01] $600. I mean, it is what it is for a 90-millimeter jet. Yeah. And the Avani is 5, what, is that what? Yeah, 599. 569.

[00:26:10] By the time you get your receiver and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. You're getting close.

[00:26:14] Getting close to batteries.

[00:26:17] Yeah.

[00:26:18] If you don't already have them. I like the F-16. I'm an F-16 fan, mostly because that's what I worked on for a long time. But the color, like, I would love to see that in a Thunderbird scheme. Or just a plain line gray with you being able to do your own tail flashes. Tail flashes, I guess, would be cool. But just for visibility, for me, a Thunderbird scheme in that version would be ultra.

[00:26:47] Kind of neat. Uber cool. Yeah. I think. Anyway. Well, E-Flight has the 80-millimeter in the Thunderbird scheme.

[00:26:54] They do.

[00:26:54] It's a good-looking airplane. It is.

[00:26:57] So, yeah. That's all for me on that one. What else do you have? So, yeah. I've got another one here from Freewing. Man, Freewing on a roll. Yeah.

[00:27:06] Freewing is kicking it out.

[00:27:07] Yeah. Another jet. I'm noticing a theme here. Yeah. Maybe that's what I was in the mood for.

[00:27:13] Yeah.

[00:27:14] It's fitting for this episode. It is. Another 90-millimeter offering. The Zeus. Very, to me, it's very F-5 looking. And if you're an elite aerosports fan, what does that remind you of, Ron? Looks like a Pekaro. A Pekaro.

[00:27:33] Yeah. I can kind of see Razer in there, too, but Pekaro more so.

[00:27:37] Definitely more Pekaro than Razer.

[00:27:52] Pekaro, yeah. Right. Yeah. It's got a little bit more contrast, I guess I would say, than that F-16, which is in similar colors. But not camo. But not camo, yeah. Sharp-looking airplane. It's a typical 90-millimeter offering, so it's going to be a 6S 5000. And the price, $469 for the standard plug-and-play version. That's not bad. I mean, it's better than $569, I suppose. Sure.

[00:28:23] But it doesn't have, it doesn't have the lights and the, I'm sure, like Dave said, oh, it does have lights. That's why I would think most of them anymore do. So, eventually down the road, you can probably do the 8-cell upgrade, although it doesn't

[00:28:37] Say that in the advertising. Oh, hold on. What is that one you're looking at?

[00:28:40] Oh, this is ARF Plus, rather.

[00:28:41] So, that's not the PNP. So, that is not the PNP.

[00:28:44] So, let's see what it says is included in the box. Here you go. The jet, the landing gear, servos, LED lights. So, yeah, you're going to have to require, ooh, the motor and the fan unit.

[00:28:55] Motor and fan. That way you could go 8-cell.

[00:28:57] That way you could, yeah, if you wanted to. Yeah, so for $100 less, I guess, you are minus the power system. Those two things, yeah.

[00:29:07] That's why there's Amazon.

[00:29:10] But anyway, it's a good-looking airplane, but still, it's almost $500 for an airplane that you still got to go buy more stuff for. Yeah, but that's, I mean, that's okay. Yeah, I suppose. You guys are out of new stuff. Yeah. I got two more to talk about here. All right, I'm going to save that one for last because that, out of all of them, is probably my favorite. Next up is from Seagull.

[00:29:34] Haven't heard from anything from Seagull for a while.

[00:29:37] They do a lot of new stuff. They do, but, like, the last thing that was really noteworthy, I think, was that big L4 they did.

[00:29:44] No, when was the, oh, was the, they do the peat and pull? No, what am I thinking of?

[00:29:51] Pete and Paul's done, but that's, there's Seagull through, what's the name of the company? No?

[00:30:01] Legend Hobby.

[00:30:02] Legend, yes.

[00:30:03] Yeah, but I think that's a Seagull, isn't that a Seagull Arf? Yeah.

[00:30:07] I don't know. At any rate, this is a… We're showing our dumbness again. A new version of an old airplane. This is the Tar Heel Hal. I was able to say it.

[00:30:16] Good job.

[00:30:17] Without getting my tongue tied. This is the blue, yellow, and orange-ish, red, and silver. Dave's favorite color version. This is the bubble top version, not the Razorback. Razorback, I actually prefer the Razorbacks myself, but bubble tops are cool, too. Typical Seagull probably comes with, I'm not going to say it. It says it's 26 to 35 cc size for a gasser or an equivalent electric. I'm sure it comes with retracts, but I can't tell you if they're electric or mechanical.

[00:30:56] Seagull likes to give you those nice mechanical retracts. I'm not sure.

[00:31:02] They're a lot cheaper.

[00:31:04] They are, for sure. Anyway, it's available for pre-order. It's a 70-inch span, so it's a good size. A two-piece wing, which is nice. Makes it easy for transport. Yeah, should be available in the fall. Cool. And the price of that one, if you're interested, for the ARF, $594.

[00:31:30] Well, I mean, it's Balsa.

[00:31:32] I mean, it is. Balsa's expensive. It is Balsa.

[00:31:36] I mean, really, that's not terrible.

[00:31:38] No.

[00:31:39] It's in line. I mean, that doesn't surprise me.

[00:31:42] It is. Yeah.

[00:31:42] Especially for an airplane that size.

[00:31:44] Yeah. But when we're talking, we jump from 90-millimeter jets that, like for $569, just a few dollars less than this. It's,. Yeah, but it's completely different. I know, but I'm, if you're comparing apples to oranges.

[00:32:01] There you go. Apples to oranges to bananas. But anyway, it's a good-looking airplane.

[00:32:04] I like the P47, even though there's a lot of them out there.

[00:32:10] Yeah.

[00:32:10] But at least it's something new and Balsa from a reputable manufacturer, which I like.

[00:32:18] Yeah. So, good deal. Good to see more stuff out there.

[00:32:20] Very nice. And then last, I'm really excited about this one. New from eFlight, Horizon Hobby brand. Their new extra 330. Ouch. That was the cat. What's the 330?

[00:32:33] Ouch. Cat. That's what happens when you screw up your landing.

[00:32:37] Oh, yeah. Oh, right. If you haven't seen the old one, it was orange and white. Also a very sharp airplane, I thought. Excellent flying airplane. But they've made it even better. A new, more visible color scheme. It's the orange, blue, and white. Actually, two-tone blue and white with orange. This one has the new AS3X Plus, which is awesome. Ron's going to talk about that in a little bit. And for $400.

[00:33:06] I'm not going to talk about it a lot.

[00:33:07] But we'll talk a little bit. For $400, it is pretty much a bind and fly operation.

[00:33:15] Well, it is a bind and fly operation.

[00:33:17] Yeah. The only thing you need to complete this is your transmitter, battery, and a charger. That's it. So, yes, it's bind and fly. For $400. It's a 48-inch airplane. So, pretty sure. Like, I don't remember exactly. I'm pretty sure this is just an updated version of their old one. Because I think the old one was 48 inches. I think so, too.

[00:33:36] New electronics, new, all that stuff.

[00:33:38] New. Yeah. Definitely updated. I think this one, we got to see one.

[00:33:44] Yeah.

[00:33:45] Nice looking airplane. Like, it really is. Really sharp. Man, the orange and blue.

[00:33:48] I can't say that I hate that paint scheme. Yeah.

[00:33:50] Yeah. And Dave doesn't like colors other than silver and gray. And white and blue. Right. But really, really sharp. And according to the videos that I saw, the promotional videos, looks like it flies amazing. Yeah. I'm the most excited about this one probably because it's closest. Other than the little mini, mini microjets that we talked about, this one is probably closer to the budget that I can afford.

[00:34:15] I've thought a lot about getting that one.

[00:34:19] The wing mounting system is pretty slick.

[00:34:20] It is very cool.

[00:34:21] If you want to describe that, I'm not sure I could do it justice because you looked at it a lot closer than I did.

[00:34:28] I don't know what it was, but the wings go, obviously, it's a mid-mount wing. Right. And they go in through the fuselage. They connect to each other. Yeah. And then the wing bolts go in through the bottom. Yeah.

[00:34:39] They sort of interlock. Yeah. It keeps it from slide side to side. Yeah. And then, yeah, exactly.

[00:34:44] Like you said, up through the bottom.

[00:34:45] So, it's pretty slick. Looks like it'll go together quickly at the field.

[00:34:48] Yeah.

[00:34:49] Yeah. So, pretty nifty. Yeah. Eventually, I think once I'm past the jet expenditures and all that, I think this may be my next airplane.

[00:35:00] So, that's a cool airplane. Yeah. I like that one. With them releasing more of these, though, I wonder if they're ever going to update the E-Flight Yak. Like the one I have over there, the small Yak 54, or what is it, 48-inch-ish wingspan. I would love to see that. The Carbon Z version. Yeah. Carbon Z Yak. I would love to see that redone.

[00:35:21] Mm-hmm. That would be cool. Could you imagine that with AS3X Plus?

[00:35:24] That would be, that would be what I would, that would probably be my next airplane then.

[00:35:28] Yeah.

[00:35:29] Unfortunately.

[00:35:30] In some bright colors. I mean, don't get me wrong. The red and gold and white is neat, but. It is. Something bright like that. Yeah. Like the new extra 330.

[00:35:37] Updated that I can take the wing off of, because this one, whoever had it before me, had to glue the wings in, so I can't remove them.

[00:35:43] Well, that would have been me, but I did not glue the wings in.

[00:35:46] So, whoever had it before you. Yeah.

[00:35:48] Still somebody that had it before me. I didn't say right before me. So, it's nice and convenient to travel around. Yeah.

[00:35:53] Yeah. Absolutely terrible. That's, that's the worst part about the whole thing. So.

[00:35:58] But that's okay. But yeah, that.

[00:36:00] It's a fun, good flying airplane, though.

[00:36:01] Yeah.

[00:36:02] Yeah.

[00:36:02] Pretty much wraps up the new stuff.

[00:36:04] Not, not completely. Oh, sorry. One more. RealFlight did come out with their quarterly update, their content pack that was released. Includes, go figure, the scale version, the military version of the MB339. Also has the super timber 1.7 meter, that new yellow one that they're out with. The RJG Decathlon is on it. So is the Micro Draco. The small version that I have, the small version that I have, that I'm not honestly all that happy with.

[00:36:39] Has the new UMX, the F86, and also the Detroit Miss P51D Mustang.

[00:36:47] So it's the UMX one.

[00:36:48] Yeah.

[00:36:51] Kind of cool. The Micro Draco. Is that the one that one of the fellas said, yeah, you won't like that, and you bought it anyway? Was that the one? Anyway. So the other thing.

