In this episode
Join us for the main discussion, practical takeaways, and stories from this episode of RC Plane Lab.
Tune in as the guys revisit one of their beginning episodes covering RC Planes for Beginners. A bit of a warning: This episode goes back to basics, covering terms and topics that are familiar to those of us that are not starting out in the hobby. They talk about what to look for as a first airplane, and give their picks on what a good model would be. They also delve a bit into Lipo batteries, covering the proper care and storage of them.
Episode 180 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
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[0:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. And I'm Dave. Howdy guys. Hi. Hi. This is fun. It is fun. This is fun. So we have decided to start covering well not really start but we're going to cover one of our first episodes i think this might have been like in the first five i don't know which one it was talking about rc planes for beginners or as dave likes to say rc planes for
[0:39] dummies no we kind of talked we figured it would be a good time to kind of start looking at some of the old episodes things have changed some yeah and we have dave and yeah we have dave speaking of dummies that is why we decided to do this yeah so rces for Beginners Revisited. Part deux. Nice. I see what you did there. That was franche. It was. You want to get started? Me? Sure. Anybody. I would love to get started. Other than me.
[1:23] So first we'll get out of the way some resources that you can use to help guide your path getting into the hobby, if that is your goal. Obviously, you can start with our website, rcplanelab.com. Did you forget it first? No, I was pausing for effect. Dramatic flair. See? Okay. But there's a wealth of information on our website. There's repair logs, build logs. There's links to manufacturers. I mean, there's actually to manufacturers, there's, I mean, there's,
[1:45] well, there's actually a beginner airplane guide, if you will, on our website, which I'm not sure if we've updated it lately, but it should, most of it should still be pretty relevant. It shall be updated sometime. Another good resource is the Academy of Model Aviation, Academy of Model Aeronautics, excuse me. Yeah. The AMA, who is basically our ginormous insurance agent. Our governing body. And also our lobbyist,
[2:12] if I'm honest. They do a lot for us with the FAA. And I feel like they've kept us out of hot water for a while now. Yeah. Now that the FAA is, we have gotten their attention. For a while now. Yeah. Now that the FAA is, we have gotten their attention. But those are a couple of really good resources that you can use.
[2:36] And also on the AMA website, you can, if you, something else we generally recommend is joining a club, getting some help from a fellow modeler. And the AMA website can help you find a club close to you. This definitely goes so much easier if you get some help. Yeah. Yeah. No sense reading that in the wheel. YouTube is a great resource. However, there's a lot of bad information on youtube also fun to watch but bad information
[2:51] yeah i get to kick out people flying their airplanes up and down their residential streets yeah that's a no yeah but it's not like yes it's fun to watch things on youtube and stuff but even if you watch like the best videos does not compare to having somebody standing next to you that knows what they're doing that can point out things you might be doing wrong or to be there is a safety yeah youtube can't give you feedback
[3:15] right so that's a good point yeah what's the website by the way for the oh it's so it's www.modelaircraft.org. And then you can click through their website. We recommend, I think unanimously, the three of us, we recommend that you join the AMA. If anything, it gives you coverage should something bad happen. Yeah. Secondary insurance coverage as a backup if you need it. Right. Yeah. Secondary insurance coverage as a backup if you need it.
[3:55] Right. And there's a lot of, once you become a member, it opens up access to a lot of additional information, both on the website and they, they've got a monthly magazine that's actually not half bad.
[4:09] Not only that too, but most, if not all, actually I'm going to say all flying fields that are AMA recognized, that are FRIAs and all that stuff, will also require you. What's a FRIA? I was going to say, but explain that for us. I don't want to. I don't know what it's called now. Federally recognized. Fill in blanks. IAs. Areas of some sort. My mind went blank. Yeah, I don't remember either. I don't remember what it stands for. Do Dave?