[00:37:05] Guess what's going to be at the next auction?

[00:37:08] Yeah. Taking it to Toledo. Taking it to Toledo.

[00:37:11] Which is ironic because I got it at Toledo.

[00:37:12] Yeah. Well, what better place to get rid of it? It's a lot of driving.

[00:37:17] Just to pick up and get rid of. Twice?

[00:37:20] Of three or four times. Oh, okay.

[00:37:22] Well, there you go. I honestly, I need to give it more time than I have. Maybe I will like it. I mean, it looks cool. Like, it has all the lights on. I mean, it really, it looks really, really cool. But to me, it's more of a static airplane than a flying airplane. That's an expensive static airplane, if that's the case. Yeah, I don't even remember how much they were. So, yeah. Whatever. Either way. Either way. We'll make that decision. Give it another chance. Maybe you'll.

[00:37:51] We'll make that decision once. And honestly, I've only flown it here. I really do need to take it to a field and actually.

[00:37:57] Fly it.

[00:37:58] Fly it.

[00:37:58] Fly it. The gear. Yeah.

[00:38:00] Well, I've flown it off the gear here. How have you? It's got the big gear. Oh. I cut my grass short just for that.

[00:38:04] Then why do you need to take it somewhere else?

[00:38:07] Because the way I'm set up here, I can't do the nice wide right to left flights that I like to do. because I'm kind of narrow. You're flying in a circle. Yeah, pretty much. It's, yeah.

[00:38:19] True. I get that.

[00:38:21] So, to be able to give it more. Yeah, give it another shot. More room.

[00:38:24] Yeah.

[00:38:25] More.

[00:38:25] Let it stretch its legs. Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:28] Mm-hmm. So, okay. Okay. That's all the new stuff. That's the new stuff. Wow. That was way more than half an episode.

[00:38:37] Yeah. Or less.

[00:38:39] Well, all right then. Are we finished?

[00:38:42] No, we still have stuff to talk about.

[00:38:45] Right. The next thing I want to talk about is we talked previously. I don't remember if it was the last episode or the episode before. That you and I went to Eli and I might have messed up a couple of airplanes with the wind.

[00:39:00] That's right. That's been a while ago. Or it feels like it's been a while ago.

[00:39:03] And that's, I can't remember if that was. Because we've been back so many times. It was two weeks ago. Was that the last episode that we talked about? Yeah, it was. It feels so long. Yeah.

[00:39:10] It was the last episode.

[00:39:11] The lapse episode. But anyway.

[00:39:13] I can say Tar Heel Howl, but I can't say the last episode.

[00:39:16] Two times in a row.

[00:39:17] I know. I was wrong with it.

[00:39:18] I know. Three times. He did it beforehand, too. Anyway, so I did get those fixed. The Decathlon and the gear on the Stinger 90. So I wanted to take those back out and fly them to make sure everything was, good now. Before I did that, though, I finally decided to take the plunge into updating them to the AS3X Plus firmware versions.

[00:39:48] It was not bad, actually.

[00:39:50] Easy to do? It was a lot easier than I was fearing.

[00:39:53] Yeah. It requires a cable, obviously.

[00:39:57] Excuse me. Yeah. So there's a programming cable you have to have, hooks up to your computer. And then you have the Spectrum Programmer app, I think is what it's called, that you download. Cool thing about the new versions of the software and stuff is it has what's called an SRM file that you can download. I don't remember what that stands for. Doesn't matter. But that's a file that has all of the settings that go on the actual receiver itself.

[00:40:29] So when you're loading a new model, bind and fly model, into your airplane, you don't have to go try and find and download the file for the transmitter.

[00:40:42] Because it's now stored on the receiver. No?

[00:40:46] Yeah. Yeah. But SRM, maybe, is that not SRM file? I thought it was something with transmitter. I thought there was a T in there. Maybe I copied that down wrong.

[00:40:55] Doesn't matter.

[00:40:56] But anyway, whatever this file is that goes on there, you load it onto the receiver, which when you buy a bind and fly airplane now, the newer ones that have this built into it, you don't have to update anything. You literally just create a new model, bind it, and when you bind it, when it goes through and it analyzes all the packets that you can get, like the telemetry packets, it finds one on there that says, hey, there's a model file loaded on this receiver.

[00:41:27] Do you want to load it? And when you load it, then it takes all the information from the receiver, puts it in your transmitter, so it has, like, flight mode set up, it has all the programming set up that it would need. It's supposed to have the pictures also on it that I found was not correct, so the picture for the decathlon actually came up as a Piper Cub, one of the yellow and gray ones. I don't remember the X2 or whatever they are. And then I also did the Viper 90.

[00:42:06] What did the cat get you?

[00:42:07] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:07] Are you okay?

[00:42:08] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:10] Trying to not cry? May have gotten him in a sensitive spot.

[00:42:16] Go away, kitty cat. We'll talk later. But anyway, so the one for the Viper, when I updated that, actually has a picture of the 50 millimeter Haboo.

[00:42:27] Hmm, close. I mean, at least it's in the same, like, propeller or EDF.

[00:42:32] Yeah. I think somebody might have overlooked that when they did the programming or whatnot. But I think it's an S, hold on. SPM. No, STF file. ST. Anyway, I know it doesn't matter, but it's messing with me because I thought there was a T in there for transmitter. But anyway, it loads up pretty easily. And like I said, I didn't have to do any other programming whatsoever.

[00:42:57] I, even though I had both of those in my transmitter already, I did new models just to start from scratch to see how it worked. Yep. Like, barely had to trim anything. Barely had to do any changes on it once I was flying. And I mean, it just, it works very nicely. Like I said, it already had the flight mode set up on the switch for the flaps. So you could do the different trim based on what flaps you had on for the Viper. Very simple.

[00:43:28] Not only did I do those, but I also did the flash, the firmware on the AR637 for the F-18. That one was easier because it wasn't in the airplane yet. And I tell you what, the setup when you're flying those with the new AS3X Plus, it's just like the jet on the Synapse. Like it has all the same options and stuff on it. It's nice. It's simple. It's easy. It's, I mean, it's leaps and bounds about what the old ones were.

[00:44:04] So describe, like, so you updated the receiver for the Viper, right?

[00:44:09] Mm-hmm.

[00:44:09] And so when you flew it with the new settings, you treated that as if it was a new model. So you had to reset the trims and stuff with flat position and all that kind of stuff, correct?

[00:44:21] Trims, yes. But I didn't have to do anything. So Crystal's now down here trying to get the animals. Who opened the door? Oh. Hi, Crystal.

[00:44:36] Hi.

[00:44:39] Anyway, yeah, the cat's already, like, dug its nails in the day. I'm not as sorry as he is. What was the question? I'm sorry.

[00:44:52] So describe the process by which you do that. Like, so… What are we talking about? The new AS-3X programming in your Viper 90. So you're treating this as if it's a new model. You're flying it for the first time. And you want to trim it for each flight mode.

[00:45:11] Sure. So, I mean, that's… I mean, it's just like trimming any other airplane. Like, with the Viper, because it was an actual pre-programmed model, there was no changing AS-3X gains or anything like that. Okay. that's all programmed into it already. So, with that, I mean, you just, you take off with takeoff flaps. And then you put the flaps up, put the gear up, trim it how you want it to fly. Get it to fly level, get it to fly straight.

[00:45:39] Yeah.

[00:45:39] Then when you put your flaps down, it automatically resets all of that trim to zero. So, first set of flaps, like takeoff flaps, then as you're flying, you trim that again. Right. And then it saves the trims based on the switch position. Because, obviously, elevator trim and all that stuff is going to change based on flap position.

[00:45:59] Yep. So are ailerons, too.

[00:46:01] Yeah, everything. Because if you have, yeah, if your flaps aren't perfectly level, and you have one or two degrees more on one side, maybe, then you're going to have to make up for it, right, with your ailerons. So you do that in that flap position, then you do it again in landing flaps. And then it automatically, like I said, stores each setting for the position.

[00:46:22] Now then, when you're all done, do you then need to mechanically, so for clean, like so for the flying the airplane clean, like gear up, flaps up, and it requires an eighth of an inch of up elevator to fly level, do you then go back and change that mechanically so you can reset your trim to zero? And then does that affect each position of the flap after that? Because those other positions are going to be based off of the neutral, right?

[00:46:52] So what's the question, do I or can you?

[00:46:55] Should you? Should a person do that? I think it depends. And once you've got them, how you like them, according to the flap switch, or in this case, flight mode switch, you just leave them?

[00:47:06] It depends on how much off it is. I gotcha. Like if it's one where I'm just two or three clicks out, I don't care. I'm not going to try and do that mechanically.

[00:47:15] Okay.

[00:47:15] If it's a big difference, then yes, I'm going to recenter and retrim in all flight modes. Right. Because like you said, yes, when you change position, that's going to change every flight mode. It's going to have to be redone.

[00:47:26] Yep.

[00:47:26] Which is not hard. No, it's not. I mean, it's just like going to trim.

[00:47:28] It's still way faster than doing it the old-fashioned way.

[00:47:32] Yeah, I agree.

[00:47:32] Going up for a flight of nothing but trimming with, say, flaps up, then getting that set, and then landing, centering your linkage or whatever, and then go back up, flaps down or flaps half, whatever.

[00:47:47] Yeah.

[00:47:47] Doing all that again for a flight, getting it just right, and then coming back down, setting a mechanic. Yeah. It's still way faster than doing it the old-fashioned way.

[00:47:54] Oh, absolutely. Cool. And so that was like we did the flights on that when we went over to Eli last weekend. And we all made a trip over there and got some flying in, which was nice.

[00:48:05] Yeah.

[00:48:06] Definitely. So somebody else can talk for a little bit. I want a drink. What did you take? What did you fly? And then we'll talk about the other stuff I did.

[00:48:16] Well, if you follow us on Facebook, I posted a couple of pictures of our adventure. I took six airplanes to fly. Ron had six or seven. Dave showed up with a couple. And Daniel even showed up with his stick.

[00:48:31] Yeah.

[00:48:32] So it was like a lot of airplanes.

[00:48:34] I think that was the loudest airplane that ever has flown at that field.

[00:48:38] Ever.

[00:48:39] Ever.

[00:48:40] That thing is, it's loud. Yeah. Stuff some freaking steel wool or something in that muffler.

[00:48:47] If it wouldn't suck it back in, I'd probably do that.

[00:48:50] Man, that thing is loud.

[00:48:52] Anyway, lots of airplanes. It does have a muffler. It's got a chamber.

[00:48:57] I was going to say. With an outlet. Yeah. I don't know how much muffling it does. It was sold as a muffler. Right. It's shaped like a muffler.

[00:49:03] I think it might be the opposite of a muffler. I think it's like an amplifier. Yeah. I think it would be quieter just with the open exhaust.

[00:49:10] Yeah. When the thing pops at idle, it's like my teeth hurt.

[00:49:13] Mm-hmm.

[00:49:14] Yeah. It is crazy loud. I don't know why.

[00:49:15] It hit me louder there, I think, than last time I heard it flying. I don't know why.

[00:49:19] Because it was over asphalt instead of grass, echoing off of that asphalt.

[00:49:22] Oh, maybe that's – and we were also in front of a building and under a canopy that everything would be echoing. So that – okay.

[00:49:29] Yeah, it did amplify it.

[00:49:30] Yeah. So it wasn't just in my head to where it seemed –

[00:49:33] No, it was – it definitely seemed louder than it was at our home field where we did not have that stuff.

[00:49:39] Okay.

[00:49:40] Yeah, it's crazy loud.

[00:49:42] It flies good.

[00:49:43] It – It looked like it. It looks like it flies good.

[00:49:46] He needs to put some more air in the tires.

[00:49:49] It's a little squishy.

[00:49:50] It's like when he was just hexing, the whole plane was, like, just wiggling, wobbling. Well, here's the thing.

[00:49:55] He leaves it on the gear all the time, so they get flat spots.

[00:49:59] Do they – I mean, like – Yeah, they flat spot. Do they flat spot when they're pneumatic?

[00:50:06] You can watch it. You're walking behind it. You can see the part of the tire is wider.

[00:50:11] Oh, okay.

[00:50:12] So if you had more air in it, that would probably pop that out a little bit.

[00:50:16] Yeah.

[00:50:18] But that's for, soft field operations.

[00:50:20] Yes, of course.

[00:50:22] Yeah. So it'll float on top of the mud.

[00:50:25] I got you.

[00:50:25] So this is a Great Plains Giant Stick with a Zenoa G38. Yeah.

[00:50:32] Yeah, it's a good-sized airplane. Like, it shows well in the air, and it does fly good. I mean, it's a stick, so they all fly good. We've never even put the flaps down on it. Probably ought to do that sometime. That's a good idea to try it. Yeah, it's something to play with. So the AS3X, moving on from that, you like the new AS3X Plus.

[00:50:52] Oh, yes.

[00:50:52] That's what you're saying.

[00:50:54] I'm trying to figure, because I know I took seven airplanes, but I can't remember what the last one was. Oh, he's riding his airplanes down.

[00:50:58] Yeah. Well, I'll talk about what I took. So I took the Beast, the Beast Unbroken, I guess I should say. Flew it, what, twice? Two flights, I think it was. Good flying airplane. I think so. I really like it. But like, as you mentioned before, I think I have found my limit. And by that, I mean what I can comfortably and safely get in and out of my airplane storage

[00:51:38] Area, which is my basement.

[00:51:41] Yeah.

[00:51:41] It's almost a two-person job. Yeah. Because I have to, I have to make a turn, go up the stairs, make another turn to go out the door. And it's just…

[00:51:47] Your door is right there at the top of the stairs.

[00:51:50] Yeah. So… Cry me a river. It's just… And I can't keep it in my garage because, I mean, it will destroy the ultra coat that's on it because, my garage is detached from the house. It's neither heated nor cooled. So…

[00:52:06] Well, it's heated by the sun and cooled by the air.

[00:52:08] Like, the double vision fits in the basement. I can get it in and out of the basement, I would say, easily without damaging it. And it's really not that much smaller, but it's just enough smaller to make that process easier.

[00:52:25] Yeah.

[00:52:25] And the beast is just that much too big. So, yeah. Anyway, I took the beast. It flies awesome. I took the 70 millimeter Viper. Again, it always flies. It never disappoints. I took the turbo timber Evolution, which I'm beginning to like more. I was a little bored with it at first, but I increased the throws and did a couple of other things. I'm liking it better. Yeah. Still not exciting.

[00:52:54] Not as sporty as you want.

[00:52:55] But the more I fly it, the more I like it. So, I'll keep flying it for a while. Same issue with the wheels. And the god-awful wheels on that thing. It's… Yeah. They're like rocks. They're so hard. And the spring… There's…

[00:53:08] Anyway.

[00:53:08] I hate to bash on it too much because it is a good airplane that flies.

[00:53:12] Just the gears. It's just the gears.

[00:53:14] It's spring-loaded gear, but I can't get mine to do any shock absorbering. I'm pretty sure they're garage door springs. Yeah. They're like crazy, crazy stiff.

[00:53:23] Yeah.

[00:53:24] The springs, I mean. And then, what else did I take? Oh, I took the UMX Conchendo. That thing, I mean…

[00:53:33] That's always a blast.

[00:53:34] Eight minutes flying with two minutes worth of motor running because I have two timers set up on it.

[00:53:40] Yeah.

[00:53:41] You got some thermals that day. For a UMX, that's impressive. And I'm sorry.

[00:53:46] It's just booking around like a little dragonfly.

[00:53:47] Yeah. And as soon as you advance the throttle… Watching that thing accelerate. Like, with the motor off, it's, kind of humming around, a little glider. And then as soon as you advance the throttle, you can actually see it lurch forward. It jumps forward. It's such a fun airplane to fly.

[00:54:02] I recommend everybody have one of these. I agree. It's a good one. Yeah.

[00:54:07] And then, oh, the FMS Kingfisher. After the post repair, after the last time we had it out, when I knocked the gear off of it because I was being stupid. And that's a good flying airplane. That one, Dave actually flew it and he says it's very similar. Very similar to the Cub.

[00:54:24] I would think so. I mean, it looks a lot alike. Yeah.

[00:54:29] So, yeah, that's the six airplanes I took and had… I flew them all. Well, I flew all of them at least twice. Most of them I flew three or more times each. Six.

[00:54:42] So, what… Did you talk about six or five? I thought that was six. Did I not?

[00:54:47] Okay. So, Beast.

[00:54:48] Yeah.

[00:54:49] UMX Conscendo. Yeah. Turbo Timber.

[00:54:51] You forgot one. I know what you forgot. The Micro Viper.

[00:54:54] Oh, yeah. The Micro Mustang. I forgot about that one.

[00:54:56] And you didn't talk about the Viper either.

[00:54:57] Yeah, I did. You said the 70 millimeter Viper. You said it never disappoints. I did say that.

[00:55:03] I guess I wasn't listening. Forgiveth me. Maybe that's when I was making my list.

[00:55:07] Probably. But, yeah, I flew the Voodoo UMX Mustang. Again, that thing, just a no-brainer. Fly is awesome. The AS3X and that is… They've got that one figured out. Yeah. So, but, yeah, there you go. Six airplanes. Nice.

[00:55:24] And you? So, now that I made my list of what I took, I took the decathlon. I already said that. MB339. F18. I'm going to say it wrong. Cree-cree. Cry-cry.

[00:55:38] The 40% French plain.

[00:55:40] Yeah. I mean, what's the correct terminology?

[00:55:43] I honestly don't know.

[00:55:44] I've always heard Cree-cree. Cree-cree. But I… I guess I'll say that and sound stupid to some people.

[00:55:49] I think it's French for cricket.

[00:55:50] I think so, too. But I don't remember.

[00:55:53] I don't know how to say cricket in French.

[00:55:54] I don't either.

[00:55:55] Cricut. Cricut.

[00:55:56] Cricut. Ah, yeah. Anyway. Anyway. Took that one. The slow ultra stick. Viper 90. Singer 90.

[00:56:04] The Cree-cree was a maiden.

[00:56:06] Yeah. That was the… I'm going to be honest. Of all the maidens I've done, which is not a ton, but enough, that was probably my most unfavorite one. Why is that? It was a bear to handle on the first flight. Do you go on? The throws were way… Or set way too high. It felt like it might have been… Might have been a tad bit tail heavy. Kind of flew around looking like it was a little bit tail heavy.

[00:56:41] But I also think that was a combination of that along with the throws being too much. Because it was… It porpoised a lot. And that was also before I got any of the AS3X stuff set up on it. This is one that I set up from scratch with the AS3X+. So it felt like it didn't want to come off the ground. Then all of a sudden it came off the ground. And then it just did the porpoise thing quite a bit until I kind of slowed down a little bit.

[00:57:16] Was able to get a little bit of altitude, feel better. And then kind of feel it out a little bit more. Once, like I only made a couple laps. Came into land. That actually went better than I expected it to. Yeah, the landing was… With the way it was flying.

[00:57:34] Well, yeah. That first landing was really more of a flop.

[00:57:39] Yeah.

[00:57:39] Than a smooth landing. Because you were… Your approach was, I think, on the edge of the stall. And then your flare was the stall.

[00:57:48] Yeah.

[00:57:48] And luckily you happened to have arrived close to the ground when that happened.

[00:57:52] Was that about a foot or two up? Yeah, it was like a foot. Yeah. It wasn't bad. It wasn't a bad landing.

[00:57:57] No.

[00:57:58] But for the setup and stuff, it was scary.

[00:58:00] Yeah. It clearly had stopped flying right before your landing.

[00:58:05] So I got that down. Moved the battery forward. Actually, I only moved the battery forward about a half inch. And then added 40% expo. And that made all the difference in the world, too.

[00:58:20] Second flight looked much better.

[00:58:21] Second flight was better. That's the flight I got the AS3X tuned.

[00:58:25] Is that the one you let me fly or was it the later one?

[00:58:28] I can't remember. You let me fly at one of them. I think it might have been the later one. I don't remember. But like I said, after I got all that stuff tuned in and taken care of, it actually doesn't fly bad. No, it's not bad. I was also concerned about, because it's just, it's such a small candy bar wing. Moving CG forward or back a little bit makes a big difference on that wing. Percentage-wise, yeah, for sure. The cord is terribly small compared to the rest of the airplane.

[00:58:55] Yeah. But after we, like I said, got that straightened out. Other thing that I have on that that I think is cool is the, and I know you're not a huge fan of it, but the nose wheel gyro. So, one of the things with AS3X Plus is you actually can put a gyro on your nose wheel. So, it will go where you point it going down the runway. I like it. I mean, it does a good job. I had to tune that too, but I got that tuned in.

[00:59:23] Fly it on a 4S 5000, which, I mean, good flight times with two motors. I will say, though, I need to fly it more to get used to it. The one thing that really throws me is the pods on the top. When you're, like, if you lose thought for just a second of, like, I'm right side up, I'm right side up, and you just kind of look back or, whatever, it looks like landing gear.