[4:28] It is federally recognized identification area, I believe. I think that's it, actually. We'll talk about it, and I'm going to look it up. Yeah, that allows you to fly without a transponder on board. And the FAA has recognized the AMA as a CBO, a community-based organization. as a CBO, a community-based organization. So they have sort of handed the torch, if you will, to the AMA to be the, I don't want to say the sole sanctioning organization, but it is recognized by
[4:58] the FAA. So anything that the AMA does for its modelers, the FAA is probably going to take that information from the AMA. So being a community-based organization per the FARs. Okay, go ahead. You got it. Yeah. So what did you guys say it was? Federally recognized identification area. Very close. FAA recognized identification area. FAA feds. It's kind of the same thing. Just saying. I know. Thank you. If we're going to be exact, we should have written this stuff down first because
[5:31] I'm dumb, but that's okay. So anyway, if you're getting started, do a little internet research first. Hit our website or go to the AMA's website. A lot of great information in there on both of those those and there's other places you can go to but like most of the manufacturers have stuff like that like horizon has has a nice how-to thing yeah so anyway okay now we got all that out
[5:56] of the way yeah well not quite yet hold on there's one thing that i wanted to bring up so the freya is only for 250 gramgram airplanes or above. Apparently, you can fly anything sub-250 grams anywhere responsibly. Responsibly. Responsibly. That's the key word. You don't have to be in a FRIA to fly that. Right. Okay. Now we can move on. Yeah. So there you go. Should we define some terms you might come across? Yeah, we should probably, yeah, some terms you're gonna come across,
[6:28] some acronyms, TLA's we like to call them in the military. What's that stand for? Three letter acronym, TLA, three letter acronym. Okay. I thought it would be dirtier than that for some reason. In the military, especially the Air Force, we speak in acronyms. Like we can speak whole sentences just using acronyms. No full words involved whatsoever. Anyway, some of them you might come across. Can you give us one? Can I? No. Some of
[6:55] them you might come across is ARF, A-R-F. Almost Ready to Fly Airplane. And what does that actually mean? It means the airplane that you get is almost ready to fly. It means, generally speaking, it means that the airframe, most of the major assembly is already done. Most of the time. Not always. Most of the time, these are Balsa airplanes. Not always. Not always, but most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. So the construction is done. You
[7:20] don't have to, usually, you don't have to glue most of the major components together. It's done for you at the factory to include the colorful protective coating or covering that they put on them. That's usually done at the factory too. But hinges are usually not installed on your surfaces. Right. Radio gear is not installed. Servos are not installed, which is part of radio
[7:43] gear. Your motor is not installed. Yep. Yep. Gear is not installed. Yep. are not installed, which is part of radio gear. Your motor is not installed. Gear is not installed. It's a box of parts. It's a box of parts, right, that you assemble. But there are parts that are really close to being something. Pre-built and covered. Right, exactly. Another term you might come across is BNF. Bind and fly. So that, generally speaking, go ahead. No, go on.
[8:05] It applies to airplanes that you pull out of the box, be it foam or balsa, and you basically bind it to a compatible transmitter. It's completely done. You just may have to do some minor assembly, bolt a tail on or something like that. Put a tail on, put wings on, something like that. BNF is a horizon term for airplanes. Right. Most of the eFlight ones and stuff that come BNF are very simple and doesn't take a lot to assemble. All the radiators installed, ready to go. Yep. Hard parts done.
[8:40] Usually no gluing of any kind involved, normally. If there is any construction it's usually nut and bolt kind of a thing right typically by the time the battery's charged it's ready to go ready to go ready to go yep another term pnp plug in play what does that mean all the radio gears in it minus the receiver so it's a bind and fly minus the receiver minus the band so you supply your own receiver so if you're flying a brand of radio that's not compatible with whatever the
[9:12] watch included you can supply your own equipment yep rtf ready to fly i mean that seems like it ought to be self-explanatory well yes and yes and no. So ready-to-fly definition has kind of changed once the, oh, what was that? Something came in with the remote ID and stuff. So you used to be able to buy airplanes above 250 grams that had everything with it, had battery, had charger battery had charger airplane transmitter literally
[9:46] everything you needed to fly not quite anymore most of the time ready to fly airplanes come minus battery minus charger which is fine yeah but if you already have those items you pull it out of the box and it is ready to fly so it's a bind and fly airplane that comes with a transmitter so it's like a bind to fly plus kind of bnf plus usually the cheaper transmitter by the way don't think you're getting normally it's going to be a toy grade yeah or a lower end
[10:17] or functional at least but yeah not quite yeah not quite a what we would call maybe a hobby. It would be a base model. Yeah, there you go. Base model. I like that. How about this one? AS3X. And AS3X Plus. And now, yeah, AS3X Plus. Active stability on three axis is what that means. And then the plus just denotes a new algorithm that they have for it. Fancy term for a gyro. It is a gyro pretty much like your
[10:47] shocks on your car just smooths out your flight and then some hmm now that's our next term yeah right and then there's safe which kind of is a follow-on from as3x plus sensor assisted flight envelope i think i did not know that actually stood for anything. Oh, really? It was just a… Yeah. Like a foresight. It's just a name they put on you. No, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Nice. So that is where it kind of takes control of the airplane, not necessarily away from you,
[11:20] but it has the ability to limit your bank angle, limit a lot of things to not let you get in trouble. If you do get in trouble, you can set up a button that if you're all kind of wonky, push the button, it will level you out in flight and give you a nice place to start from. Wonky. Wonky. Nice. Wonky, wonky. That's a good choice because we, that's a good way to describe sometimes the positions we find ourselves in. I've seen plenty of wonky things, so yeah.
[11:50] So, okay, here's another one. EPS, which is referring to a type of? Expanded polystyrene. That's the white foam that you can usually see packing material come in. Cooler foam. Yeah, airplanes come in at two. There's different densities one pound two pound three pound whatever else which just the higher the density the stronger your foam is going to be there's a wide variety of different foams out there they're not all eps eps is like
[12:16] the stuff we don't want anymore yeah there's eps epp epo epo yeahPP and EPO are the ones that are tough. Yep. Cool. Some definitions. We probably ought to cover some of these. Balsa. Obviously, that is a type of wood, a very lightweight wood that is easy to manipulate or form or shape. It's the traditional building material of choice for many generations up until kind of recently. I was going to say, I don't know if I would say traditional, but we'll see.
[12:50] Well, I mean, I would say traditional. It may not be as prolific as it used to be, but it's, I mean, when you think of traditional hobby-grade model aircraft, you think of Balsa. True. I think most people would agree with that. Generally speaking, that is referring to a built-up kind of a model so you take balsa parts glue them together into a shape and hopefully it's an airplane when it's done and and then you fly it yeah if you hear both or built up airplane
[13:18] that's referring to stick built oh there youbuilt. Another one. Generally, they come in kits, but you can find Balsa ARFs still and Binaflies. The Binafly Balsa airplanes are rare, but they're out there. Yeah. You're right. Here's another one. A definition I've seen people struggle over. Dihedral. What is that? That's the uppy, swoopy thing on the wings, right? Dave, that's less than helpful. Yeah. What do you mean? That's more than helpful.
[13:59] It refers to the upward bend of the wingtips forming a V-shape in the wings. Right, or the wing, the entire wing itself. Wing panels, left, right, wings, hat. And it basically adds, I'm sorry. It adds stability to the aircraft. And also, if you have a three-channel aircraft that's only using the rudder, you have to have the dihedral to allow it to bank when you apply rudder. Right. Yep. And how does that work then? Like the amount of lift is… Oh, you want an aerodynamic lesson?
[14:23] Do it quickly. Like the amount of lift is… Oh, you want an aerodynamic lesson? Do it quickly. So… Ron is now watching with bated breath. I know the answer. Oh, okay. Well, you should just say it then instead of making us fumble through it. So it has to do with the angle of attack of the wing as you apply rudder. So you yaw the aircraft to the left. The nose won't turn to the left.