[00:59:53] It does. The two motors out on the pods.

[00:59:55] And there were several times where I was like, am I upside down? Like, this doesn't make any sense. I've lost, like, all mental thoughts of what I'm doing on this. It is odd looking. Takes some getting used to. But it does fly good. But I think that's what I'm going to keep. Good. Like, it's different enough to where I've not seen one before. It needs, visually, it needs something.

[01:00:22] It needs a pilot.

[01:00:24] It does need a pilot. That great big bubble. Yeah. But, I mean, color-wise, it's kind of boring. If I'm honest.

[01:00:32] Yeah, it needs something on it. But that actually is a model off of a real airplane. I'm sure. But it needs something. But you're right. Stickers or something. Yeah. Something to kind of make it pop to make it easier to see.

[01:00:43] Although, the solid red underneath does contrast nicely with the red and white top.

[01:00:49] Yeah.

[01:00:49] So that's, I guess that's good.

[01:00:51] I agree. But it's a fun airplane. It looks good. I mean. It does. Yeah. It's definitely different. It needs more flights for me to get comfortable with. Which is. But we'll get there. Yep. Which is what you like. We, I know.

[01:01:04] It's, like I said, I've not seen those before.

[01:01:06] Like, in model form. Yeah. But we have a scale event coming up at the end of this month at Eli. So that's why I wanted to get that out and actually get that flown.

[01:01:14] Yeah.

[01:01:15] So I have something to fly there.

[01:01:17] Scale to fly. Yeah. And that is scale. It's 40%. It's giant scale. It doesn't look like it.

[01:01:22] Yeah.

[01:01:22] It's giant scale. But it's only, what, 50-something inch wing?

[01:01:26] No. It's bigger than that.

[01:01:27] Is it bigger? Okay. Either way. It's not terribly large.

[01:01:30] Yeah.

[01:01:31] For being giant scale.

[01:01:32] Well. Yeah. If you look at the canopy, it looks big.

[01:01:35] Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you could fit a small child's head in the canopy. It looks like a football helmet.

[01:01:41] Yeah. Yeah, it does kind of. It's kind of ugly, but that's what makes it cute. Yeah. But that's not the only Maiden you did. No. I actually also Maiden the X-Fly model F-18 that we talked about earlier that I got. It flies good. Once again, I don't know how good it would fly without the AS3X Plus in it.

[01:02:06] It looked like one of the flights, to me, that the gains might have been a little high.

[01:02:12] So, yeah. I had forgotten. So, I didn't actually, that day, program the gains into the receiver. I still had it on the knob. And the gains. Huh? Good thing. Well, the gains on the Cree-Cree are much higher than the gains for the F-18. I didn't change it when I went back over to the F-18 for that extra flight. So, yeah. As soon as I took off, it just started going back and forth. I turned the gains down. It was fine. Yeah.

[01:02:42] I have not hand-launched it yet.

[01:02:46] I need to because I dislike the gear.

[01:02:50] It's very cosmetically not good. Right.

[01:02:53] Yeah. It just, it ruins the look of it. But it flies good. It sounds good. It's got the dual 40-millimeter fans on it. It does sound cool. It sounds neat.

[01:03:02] Especially when they're just out of sync. I know.

[01:03:04] You get the little, yeah, that sounds to it.

[01:03:06] Does it use, does it have two ESCs or just one? Would have two, right?

[01:03:12] I think, yeah, it would have two. Yeah, it should have two. Are they plugged into separate channels?

[01:03:16] No. where I'm going with this.

[01:03:18] Vector thrust? Or at least differential thrust.

[01:03:20] I think it'd be.

[01:03:21] That's what I meant, differential thrust.

[01:03:22] But Dave, you made a good point. Like, they're so close together, they're probably not going to, yeah. It's not like an A-10 or anything like that. You could practice, like, reduced power. Oh, reduced power takeoffs or something. Anyway, whatever.

[01:03:34] I don't know. I mean, that's one that'll just be a fun.

[01:03:36] I'm just out of sync so they make that back and forth noise.

[01:03:41] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe. That was the first one, though, that I had set up the, or did all the firmware updates and stuff on on that receiver. Going to the AS3X Plus from the old one is as simple as hooking that up to the computer like we kind of talked about before. But if it's not model specific, like where you load a model onto it, you go into the programmer and there's a version that you can load onto that's the 2.0 to 3.0 update patch.

[01:04:13] You load that, and then when you refresh, it gives you the option of the three-point whatever firmware, which is the AX3S stuff. Click that, load it on, you're done. AS3X Plus. AS3X Plus. Yeah.

[01:04:26] Okay.

[01:04:27] And then once you have that, everything is just done forward programming on your transmitter.

[01:04:30] Does it, for the test, does it do the, like what the synapse can do? You move the model and it moves everything full deflection so you can tell if it's going right?

[01:04:38] That's awesome.

[01:04:39] Yeah. And for setup. That by itself, to me, is like worth the update.

[01:04:43] And for setup too, like when you're going through your first time setup on the AS3X on your receiver, excuse me, it tells you hold the plane, I think it was up or straight up, and then it knows what it is. And then I think sometimes you have to do like 90 degrees on its side or something like that, and then it knows orientation of what it is. So you don't even have to program in what your orientation is.

[01:05:07] You can just tell, especially on smaller airplanes, it'll figure it out on its own. That's pretty cool. And then you go through, set up your gain knob, gain channel, all that kind of stuff for adjusting all that, and it's ready to fly then. That's awesome. I mean, there's not a lot to it.

[01:05:24] Yeah. It's simpler than it should be.

[01:05:26] I mean, like I was afraid to do it because it seemed like it would be difficult. Yeah. But it's not.

[01:05:32] Cool.

[01:05:32] So I would be happy to do that on any of the ones I can now. Yeah. I think I'm up to four that have it on it now.

[01:05:41] Nice.

[01:05:42] Yeah. But other than that, I mean, that plane flew good. Not great yet, but I think we'll get there. Oh, yeah. For sure. I think next time I will try to take the wheels off. Like, I really wanted to get it tuned, taking off from a runway, so I didn't have that split second of, okay, it's launched now. It has to fly right now. Right.

[01:06:04] If something happened and I was a foot off the ground or something with wheels when I was taken off and it didn't seem right, you can always land again, no harm, no foul.

[01:06:11] Shut it down and roll out.

[01:06:13] Right. But also with the AS3X Plus, it has the hand launch mode. So as soon as you let go, it'll-

[01:06:21] Almost like a safe for a launch.

[01:06:22] Yeah. It'll go, and you can set that too, which is kind of nice. So it's set now 10% grade, like climb is what it's set for going at, and then 100% throttle for two seconds. You can change the amount of time. You can change the amount of- Oh, that's cool. I didn't know it had that. Steepness. Oh, yeah.

[01:06:39] That's awesome.

[01:06:40] And that's all, like, you don't have to start anything automatically. If the throttle has been down for more than five seconds and then it goes to full throttle, actually, I think mine's set anything over 85%, and then it feels one and a half Gs, it knows it's being launched and goes into that mode. That's wild. It's kind of neat. So, and that's, you don't have to worry about being out of trim or anything like that either, because the plane will try and keep itself right.

[01:07:12] But being the first time I have ever done the setup and all that kind of stuff, I didn't want that to be my first flight on it. Yeah.

[01:07:18] I get that.

[01:07:18] Next time.

[01:07:20] Yeah.

[01:07:20] And the other thing I flew was the MB339. It was fun. Got a couple flights on it. The first one was not all that great. I had a couple issues trying to land. I was in my head. Yeah.

[01:07:34] It's no harm, no foul. I am so paranoid.

[01:07:39] First off, for hitting the trees that are all the way down on the right-hand side of the runway.

[01:07:42] Yeah.

[01:07:42] And we had to make right-to-left landings because of the wind.

[01:07:45] Yeah.

[01:07:45] And I'm paranoid to stall it.

[01:07:48] Yeah.

[01:07:49] Like, I know I wasn't at stall speed, but still, like, it's just kind of hard to tell coming in from so high because you want to miss the trees.

[01:07:57] Right.

[01:07:57] Which I think I heard the trees are 450 feet from the end of the runway is how far the end of the runway to the trees. So, from where I'm standing, they're 850-ish feet.

[01:08:09] I mean, it's, I guess that's a long way.

[01:08:10] It's a long way, but it's a big plane, too. Yeah, that's true. it looks closer, I think, than it really is sometimes, and I don't want to be the guy that goes into the tree. But my third landing on it, the third attempt at landing on the first flight, was beautiful. I got myself calmed down, landed, taxi back, turned it off, opened up the hatch, and saw that I was pulling fuel from the UAT. So, I was completely out of fuel in the gas tank.

[01:08:41] So, I'm glad that worked out because I could not have gone around one more time. I would have been dead stick halfway.

[01:08:48] Which, thankfully, that airplane does pretty well in a glide. It does. As Allie has demonstrated numerous times.

[01:08:55] But I don't want to have to do that yet. Right. Give me more use to it first. Yeah. And then, I flew the Stinger 90. we talked about that one, the nose wheel on grass, how it liked to fold over. So much better on actual asphalt runway. It had no issues whatsoever with that.

[01:09:13] Nope.

[01:09:13] Viper 90 is, honestly, now probably my favorite airplane. I was scared of that one for some reason.

[01:09:21] I don't get that.

[01:09:22] I don't either. That was stupid. That's a great airplane. Yeah. I got a lot of flights on that. last flight, unfortunately, though, I don't think I closed the hatch all the way. And I took off and then made the, the turn to, come back, started to do a knife edge pass, and then the canopy just fell off. Oops. Got another one in order. Be here tomorrow. but yeah, that was everything I took and flew. I had 30 flights that day.

[01:09:55] Nice. That was a great day. I should have counted mine.

[01:09:58] Dave? You really should have. Five. Better than none. Yeah. I only took three planes. wasn't feeling all that good, but, I ended up bringing the, brand new FMS, Super Cub. did a maiden flight with that. Oh, that's right. You did have three airplanes.

[01:10:17] I was like, I said two earlier, but no, you're right. It was three. Duh.

[01:10:20] And then I had the, the free wing 90 millimeter F-15 and, the Goblin. The football, the flying football. I forgot about that one. Which we've, now we've got some flight time on. It was starting to show us a few issues. Yeah. That one's interesting. It's,.

[01:10:37] Like at half throttle, Dave, let me fly it. At half throttle, that thing is like awesome. Perfectly trimmed, perfectly balanced. Nice little sports. Smooth. Yeah. Anything above.