[14:42] The right wing is going to have to travel faster than the left wing so therefore it creates more lift and because of the vector angle of the dihedral it'll automatically want to roll back to the left conversely when you let go that rudder that v wants to come back to level so it'll try to self-level itself takes a little bit off the pilot load makes for a little less maneuverable aircraft but more stable yeah
[15:06] generally speaking not quite as aerobatic but much more friendly to beginners the more dihedral you have generally speaking the more stable the airframe obviously up to a point right up to a point so it's an old but so how am i going to want to say that so it's what you can do with a gyro before you had gyros. Kind of. Yeah, you could think of it that way. A gyro will compensate for an airplane with less dihedral. But you can recenter an airplane electronically now,
[15:35] re-level an airplane and fly it electronically now. You don't have to worry about dihedral. Not as much, yeah, as we used to. Lipo. I mean, I think that's pretty common nowadays. Most electric airplanes are flown with these. It's a lithium polymer battery. And there's many different chemistries of those. Yeah, there's lithium ions, lithium polymers, lithium phosphates. There's a lot of different ones. But basically, it's referring to a lithium-based power source. Power source.
[16:11] Rechargeable power source. Mm-hmm. God, we are dumbing these down so much, but I think it's probably good just in case people don't know. Hopefully some of our listeners out there will guide some of their newbies to this episode and maybe answer some questions. Hey, if we've answered one question from one listener, I think that's a win. Obviously, a battery charger, you're going to come across one of those. You're going to need one of those, regardless of what type of airplane you fly.
[16:40] It has to be compatible with the battery capacity. It has to be compatible. Yep, exactly. I was going to say that. What's the difference between it? So when we talk about channels, you want to take this one, Ron? What? Like what's a channel? Like what are we talking about? What's, this airplane, this says it's a three channel. This one over here says it's a four channel. What does that mean? So channels basically are the amount of paths of communication. Is that how you
[17:05] would say it it's the functions how many functions really yeah okay three channel airplane has three functions throttle elevator rudder four has ailerons added to that five has retracts six has flaps and retracts doesn't have to though but that could be i mean other things as we kind of get more into airplanes that are out now you have some that don't have landing gear but are still six channels because they have because it's a function of some sort you turn the lights on
[17:36] and off but it's a a path between the transmitter and the receiver it's different channels different paths for it to listen to. Correct. Separately. And it's easy to get that confused with the number of slots in your receiver. Which is different. Generally speaking, years ago, a four-channel receiver, in addition to the battery slot, had basically four slots. Four servos or four functions. Yes, thank you.
[18:05] Because you can run more than four servos on four channels. You could use Y harnesses, whatever. Anyway, that's not the case so much anymore. Now we have 10 and 12 and 14 and 20 channel receivers, or more channel receivers that are actually capable of more than what I would, or what you're describing as 20 paths of communication. So the days of counting the slots on the receiver and calling it that channel are
[18:34] kind of, kind of old school. Now it's more like you said, it's more like how many, how many things can I control with this receiver? And it's really kind of referring to that as opposed to old school me thinking a four channel receiver has four slots. Does that make sense of what I'm saying? No. I'm sorry, I'm not following. So the channel count doesn't necessarily have to match the amount of slots the receiver has. So if you have a six channel receiver,
[19:06] you can actually use channel seven where your receiver is still listening to a different channel, but it can't physically control directly an output. Because it doesn't have a seventh slot. Right. Right. That's what I'm saying. It can be used to change settings on the receiver to go from save AS3X. Yep. Exactly. Okay. Like the path of communication is internal to the receiver without having a slot assigned to it. It can hear it, but it can't do anything physical with it. Right, exactly.
[19:32] I think that's what I was trying to say. Okay. But yeah, so the old school way of doing things, a slot per channel, not so much anymore. You can have way more capability with fewer physical slots. It's way beyond a beginner level of stuff here. Yeah. But basically a channel, when we're referring to airplanes, a three-channel airplane is going to have three functions, like Dave said. It's going to have usually a throttle, an elevator, and a rudder. No ailerons. And no ailerons.
[19:59] Or you could have ailerons and a rudder. Or you could have, yeah, exactly. So a four-channel radio, or a four-channel airplane, excuse me, we used to call that full house radio control. Yeah, that used to be the locks. Way back when. But that adds either ailerons or rudder to the other three. And then six-channel, like Dave said, you're starting to add other functions. So channels, when you're talking about the airplane, refers to the functions that the airplane can, you have control of.
[20:29] So reminds me of another one then. You said ailerons, no rudder. What is that kind of airplane called? Do you call that a yank and bank? Yeah, more or less. Yeah, because there are some airplanes out there that don't have… I have lots of three-channel airplanes that don't have rudders. Right, yeah, so that would be exactly, you yank it and bang it. You don't really steer it with a rudder.
[20:49] You steer it by changing that angle of lift by tilting it off the vertical so that you're pulling around that. Well, and a lot of the smaller EDFs are that way, too. Right. You don't have rudders on them. Yep. Anyway. What's a park flyer? A small airplane that's made to be slow and fly in a park okay i mean that's fair right i mean i'm gonna let dave take this with glow power and why is it called that so glow power is the traditional
[21:19] internal combustion engine they used on aircraft up until recently glow fuel is a mixture of alcohol oil and in the United States usually nitromethane smells good smells good these are oily nasty mess on your airplane I like it but it is the traditional method of power and an internal combustion engine until recent times now that gasoline powered engines have become smaller and lighter
[21:47] and more economically available, they're starting to replace the glow engines. So you still have an internal combustion engine, but instead of running on the alcohol, it runs on gasoline. Gas and oil. Gas and oil doesn't leave nearly as big a mess on the aircraft. That's true. And the fuel is much, much cheaper. And they don't produce as much power if i'm honest and they're typically heavier displacement to displacement yeah the gasoline
[22:11] powered engines don't generally produce as much power as that but the simplicity and cheapness of running them i'm not unmatched not disputing that but you can still get nitro it's just it's just not nearly as common as it used to be. Yeah. Unfortunately. 30-ish bucks a gallon. And they typically run on a glow plug instead of a spark plug. So it runs on catalytic reaction with a platinum and alcohol versus a gasoline engine that runs on spark ignition like your car. There you go. Okay.
[22:45] I think we've covered enough definitions and acronyms. I almost said it wrong. Anhydryl. I was going to say anhydryl for some reason. What's anhydryl? The opposite of dihydryl. Yeah, it's the reverse of dihydryl. It's the wings being down. I think to use your words, the pointy downness of the surface that we're talking about. Okay. Not very common, but it is around. Usually in the tail. I've seen it more common, yeah, exactly, in the tail. But anhydral is the opposite of dihedral.
[23:21] So there you go. Okay, next. Let's talk a little bit about simulators okay simulators well before we get to that before we get to that yeah we should probably discuss the importance of durability stability ease of use and control you want to take this one ron not really durability is good because if you crash it you need to be able to put it back together. And you will dork it. Yeah. We've all done it. Semi-often when you're starting. Usually with someone else's airplane.
[23:54] Mostly when you do it with my airplane. No, I've gotten a few into the ground when I started. I've gotten a few into trees. So it's good to have an airplane that's durable and easy to fix if you need to fix it, glue it back together. I was going to say, and that's key, being able to fix the airplane. That's kind of what really sets hobby grade. And I'm not even sure I would say hobby grade but some models apart from others like
[24:26] yes you can go to insert big retail chain name here there and buy a remote control airplane off the shelf for 19 bucks or 20 25 whatever they are okay but when you crash them bucks or 20 25 whatever they are okay but when you crash them they're done you can't break a propeller that's it you're done you can't you can't replace a propeller you can't replace a landing gear you can't replace a whatever an electronic component that fries because you
[24:56] hook the battery in backwards or whatever hobby grade airplanes that we're going to talk about later you can like they make replacement parts. Right. Hobby grade is repairable. Yeah, exactly. They have parts available to replace if necessary. So it's good to be durable, but it's also good to be repairable. Yeah. Sorry. That's all right. Stability, it's good to have a nice stable airframe to learn on, especially when you're beginning.
[25:24] You can get wacky later, but as a beginning airplane, start with slow and stable first. You want something easy. You want something that's not going to take you 15, 20 minutes each time you go to the field to put together. You look like you disagree. Well, I mean, it's not that I disagree. You look like you disagree. Well, I mean, it's not that I disagree. I think for probably the overwhelming majority of people getting into RC flying, yes, what you're saying.