[01:10:49] 50%.

[01:10:50] 50% throttle. It gets a little hairy. It's coming from a guy with no hair. That's.

[01:10:55] On your chest you do though.

[01:10:56] Well, that's plenty. On your back. What?

[01:10:59] Legs.

[01:10:59] We still don't put anything in it, but I'm guessing what? 150?

[01:11:03] Oh, at least. At least 150. Like at wide open, if you can keep it level, that thing was doing at least, at least 150. I mean, like really, you think so?

[01:11:14] Screams. It screams, but it's a small plane, so it looks faster.

[01:11:17] That's true. It's, it's well over a hundred.

[01:11:20] It's definitely over a hundred. It's definitely over a buck 20. Wish we would have thought, because I have the, that Sky ID that we could have thrown in there too.

[01:11:28] Yeah. And I've got that thing that I've been messing with, by the way. Oh, you have? So I'm ready to put that in an airplane and, and try it. And what's that called? Sky RC GNSS module. That's what's on the label. But it's just a small little square device you toss in an airplane and then it Bluetooth to your phone via an app. Yeah, but it locks on a GPS and you can track altitude and speed.

[01:11:55] But anyway, yeah. We're going to have to do that. Yeah, we will definitely. Once we get this little beast straightened out.

[01:12:00] Yeah.

[01:12:01] It seems that the little E-Max servos are not up to the job of 150 mile an hour. That's not surprising.

[01:12:09] I mean, like, I'm sorry. That's not surprising.

[01:12:12] At $9 each, I'm surprised that they can't, they can't handle that.

[01:12:15] This is one thing I don't think I would have skimped out on servos. I put the ones that are recommended by the factory. Yeah, which is awesome. Eh, I still, I still think I would upgrade. Yeah, they're going to be upgraded. I believe there's some pro modelers going to be stuffed in it. Or something. Yeah, at least. My thought is right now they don't have enough power at center to hold at speed.

[01:12:36] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:36] Because at 50%, they're not bad. Yeah. But you start cracking the throttle. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It, it's all around. It dives.

[01:12:44] Like, it does this weird. So when you open it up, it dives. But then you feed in up elevator to correct it. And then it just goes from the opposite diving to, like, climbing, like, vertically. And then you correct again, and then it's diving again. It does this whole weird, almost like a tail-heavy airplane.

[01:13:05] Kind of like the shiny was doing before we cleaned all that up.

[01:13:08] Similar, but more extreme. Like, well, yeah. Because the shiny is, like, 20 miles an hour. Dave was flying at once, and I was, kind of off to his side. And it did that, and it disappeared behind him. I thought, I thought it was coming right at us.

[01:13:19] Well, it disappeared under my hat. I couldn't see it because my, the floppy hat.

[01:13:24] Yeah. It was exciting. I mean, that thing will generate some adrenaline.

[01:13:28] But then it'll straighten out. You can get it straightened out. As long as you kind of, like, ease into it.

[01:13:32] So if you, you're talking about when you go full throttle, it starts to dive. If you don't, like, if you're high enough, and you don't put any elevator input into it, and you just slowly let off the throttle, does it continue to dive, or will it even happen?

[01:13:47] I haven't had time to deal with that because it does it so dramatically. So quickly. And it's moving so fast. Oh, yeah.

[01:13:52] It accelerates quickly.

[01:13:54] Very smooth, though.

[01:13:56] But, yeah, I think it's, Dave says that, like, there's a little bit of reflex built into the wing. So I think, Dave thinks this, too, and I agree. I think the wing, it's going so fast, it's trying to straighten stuff out.

[01:14:09] It's trying to straight down the Avalon's.

[01:14:11] Yeah, and the servos are not strong enough to hold that neutral position, so they're flexing or allowing the ailerons to then, or elevons, excuse me, to straighten out, and then that's what's called. You lose your reflex. Yeah.

[01:14:24] So I'm sorry, I was confused by that earlier. When you were talking about reflex, I thought you meant that that was the AS3X that they call reflex. Oh, no, no.

[01:14:31] There's reflex built into the wings.

[01:14:33] Ah, I gotcha. Well, that's why I said it might not be programmed right. There's no stabilization in it whatsoever. You might have to adjust gains or something, but now I understand what you're talking about. I gotcha.

[01:14:43] Aerodynamic reflex.

[01:14:43] Yeah. Well, because that's what another company calls AS3X stuff. I don't remember who that is.

[01:14:48] Oh, FMS calls it reflex. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a fun little bird, and I think we get new servos in it. It'll be.

[01:14:54] And the launch was incredibly. It's simple. Like, non-exciting.

[01:14:59] Yeah.

[01:14:59] Like, it just flies right out of your hand. Yeah. You just give it a gentle toss, and it's flying. 40% throttle, and off it goes. Yeah.

[01:15:06] Nice.

[01:15:07] Like, way less drama than, say, I don't know, a V900.

[01:15:12] And it better have good long-distance vision.

[01:15:14] Yeah. It gets small quickly.

[01:15:17] Yes, it did. It's a good thing it's orange and white. Yeah, I'm not a fan of orange, but.

[01:15:21] Something else I wanted to say, the bottom of the wing, the green patches that you put on. Yeah.

[01:15:27] Great call. Fluorescent green patches.

[01:15:29] Yeah. Great call. It shows up really, really well. Yeah. So.

[01:15:33] It's a lot of fun. It'll be more fun when we get it straightened out. Yep.

[01:15:36] I agree.

[01:15:37] And then, free wing F-15, I've had that thing forever, banging around. It's getting, starting to show its age. So, fly's good. Fly's great. No problems. We're a brick. On 8S. On 8S. But I did make a mistake on the last landing. Yeah. And I missed the runway by about two feet.

[01:16:00] Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:16:00] And it gets pretty rough, kind of, on that. Well, and that nose strut collapses, and it dug the nose cone in.

[01:16:07] And I have glued the nose cone on, because I didn't want to lose it. Oh. So, when it dug in, it kind of cracked the, it's got a weak nose section on it, and flies decent with it, but it's a little touchy. And then I, when it did that, the grass ripped all the gear off of it, or, sorry, the gear doors off of it.

[01:16:27] Mm-hmm.

[01:16:27] So, those are the way they should be here tomorrow.

[01:16:29] So, that's the pieces I saw flying for the gear doors.

[01:16:33] Yeah, you saw. It looked worse than it was. Yeah. Both mains. One of the mains broke in half. So, there's three pieces there. And then the nose wheel small door is gone.

[01:16:44] Yeah. I just thought you were trying to land in the grass. Like, I don't know, that's, that was what I envisioned when I saw you coming in.

[01:16:52] There is so much going on with that one, because it's so heavy. It has, there's a lot going on in the landing.

[01:16:57] Yeah.

[01:16:58] I was paying attention to my airspeed and all that, and just literally missed the edge of the runway.

[01:17:03] Well, it's only 60 feet wide, so I understand that.

[01:17:06] It's my bad, bad pilot.

[01:17:08] But, it doesn't make you a bad pilot. It happens. Just, it's a small little mistake. It looked way worse than it was.

[01:17:17] Oh, yeah.

[01:17:17] Like, when I saw it, and I saw the pieces flying, I'm like, oh, man. But then, yeah, you taxied back, and Ron just broke his pen.

[01:17:28] I was flying with it, I guess, too hard.

[01:17:31] So, yeah, all the gear doors flying all over the place. Yeah. It made it look worse. And it came to a screeching halt in, what, two feet? Oh, yeah, it was, it stopped very quickly.

[01:17:40] Yeah. Rule out was non-existent. Yeah.

[01:17:44] Yeah, so, cool. And then Daniel had his crazy, loud, giant stick.

[01:17:49] Yeah, he got a couple of flights in on that, too. And then his willy-nilly plane. I forgot about that one. That fly is really good, actually. He seems to be getting used to it.

[01:17:57] Yeah. It,.

[01:17:58] That little green wing. Green and black.

[01:18:02] I don't think I saw him fly that. He had a problem with it. It made a screeching noise. And then-

[01:18:09] It sounded like the motor was out of time.

[01:18:11] Yeah. And then he freaked and chopped the throttle, and it just kind of fell out of the sky. Hmm. Didn't hurt it in the least bit. Well, so light. Yeah. It fell about 20 foot and cartwheeled, and he picked it up, and it's fine. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:18:26] It was almost, like, right in front of us.

[01:18:28] Oh.

[01:18:29] So, yeah.

[01:18:29] Completely missed it somehow. Motor made some sort of weird sense.

[01:18:33] Like I said, it sounded like it was out of time. Like it skipped- Skip timing. Skip timing on that. Yeah. Which, usually, they- You can fix those just by going down on throttle and then going back up. It's fine. And he freaked and just shut it off.

[01:18:47] Yeah. Which, fine, didn't hurt anything. Yeah. Wasn't pretty.

[01:18:51] And this is a willy-nilly's?

[01:18:53] Yeah.

[01:18:53] Which one is it?

[01:18:54] That's the one he got in Toledo, right? Yeah. I can't remember what it's called. It's the- Basically, it's just a Hershey bar wing. It's basically like the- What is that thing?

[01:19:05] The SIG.

[01:19:07] It's kind of like a SIG Wonder. But it's only got one tail instead of two. Oh. Okay.

[01:19:13] Cool. Yeah. I'll have to make sure I pay attention next time.

[01:19:17] Actually, now I think about it, it's more closer to Goblin because it has no horizontal.

[01:19:20] Oh, that's- Yeah. How many times did he fly it?

[01:19:24] Once. Oh. He's flying it out at our, like, the local club. I don't know if you were out or not. I wasn't around. I definitely haven't seen it. Okay. No biggie. It's light.

[01:19:34] Yeah. You sneeze and it's blown away.

[01:19:36] Yeah.

[01:19:38] So, anyway, it was a good day. All day flying. Good weekend.

[01:19:41] Yeah. Good fun. We'll do it again sometime.

[01:19:43] Mm-hmm.

[01:19:44] Well, I have to find out when because it's going to be getting cold and windy and folly here. Folly? Folly. I like it.

[01:19:52] That's what we're getting to. Yeah. But- Maybe we'll get an Indian summer where we can keep flying for a while.

[01:19:58] I hope so. I still have a lot to get to my goal. A lot.

[01:20:02] Anyway.

[01:20:04] Are we ready to talk about the most important topic of the evening?

[01:20:09] Well, yeah. We're over an hour in, so may as well start talking about it now.

[01:20:14] The jet meet!

[01:20:15] Yeah, that was fun.

[01:20:16] Illini Jets 2024. I'm glad I went. I am, too. My first jet meet. I didn't realize that, but yeah. Yeah. So what were your impressions being a rookie attendee?

[01:20:28] So my first impressions were, and I kind of expected this, but some of the talent. Like there's some very talented pilots that showed up for that. That was my first overall impression was the skill level overall that showed up. And then the number of cool, expensive airplanes that were there. Large.

[01:20:51] Yeah.

[01:20:52] It's like within, like on the second day, you'd see all these huge airplanes that ordinarily you show up in a field, you're like, holy cow, that thing is huge. Like the second day there, you're like, yeah, it's just another big airplane. what I mean? It's overwhelming. Yeah. So.

[01:21:11] I would say conservatively, well over a million dollars worth of airplanes.

[01:21:15] Oh, easily. Oh, okay. I like, I'm not, like, I haven't spent enough, I guess, yet on my own jet for that to fully sink in, but I would not be surprised. Yeah. A lot of very, very high-end airplanes there. Yeah. Yeah. There were, there were, there was, there was all kinds. There was sport jets. There was scale airplanes there. There were speed, demon, like it was just a, like a great assortment from every sort of facet of jet modeling.

[01:21:51] Yeah. So I did make a list of some of the ones, the notable planes that I wanted to bring up. We can get to that in a minute. But like, did you have a favorite?

[01:22:01] I mean, they, yeah, I would say, yeah.

[01:22:08] Okay. Would you like to expand on that? Well, I mean, we haven't. Yes, I had a favorite. That's it.

[01:22:13] You're going to talk about them, but like.

[01:22:14] Well, do you want me to go through this, then we can talk about different ones, or how do you want to do that?

[01:22:18] However.

[01:22:19] I mean, we can, you can go through your list and then as you hit the one that I feel like was my favorite, then I'll say, yeah, that was my favorite.

[01:22:27] Okay. So first off, I want to say I have now flown at a jet meet at Illini Jets. Yep. Making my goal.

[01:22:37] As per your promise. That we set two years ago.

[01:22:40] So I'm very proud of myself for that.

[01:22:42] Yep.

[01:22:43] I was not comfortable flying in front of all those people.

[01:22:47] But you did it.

[01:22:48] Twice. I did it twice. So next year, I'll fly a lot more.

[01:22:52] Hopefully.

[01:22:53] Because I can, I can already tell the, the nerves are dying down a little bit with all the other planes I've been flying.

[01:22:58] Yeah.

[01:22:59] There's just something about flying, like honestly, one of, if not the cheapest jets there next to a jet that's waiting to take off behind you. That's, 30, $40,000 worth of equipment. But that's just a me problem. I got to get over. Like nobody made me feel that way. Like that was not, everybody there was just, was great.

[01:23:22] Super cool.

[01:23:22] So the one, like, okay. So after seeing all these airplanes too, I realized that I like scale jets, but I don't think I would ever want to own one because they're limited in the amount of fun you can have. Does that make a lot of sense? Does that make any sense?

[01:23:44] It makes sense what you're saying. I'm not sure I agree with it.

[01:23:47] I don't agree with that either. Okay. The fun is trying to replicate the most scale-like possible flight with a scale aircraft, not just blasting a hole in the sky with it.

[01:23:57] Well, at this point for me, the fun is trying to blast a hole in the sky and just hovering and all that kind of stuff, which we got to see some planes do too. I have a lot of respect for the people that build these scale jets because they are an amazing piece of equipment. Yeah. so I, I think my favorite one, it's so hard to tell.

[01:24:19] It is.

[01:24:19] The F-84 that was there.

[01:24:21] Mine.

[01:24:21] That's my favorite. Was that your favorite? I think so.

[01:24:24] So. Beautiful. Huge. This plane was huge. Enormous. Huge. but it was a very, very good looking, scale airplane. Mm-hmm.

[01:24:37] So that airplane was built in Italy. Okay. That was painted in England.

[01:24:42] Okay.

[01:24:42] And then sent over to Illinois to be assembled, test flown, and tuned, before being delivered to the guy that actually owns it.

[01:24:50] And it flies beautifully.

[01:24:52] It flies slow. It flies fast. And yes, a lot has to do with the pilot piloting it. but that was, that was gorgeous airplane. Like, I, I love that one.

[01:25:06] It was, and it was flown in a very scale manner, which, yeah, that should, I think did it for me.

[01:25:12] Yeah.

[01:25:12] He didn't do anything crazy. He didn't do any,.

[01:25:16] Wasn't his airplane.

[01:25:16] Knife edges or snap roll. He just flew it in a very scale manner, which was very, very pleasing to watch. Like, well, the whole place shut down to watch.

[01:25:29] Every time he flew it. Every time he flew it. Yeah.

[01:25:31] It was three or four times he flew it, I think.

[01:25:33] Like, yeah, so awesome.

[01:25:34] That one, that one would probably, it for sure is the one that like sticks out in my mind. So that means probably that that was my favorite because it was just awesome.

[01:25:45] Yeah. That was of the scale ones that was up there. the other one that really was up there was the ME 163.

[01:25:54] Very cool.

[01:25:55] Thought of you, Dave. There are actually two of them. Two of them.

[01:25:58] Yeah.

[01:25:58] Half scale.

[01:26:01] Yeah.

[01:26:02] Yeah. They're not a big airplane. No. No. But half scale, it's, it's bigger than like a 40% Cree Cree. Yeah.

[01:26:11] That's true.

[01:26:12] That one was not flown scale-like. well, no. Unless the scale-like was before they were crashing and just trying to figure out how not to crash with a rocket motor on it. but it was flown very high energy. It would be very, very fun to watch.

[01:26:31] And those are very good flying airframes.

[01:26:33] Are they really? Yeah. I mean, like, I, I don't know how hard it would be to make one fly well, but this one.

[01:26:39] My tiny one flies beautifully.

[01:26:42] Yeah. He, he does a lot of knife edge passes and stuff with it. He does. Very low. Well, and. And it was impressive.

[01:26:48] The red one, for sure. And the one Ali was flying may have had it also, but they had thrust vector.

[01:26:54] Oh, yeah. They both had them. Yeah. Okay, so. Makes a big difference.

[01:26:58] Maybe not exactly, but they weren't doing 3D type stuff with them. They were using the thrust vectoring to help with knife edges.

[01:27:06] And there's not much fuselage area there.

[01:27:07] No. So, even though they weren't flown, maybe exactly scale, they were flown as you would fly a scale or bird. Like, they, they flew them very similar to how Ali kind of flew the F-84, I feel like.

[01:27:22] Ooh. You don't think so? The red one, yes. His green one, I don't, and I don't know colors enough to know. There was a lot of, well, I mean, I think the knife edge is what I'm thinking of more or so than there were several of those that would not be very scale.

[01:27:40] Either way, really cool airplanes to, to, to watch fly.

[01:27:44] Yeah. And they even have, Dave, the, the gear that drops off just like yours does. They have the dollies. Yeah. -huh. It, I mean.

[01:27:51] Yeah. Because dragging those around is no bueno. Yeah.

[01:27:55] But. Very cool. Very cool to see. there was a big ME-262 there. I don't know how big that was.

[01:28:02] Yeah. I didn't catch the scale, but it was not small.

[01:28:05] Yeah.

[01:28:05] Looked like it, I mean, it wasn't as fun to watch for me for whatever reason as the, like the F-84. but I, it was flown in a scale manner. Yeah.

[01:28:17] Yeah. It, yeah. I think a lot. Good looking airplane, though. I think a lot goes back to the style of flight.

[01:28:24] Yeah.

[01:28:25] Low and slow and all that stuff that you get with the F-84 was always impressive to watch. Yeah. and that the 262 just didn't quite fly the same way.

[01:28:36] Right.

[01:28:36] It would be how I would fly something. High, just in case something happens. Yeah. And the only time I get within a hundred feet of the runway is when I'm landing.

[01:28:44] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:28:45] As opposed to.

[01:28:46] It was a good looking airplane.

[01:28:47] Yeah.

[01:28:48] Well, it still is.

[01:28:48] I mean. It's a good looking airplane. But we don't see it now. So that's, that's why was is okay to say. the twin turbine A-10. I thought that was a good one.

[01:28:58] Yeah.

[01:28:59] I like A-10s.

[01:29:00] It was a pretty airplane.

[01:29:02] Yes. It was the black and white skin. Yeah.

[01:29:04] But I don't know. I mean. I'm the same way.

[01:29:07] But I still liked it. But I would not want to own it. Right.

[01:29:11] Yeah.

[01:29:12] It's, it's cool. It sounded neat. And honestly, like if we were at a fly-in and that was the biggest jet kind of thing there, you didn't have all these other ones, that would be very impressive. But I think it was just outshone.

[01:29:27] That's a good point.

[01:29:28] By the talent or whatever you want to call it that was there.

[01:29:30] That's a good point. Yeah. Because it, like by itself, it is a beautifully done airplane. And he flew it well.

[01:29:36] Yeah.

[01:29:37] Like he flew it in a very A-10-like, pattern. But yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. There were so many other airplanes that were either bigger or shinier or whatever.

[01:29:50] Different-er.

[01:29:51] Different-er. Yeah.

[01:29:52] No, I mean, like I said, gorgeous airplane. Yeah. Flown very well. But just outshone. Yeah. By some of the other things that were there.

[01:30:00] I would agree with that.

[01:30:02] The other thing that was neat was the CARF MiG-17s. Remember those? There were four of those. Four of them.

[01:30:07] Yeah. And they flew them all together. That was kind of cool. Loose formation. Right.

[01:30:14] But that was neat, too. All four of them were in the air at once. Nobody else was up with them. And they just kind of did their own little show. It was cool. I was impressed with that. Somebody, as they were flying, yelled out, that's what $100,000 worth of airplanes looks like. Guess about $25,000 a piece then. So, neat airplanes, though. They sound cool. They look cool. And two of them were different. I mean, like there were two different schemes.

[01:30:40] One was red and then one was blue. I don't know enough about schemes to know the difference.

[01:30:44] The two red ones were different.

[01:30:46] Yeah. The blue ones were the same, I think. Yeah.

[01:30:48] The blue ones were the same.

[01:30:49] Different numbers on them, but the same setup, same color scheme, whatever. I think that's scale-wise what I was, what I kind of caught. Or I guess if you want to talk MB339 scale, that was by far the most numerous airplane there. There was a few. At least 11, and there might have been 12. Because we took a picture of all of them together.

[01:31:15] Yeah.

[01:31:16] And I think, I think, there was one guy that didn't make it in the picture, and there were 11 in the picture.