[25:57] But some people I think probably maybe are getting into the hobby to be a hobby. they want to maybe like me, they like to tinker. They want to maybe they're retired and they need something to occupy their time.
[26:12] Or maybe they just want something to get into so maybe the maybe the easy isn't the answer but i i think you're referring to field assembly where you don't want to take 20 minutes to put an airplane together at the field you need to be able to get out there and get some flight time in learn how to do this the point of these is what kind of plane do you look for as your first plane as something you can fly something in repair you don't want to start with something that
[26:30] like dave said it's going to take 20 minutes to assemble when you get there 20 minutes to take apart you want something easy so you can focus not on all the other stuff but focus on flying now if you want to take it for hours at home that's absolutely okay go back to when you first started like i know times were different with what airplanes were available it was nothing easy when i started but if your first airplane could have been something from today you probably would
[26:58] have gone that way i don't know you don't think so i i i credit the longevity of me being in the hobby to building like building my first airplane i'll say i because i think i don't know and like people are all different right not everybody shares my views not everybody shares your views maybe most people do i don't know but like me personally i, I really enjoy the time in the shop working on an airplane or putting one together or even at the field for that matter. Like, yeah,
[27:32] 20 minutes might be a little extreme, but like, putting an airplane together, getting it ready to fly. I like that myself. And I think there's probably others that do. Maybe not a large number, but there's some. Well, liking it is fine. But once again, first starting off. For your first time, yeah. First starting off, you need something simple, easy to get ready to go. Yeah. Because the whole goal at this point is to learn how to fly. Yeah. And you can.
[27:55] You don't want something that you can accidentally plug the servos into the wrong ports and,. Right. And reverse things or do something like that when you're assembling a wing. That's all I'm saying on that one. something that's easy something that's quick yeah so high wing ready to fly what do you want to go with typically speaking the original trainer that you would be looking for is something that looks like a cessessna. High wing, flat bottom airfoil, moderately powered,
[28:26] typically tricycle landing gear. That's where you have a nose wheel and two mains. Not a Cub. But not saying the Cub's a bad idea. It's just traditionally speaking, you're looking for that tricycle landing gear, basically something that looks like a Cessna 172. That's what you would typically look for as a trainer because those are going to give you the best flight characteristics to learn how to fly. They're going to be stable. They're going to be slow, but yet maneuverable enough
[28:51] to keep you interested. To keep you interested and keep yourself out of trouble as well. There's a reason those are popular as general aviation airplanes. Yeah, because it's all those reasons. Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Now you want to move on to simulators? Yeah, let's do reasons. Right. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Okay. All right. So. Now you want to move on to simulators? Yeah, let's do that. Get a simulator. Definitely. Buy a simulator. Yeah. It's cheap.
[29:12] Not only are they just fun to, it's a big video game. I mean, who doesn't, who doesn't want to fly an airplane in a video game? With nothing to lose. Yeah. They crash it all day long. Get the space bar and you're back. You're back. Yeah. Yeah, they crash it all day long. Get the space bar and you're back to being active. I don't think we can talk enough about how important that is just for saving money in the long run. Yeah, absolutely.
[29:34] I mean, if you can learn the basics of flight that way and you don't have to do it outside, you're golden. Well, and here's the great thing about a simulator. Like once you've mastered, basic flying and you want to add new things to your flying repertoire. What happens when I do this? Yeah, loops, roll. No, that's a bad idea. And, so the simulator will grow with you as you, as you develop your skills and stuff.
[30:03] So I mean, it's not a part of the hobby that you spend on and then once you're done with it, you're done with it. You can learn from a simulator. Like I've been in a long time and I'm still learning stuff off of my simulator. Yeah, so for us that have the winters, get cold and unflyable, it's a good time to get some sim time in and actually practice and maybe hone your skills a little bit more. And that being said, they're not an absolute necessity.
[30:29] You can go out there and learn to fly without one. It's just going to get you that much further ahead of the flight curve when you get to the field. And being able to master something on that simulator doesn't say you're going to be able to do it in real life. That's true. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. But it will teach you the basic reflexes that you're going to be able to do it in real life. That's true. Yeah, I learned that the hard way. But it will teach you the basic reflexes
[30:48] that you're going to need to learn. Right. Like when an airplane is coming at you, it doesn't behave, well, I mean, it behaves the same, but the control inputs are a little bit different than when it's going away from you. Yeah. Those are all reflexes that you can learn for free after you buy it, I guess, but without fear of crashing with a simulator yeah i think it's money well spent personally i own one me too i don't need one but i own one because
[31:13] i like to learn new things dave doesn't have fun well dave doesn't have a computer new in 1976 so you got us no never mind we're not going there i going there. I'm actually surprised that you don't have an old Dave Brown simulator. I do, actually. Oh, there you go. There's a 486 out in the garage with a Dave Brown simulator attached to it. Of course there is. Why does that not surprise me in the least? But anyway. It's on the floppy disk and everything.
[31:42] I don't know if you want to talk about prices, but the simulator right now, what are they? 150-ish? I don't know. Yeah, I don't recall either. And there are multiple ones out there. I'm familiar with RealFlight. And that's by far the most common one you're going to run across, at least in the United States. There's another one that is no longer supported, but it's free, called PhoenixRC, I think. I started out using that one before they went belly up.
[32:07] It's still available, I think, somewhere on the web as downloading. It worked great. But you still have to have a controller of some kind. Oh, yeah. I mean, you have to have a controller and a dongle for making the controller work. But, yeah, like I said, the real flight is probably the most common one. It is a little bit pricey, but once again, in the long run, saves you lots and lots of money. Yeah. Just in one crash. I say like so highly recommend it, but not necessary.
[32:37] Right. Yeah. It can definitely save you money in the long run, especially when you're trying to learn new things as an instructor I can definitely tell when a student has had an a simulator versus not having a simulator yeah yeah we proceed much much faster yeah you get the basics down yep so shall we talk about actual sure airplanes fun part what you guys think is a good beginning airplane to buy beginning airplane to
[33:06] buy who wants to go first not it not it dave all year hey so as we talked earlier something that looks like a cessna or a cub high wing there's multiples out there there's some out there are basically non-scale looking trainers and that's really kind of what you want yeah you don't want anything super detailed or scale-like because you want it to fly well be very light light flies better name one let's let's get the airplanes out there
[33:36] what don't don't skirt around it what do you got skirt around it the aerostar that is probably one of the most common ones not the aerostar aeroscout that was mine oh well in that case another one you didn't want to go first yeah yeah you chose not to that's true fine okay oh ron is gay the fms ranger is a very popular foam trainer that was tommy's it is cessna likelike looking, very tough. It's got a very springy nose gear, so when you dork it in on that nose wheel, it bounces.
[34:11] Is that what you have, Tommy? No, not a Ranger. No, mine's a Kingfisher. Kingfisher, okay. A little bit more maneuverable than the Ranger, but still a fine flying airplane, and I would have no problem at all. I've only seen yours on floats. Is it Trek or Tail Dryer? Yeah, it's a tricycle it is no I'm sorry it's tail dragger okay I was thinking is it a tricycle or tail dragger yep so not ideal skis and conventional gear yeah three
[34:40] that's what I was it has all three yeah but anyway no it's a tail dragger so yes the Yeah. It has three. That's what I was going to say. It has all three. Yeah. But anyway, no, it's a tail dragger. Sorry. So, yes, the FMS Ranger, very nice beginner aircraft. Yep. What do you got, Tom? Well, I was going to go old school. Yeah, I was going to go with building a kit for your first airplane. Of course, right? I don't think that's a good idea. No? Too much emotional investment in it.
[35:03] That would be my only issue with having that as your first start i you can absolutely recommend that to people and i will i have my own but there's there's like if you want to get in the hobby and you want to start in the hobby in the traditional manner by building your own airplane this word traditional is coming up a lot, and I don't think I agree with the use of it a lot. What should I use in its place? Well, when you say traditional, like we're talking to people in this era. Today.
[35:40] Right.
[35:51] today right and so maybe the good old days of your yori are no longer the common way of getting into it i didn't say it was common i'm not sure if i'm okay with traditional though but let's move on i will digress and let you talk well whatever word you want to substitute for traditional the old school way of getting into the hobby i like that build your own airplane develop an appreciation for what it took to put it together go fly on
[36:18] the simulator learn the basic skills and then go join a club, seek help from a fellow club member and go fly the airplane that you invested all your time and effort into. And for that, it was going to be an old school Modelworks. Sorry, not the 56. The Falcon 56 was like, anyway, it's called the Ghost. For about 210 bucks, it's a Balsa kit that comes with everything you need minus all the stuff to fly it with. So it comes with all the Balsa. It comes with the canopy.
[36:49] It comes with the landing gear. It comes with the hardware, all the stuff you need to put the airframe together. And then you buy a radio and then you buy an electric motor or a nitro if that's the direction you want to go. And you put it together and you develop an appreciation for the hobby.
[37:06] That's my recommendation. Okay. If that's the direction you want to go and you put it together and you develop an appreciation for the hobby that's my recommendation okay that's the direction you want to go most of the timbers would work as well yeah i've got a timber and it flies great yeah agreed so dave already stole my thunder but the aeroscout i think is the number one the top of the line no–brainer beginner RC airplane that's out there. Incredible flying aircraft. It does fly good.
[37:30] And it can entertain you beyond a train of hope for sure. So the nice thing about it, it is a tricycle. If you don't know what an Aeroscout looks like, Google it really quick. It's got a pusher prop in the center of the airplane. That helps you, too. When you're pushing those over, you're not breaking props all the time. Exactly. So if you land hard, if you nose it over, your prop's not going to strike the ground. It's kind of hidden. It's a great, flying, fun, stupid little airplane.
[38:01] They're tough, too. I think they're about $200 now, ready to fly, which is bind-and-fly airplane. Everything's installed. If I remember right, I think you have to put the horizontal stabilizer on. It's all bolt-together stuff. And then two screws hold on the wing, I think. Yeah, it's super simple. Actually, the wheels might have to be put on too, but it doesn't take very long at all to do that. Hatches on top. So when you take the hatch off to
[38:31] put a battery in, it's right there for you. You don't have to worry about the propeller being in the way. As a new person in the hobby, you need to be careful of propellers, which is why it's a good thing to kind of have it away from your fingers when you're working on putting an airplane or a battery in an airplane. And like I said, it's just a fun, easy flying airplane. Parts are readily available. Right. Comes with the transmitter. Once again, it's an entry level transmitter.
[39:04] Yeah, it's functional. But it will work just to get you in the hobby, no problem. Don't expect it to be one that you're going to spend 10 years in the hobby on or with and be happy. But the good news is the one that comes with it, if you do upgrade, do a nicer radio, can work as a trainer. It can work as a slave radio for having somebody else. A buddy box. A buddy box radio, yeah. Yeah, like I said, I think it's about $199, and then you can also get the
[39:30] battery and charger separate. The other option you can go with, I'm not a big fan of it, but you can get the Apprentice STS. It's also a trainer-type airplane, but I honestly don't think you will be happier with that one than you would an AeroScout. AeroScout's by far. Yeah. And Mountly Aerobatic, after you learn to fly. Yeah, it flies upside down great for some odd reason. It is just as happy upside down as it is upright. I know.
[40:02] The last one, I think, is the i think it's hobby zone i don't remember if it's e-flight or whoever but the sport cub s2 that is a umx airplane explain umx ultra micro x i don't remember if it even means anything it's a tiny airplane so it's 15 16 inch wingspan something like that runs on a small battery that comes with it. Comes with a charger. I want to say it's like $170, ready to fly. Like I said, battery, charger, transmitter, airplane, and a handy carrying box.
[40:35] That's the nice thing about UMX planes. With a handle. Yeah, and they're so light. Even if you do have a mistake while landing or taking off, usually you can pick it up and go right back and they usually don't break because they're so light they just have no inertia yeah you just chop the