[01:31:23] Something about a lemur comes to mind, but yeah.

[01:31:25] I don't get that. The, I mean, obviously it's, it's one of the most economical jets to get in the high. So that, that makes sense that there's so many of them.

[01:31:40] Well, yeah. And it's, I mean, a lot of us are new to the jet world, so.

[01:31:44] But they had both, both schemes there, plus a custom one.

[01:31:48] That weighed a lot more. Weighed a lot more. What was it, like three pounds more or something like that? I think that's what they said. But it seemed to fly just as good as the others. It looked great.

[01:31:56] That's a lot of paint for three pounds.

[01:31:58] Well, he fiberglassed the whole thing. I hated it. Yeah. But at least it was different. I don't know what scheme that was. It was a little bit different. It kind of looked like the military scheme.

[01:32:06] Yeah. Same color, it's just a kind of a different layout.

[01:32:09] Yeah. Yeah. And once again, I don't know my livery's, livery's, whatever, to know the difference. But that, yeah. So there was, that was cool to see all those together. Would have been cool to see them all flying together. That would have been cool.

[01:32:23] Kind of like we did with the decathlons.

[01:32:25] Big difference in that.

[01:32:26] Decathlons, that's fine. I'll do that with, what, six or seven of us or however many.

[01:32:31] $200, $2,000. What's the difference? Well, whatever. That's not $2,000, Dave. I know.

[01:32:37] Not even near. But anyway. Anyway. And that would be $11,000 as opposed to the other ones, too. But like I said, I think that was all the scale ones that I kind of liked. Going into the sport jet side of things, there was a lot. There was more sport jets, obviously, than there was at the scale ones. Did you have a favorite on the sport jet? Oh, yeah. Do you want me to go through these and see if I hit it?

[01:33:05] Yeah.

[01:33:05] So, this actually is in no real order. The one that I liked, I don't know if it debuted at this event or if this was like an official opening or something. Not opening, but like a reveal or something. But Elite Aerosports has had the Picaro out for several years in a three-meter version. They're starting to shrink some of their airplanes down. And this was the two-meter version of it. Very fast. Oh, yeah. Very agile.

[01:33:38] Yeah.

[01:33:39] Very good-looking airplane. Very expensive.

[01:33:42] Well, yeah.

[01:33:43] But I think it's worth it after seeing them fly. Yeah. Those are very well-built. We're well-put together. Looks like a jet that can do anything. Mm-hmm.

[01:33:53] Yeah. Especially with the thrust vectoring and, yeah.

[01:33:56] Yeah. And then, what was the other? The several BDXs and stuff there, too. Mm-hmm. The other one, Elite Aerosports, again, the Razor. That's my favorite. Is that your favorite? Yeah. So, that's Alley's airplane. The neon yellow and gray is the one you're talking about?

[01:34:11] Yeah. That one, actually, it's kind of a tie. I really like the Diablo, also, that they were flying.

[01:34:18] See, I don't know about that one yet.

[01:34:20] I like the Razor for the looks, but the Diablo seemed to fly differently, more to what I would like to be able to do eventually. Yeah. If that makes sense. I get it. Yes. what I mean?

[01:35:02] Yeah. It's different than, like, anybody I've ever seen. A lot of, yeah. It's very precise. It's very, and I mean, he's said before that he never has a plan when he goes for a flight. It's just, he doesn't have anything planned out that he's going to do. It's just what comes next to him. But his transitions are perfect. Like, his control, like, when he's stopping a roll or something, it's always exactly where it needs to be.

[01:35:30] There's nothing to where it has to, a lot of times, especially like me.

[01:35:33] You don't see him make small corrections.

[01:35:34] Right. There's no, like, two-degree correction or anything. It's always just dead on. He's one that whenever he's flying something, I will always stop and watch just because it's fun to watch.

[01:35:47] Zavi, to some degree, flies like that as well. He does. He's getting, he's not quite there yet, but he's a lot younger. I like watching, well, I like watching both of them fly, but Zavi's, I like watching him fly as well.

[01:35:59] He's, I think he's more into the thrust vectoring and all that kind of stuff. And his dad is, but that's okay. I think he'll be fun to watch in the next five, 10 years. Oh, yeah. So that was that one. Then the next one, and I, I don't know how to say this. So it's the Krill. Is it the Ares, the Ares, the?

[01:36:18] Oh, I think it's Ares.

[01:36:20] Ares. Ares, yes. The, the mini.

[01:36:23] Yeah. That's, that, that one kind of caught my eye. Mine too. And then we looked up the price. And that's even better. Reasonably for, I mean, what they are, fairly reasonable. There were four of them there.

[01:36:36] Runs on, you can put the K86 in it. One of the guys had the thrust vectoring pipe set up. Nozzle. And the nozzle, yeah. And he was, I mean, he, he was doing pretty good with it.

[01:36:47] Mm-hmm.

[01:36:49] Of the four there, I think his was my favorite one.

[01:36:52] Yeah.

[01:36:53] I agree. So it was set up well. He flew it well. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, it's, it's cool. And they're fat.

[01:37:00] Well, I mean, they're a little bit smaller, but they, they appear like they move along pretty good. And affordable. And, yeah. I mean, all things, yeah, considered. You could probably get into an Aries for just a little bit more than what you could get an MB339 set up for. Or maybe.

[01:37:14] I would think about the same, if not maybe a little bit less. Because the ARF is, what, 400 bucks cheaper? And it does come with the gear?

[01:37:21] That's true.

[01:37:22] So.

[01:37:23] Oh.

[01:37:23] So, yeah. That's true. The Karf. This is the one you like. The Karf Diablo? Diablo? Diablo. Just one of those, I think, right? No, there was two.

[01:37:32] Oh, there was two?

[01:37:32] Mm-hmm.

[01:37:33] Yeah, Xavi was flying a pink one, and then there was a red one there also, red and black. I guess I, oh, I remember that one now.

[01:37:40] Yeah, I know who had that one. Mm-hmm. That was fun to watch, too.

[01:37:45] And then the other one that I really like, the Karf Rebel Max. Mm-hmm. There's just something about how it presents itself in the air. It slows down.

[01:37:56] Mm-hmm.

[01:37:57] It's, I mean, it's a fun-looking airplane. That I would one day like to have. Maybe. I mean, no, I would like to have one, but whether or not that's realistic, I don't know.

[01:38:07] I got you.

[01:38:07] And then they did something weird on the tail on that one. That was the one, right? Where they were dragging the tail. Oh, yeah. I don't know if they put, like, magnesium or something on the back.

[01:38:16] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Something on the, yeah, right underneath the tail cone.

[01:38:20] So that is, they were taking off, they were dragging the tail and just sending sparks everywhere. It looked really cool. It did. Yeah. Guys from Boomerang were there?

[01:38:29] Yeah, they were there with the whole slew. And I didn't know this at the time until after I was surfing Facebook after we were done. But they were there with a prototype.

[01:38:39] Yeah.

[01:38:40] Viper-looking airplane.

[01:38:42] Yeah.

[01:38:42] I think 65, I think.

[01:38:45] Small.

[01:38:46] Yeah.

[01:38:46] Yeah.

[01:38:48] We'll see what that looks like. They said, their Facebook post said that they'll be announcing it soon. But they were there with their Atoms. And then they, I finally got to watch them fly the Ranger, which I was really happy to watch.

[01:38:59] Yeah.

[01:38:59] So, yeah. They were there with all the toys.

[01:39:02] And soon, hopefully, knock on wood, whatever, you'll have yours going.

[01:39:06] I'm, spring. I know. That's my goal.

[01:39:09] That'll be here before it, by the way. I know. So, what else? Oh, crashes.

[01:39:15] Yeah. Witnessed a really, really bad one.

[01:39:20] Amazing how quickly they catch fire.

[01:39:23] This one. It's instant, by the way.

[01:39:25] It is.

[01:39:25] Well, it depends on the crash.

[01:39:27] Right. There was one that, can you say, blew up?

[01:39:31] Yeah. The engine let go.

[01:39:33] I mean. Yeah.

[01:39:34] The compressor. It was either the compressor or the fan came apart. Oh, wait.

[01:39:38] Which one are you talking about?

[01:39:39] I don't know that one. I was talking about the, it wasn't a Vakaro. Was it a Maverick? The yellow and white and silver one. The one that was right up above us and we heard it go, pew. That one actually came apart. The engine shot blades out the side of the fuselage. I don't know if I remember that one. Yeah. Well, I mean. I mean, I don't know if I was. Was I there? Like, was I. You weren't next to me. I was, I was like standing.

[01:40:03] Because it was the guy that was doing a lot of the 3D stuff that I liked to watch.

[01:40:07] No, I was up at the hangar for that. I heard about that afterwards.

[01:40:09] Yeah, that one actually, the engine came apart.

[01:40:12] Oh.

[01:40:13] Like, threw blades out the side of it. Ouch. That was. And he made a VDX? No, it was. I don't think it was VDX.

[01:40:20] I thought that was the one that had the thrust vectoring. It had thrust vectoring. Was that the one he was hovering? Yes. I think that was a VDX. The yellow and white.

[01:40:26] No? No. I thought it was more like a Beccaro.

[01:40:30] It doesn't matter.

[01:40:30] It doesn't matter.

[01:40:31] Yeah.

[01:40:31] But he made a fantastic save. Because he wasn't terribly high. Because he had just pulled an upline.

[01:40:37] Yeah.

[01:40:37] And I think he was going to do one of the cool things like I like to watch him do. The flitter pattern. Yeah. The flat spin that looks like a Frisbee.

[01:40:45] Yeah.

[01:40:45] But yeah, he had just pulled the upline and when it let go. But fantastic save. I mean, landed it pretty much right in front of him. And then the rollout just rolled over to his tent. So it was. Yeah.

[01:40:57] Well, so that was.

[01:40:58] Very talented.

[01:40:58] I don't know if I consider that a crash then. Oh, that's the one I thought you were talking about. No, no, no, no. The one. Well, we'll get to the one I was going to talk about first. We had two of them that went down in the corn. I didn't see those. I didn't either. I saw the guys go into the corn and I didn't realize how tall the corn was out there. I mean, it looks like it's at least nine or ten foot tall. It's tall. Based on the guys walking into it.

[01:41:21] So there was one that went out, I guess. It was about 800 feet straight out. That was the Mirage? Yeah. Yeah.

[01:41:27] Yep. It went straight in, by the way. Oh, it did? Yeah. See, I didn't catch that. Yeah. Well, I saw them carrying the pieces back.

[01:41:33] They lucked out then. It wasn't good. Because it didn't catch fire.

[01:41:37] Right. It wasn't going terribly fast from what I understand.

[01:41:39] Then there was another one that went down to the right-hand side in the corn. But I think that one was more of a glide in. I don't think we were here for that. I just heard about that one. And then the one that I thought you were talking about at first with the fire thing. I don't know what kind of plane it was, because you couldn't tell afterwards.

[01:41:58] I think… It was small and fast.

[01:42:02] And went bye-bye quickly. All these, by the way, I think they all admitted to pilot error on what happened. I think this guy that I'm talking about now was upside down and went the wrong way on the elevator. It's literally straight. Wide open. Straight into the ground.

[01:42:22] So much so that when I was out there last weekend, you walked out and looked, you can still see where the wings go. You could see where the fuselage went. And you can see the upright for the tail. So, that plane impaled itself into the ground and caught fire instantly. Milliseconds, yeah. So much so they couldn't get the nose cone out of the ground. It was buried too much. So, it is now a permanent part of Eli Field.

[01:42:54] They left it in there and just shoveled the dirt back on top of it. Ouch. Yeah. I mean, that would suck.

[01:43:01] Yeah. And, well, we saw… We didn't see the impact. But I saw, like, the second or so of… Because we were walking back from talking to the Boomerang guys, I think. I think so, yeah. And I saw him pull inverted, like, right kind of above the runway. And then I just saw it pull straight down, like, without slowing down whatsoever. And, obviously, like I said, it went behind. My view was blocked by, like, a trailer or maybe a tent or something.

[01:43:33] Yeah.

[01:43:33] But by the time our view was clear, it was already fireball. Engulfed. Yeah.

[01:43:39] Yep. It happens. And that's sickening. It's a different sound than a Balsa airplane, by the way. Like, it really is completely different.

[01:43:50] Yeah. It's whooshing, followed by a fwump, followed by silence.

[01:43:54] Yeah. And so that was the other thing. When I went to the meeting last night, we had some surface guys, like, playing with their cars out on the track. Like, when you're flying and you're not used to hearing that in the background and you hear when they crash or when they land or something like that, every time I thought, who just went down? Because it sounds just like an airplane crash when you're not expecting it. But, anyway. But, yeah. So that was the Jet Meet.

[01:44:28] It was a lot of fun. We actually helped out quite a bit with food service and all that. Food was delicious, by the way.

[01:44:34] Oh, man.

[01:44:35] Yeah.

[01:44:35] Steve did such a good job with the meat for all of the…

[01:44:40] Well, we have skirt steak. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, brats, pulled pork.

[01:44:47] Pulled pork. Smoked pulled pork that he did right there on the premises.

[01:44:51] Yeah.

[01:44:51] Good job, Steve.

[01:44:53] Everything tasted great. Yeah. A lot of fun, though. It was. So next year, I'm hoping we will all be able to go and fly together.

[01:45:01] Yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, for sure, definitely on my bucket list. I'm not making any promises.

[01:45:06] I don't expect you to. I'm not going to make the mistake that Reggie made. He failed. But I don't expect you to.

[01:45:11] But my goal is to have a flyable jet by spring. That's my goal. I'm not making any promises.

[01:45:15] Yeah.

[01:45:16] But if I have a flyable jet by spring and it's still flyable by the jet meet, I will for sure fly there.

[01:45:23] Yeah.

[01:45:24] So I think that's a great idea.

[01:45:26] And tell them about what you won.

[01:45:29] Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that. But so, they do the raffle, they sold tickets, to kind of help raise funds for the for the club. And I resisted, like all weekend long. I wasn't I never win anything. So, like, I'm not going to. And then I started thinking about it. I was like, well, it's for the club. And there are some really great prizes up here that they're going to they're going to, give away. What the heck?

[01:45:55] I'll throw some money at it.

[01:45:56] So I which I didn't even know, by the way, before they started drawing that that was one of the prizes.

[01:46:03] Well, they announced it like as he was talking about it up there, what they were giving away. They said, oh, yeah, we got this cool.

[01:46:08] Right. But before that, I had no idea. Like, you could only see what was sitting up there. I got you. And they had an MB339 up there. They were raffling off. They had the new UMX ME262 and a whole bunch of other things. Yeah.

[01:46:21] But go on. Oh, yeah. So I thought, yeah, I'll throw, I forget what even $20, I think, is what I gave her. I think so, yeah. And she gave me $20 worth of tickets. And really, I credit Dustin's wife. I can't remember, Jessica. Yeah. Jess. For me winning because she's the one that picked out the tickets to give me. what I mean? I just gave her the money. I said, okay, here. And she's like, here's your tickets. Okay. So anyway, yeah.

[01:46:46] Like, so they start the raffle. And of course, it's, they don't raffle off this item first. They just call a number and then you come up there and you pick what you want, right?

[01:46:55] It's choice.

[01:46:55] Yeah. So they call the first ticket. And of course, I'm looking at my tickets. It's like not even the same color, right? It's my ticket. So I'm like, oh, this is how this is going to go. And of course, rightfully so, the first guy that gets called, he picks the MB339 kit that's up there. Well, the next, yeah, or sorry, ARV. Among the other prizes that they're raffling, I mean, there's some cool stuff up there.

[01:47:20] But among the cool stuff is a 50% off certificate from Boomerang Jets on any of their kits or ARVs. So half off, which is significant.

[01:47:33] That's thousands of dollars.

[01:47:35] Thousands, yeah. So I think everybody can probably guess where I'm going with this. I am the second ticket that they call. Like, they call the next ticket after the guy picks the MB339 and it's my ticket. And of course, I go up there and I grab the gift certificate. So I got a half off gift certificate off of another jet from Boomerang.

[01:47:56] So what are you going to get?

[01:47:57] Well, I mean, it'll depend. Like, so the expiration date, I get a year, right? So, I mean, I really like that new atom of theirs, especially the orange version. No.

[01:48:12] Yes, I like that, but not the orange, especially after seeing the picture. You asked me what I'm going to get.

[01:48:17] I know. I'm trying to pressure you. I'm not getting the pink one.

[01:48:21] You should get the pink one. The pink one looks so much better.

[01:48:23] And I may not even get an atom. It'll depend on what I can afford at the time or before the thing expires. what I mean?

[01:48:30] Yeah.

[01:48:31] So, but yeah, that is definitely on my radar, the orange.

[01:48:36] You've been excited about that one for a while.

[01:48:38] Since I saw it first.

[01:48:40] Since I first saw that. Joan Hall, yeah. Yeah.

[01:48:42] Right. Well, I even saw it before Joan Hall. That was the first time in person. That was the first time I saw it in person.

[01:48:46] Yeah.

[01:48:47] But I had seen it on their Facebook page, long before that.

[01:48:51] Yeah.

[01:48:52] So, if I can swing it, that's what my second jet will be.

[01:48:58] Look at you. Already talking about your second jet. Yeah. Hey. Oh, that's cool, though. That was awesome.

[01:49:04] We'll see.

[01:49:05] That was a good weekend.

[01:49:05] But we'll see what this new little Viper of theirs looks like. I mean, if they do it in some cool color schemes. Like, I'm not a huge fan of the color scheme that they had there, the green and white. I mean, it's nice. Yeah.

[01:49:16] It looked cool.

[01:49:17] But if they do something really, really flashy, a smaller jet that's a little more affordable. And orange. Is appealing.

[01:49:23] Small doesn't necessarily mean affordable, by the way.

[01:49:25] That's true. But that would be appealing to me if it was a little more affordable. Like those Aries. Like, I was really thinking that could be a good second airplane. A second jet airplane.

[01:49:35] Yeah.

[01:49:35] But now, I have this coupon. Which takes you down to about the same price.

[01:49:40] Not quite. Well, a little less.

[01:49:42] Or a little more. But for the Atom, anyway. I don't know.

[01:49:45] Pretty cool, though.

[01:49:46] You're lucky. I was shocked and excited because I never win anything at these things, so. That's cool. Yeah. Very glad to hear it.

[01:49:55] Glad you had a good time.

[01:49:56] Second airplane is on the radar.

[01:49:59] Second jet. Or, yeah. You'll probably be the first one to have two. I don't say that.

[01:50:03] Why? Because, I mean, it could be years. I mean, yeah. Buy the, get the kit. It may take me three years to assemble the rest of the stuff. Still have two. Does one in a box count? I guess maybe it does, depending on how you. I think so.

[01:50:19] I mean, it's technically, it's not assembled. It's not ready. But, I mean, like, do you, I don't know, what ARFs do you have? Anything put together still that you need to do? Like, just in general? Do you have ARFs at home? No. I have kits.

[01:50:35] Well, I take that back. I do. I do have that factor.

[01:50:38] See? So, do you consider that you have the airplane? Mm-mm. Really?

[01:50:42] Mm-mm. What do you consider? Not flyable.

[01:50:44] But you still have the airplane.

[01:50:46] I have an ARF. Yeah.

[01:50:48] Okay. It's not on my books.

[01:50:51] It's not on your books? Yeah. See?

[01:50:56] Well, now, Dave, it's time to wake up. I saw him over there a couple times yawning and checking his watch.

[01:51:02] Dave didn't go to the jet meet.

[01:51:04] No.

[01:51:05] Jets are not Dave's thing. No.

[01:51:08] Not yet. I don't know why.

[01:51:10] Just not yet. I tell you what.

[01:51:12] I have been bitten a lot by the EDF bug.

[01:51:17] Mm-mm.

[01:51:17] And the jets just do it, too.

[01:51:20] There's just something about the sound. And especially when you're by yourself and you can play around more. Yeah. You can practice making it louder. Because that's the part I like. I love the sound of it when it's flying by.

[01:51:33] Yeah.

[01:51:33] Get right in front of yourself and then turn away from you so the exhaust points right at you. And so you can hear it more. Yeah. Full throttle on that. That's awesome.

[01:51:40] It does sound cool. I love it. You need to get a bag of marshmallows and a stick. Mm-hmm. Maybe. Mm-hmm.

[01:51:46] I mean, it's just diesel. Yeah. Well, there is, I guess. Because there's oil, too. Oh, that's true. That all comes out. Anyway, anything else? Are we?

[01:51:55] No, that's all I have.

[01:51:56] I think that's a long one. Yeah. Almost two hours.

[01:52:00] Whew. Well.

[01:52:01] Sorry.

[01:52:01] They get longer all the time.

[01:52:04] Not always. So much for 40 minutes. Well. That's okay.

[01:52:07] Well, thank you, everybody, for putting up with us this long. Yeah. Until next time, I'm Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave. Good night. Good night. Good night.

[01:52:17] I hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Planelab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle.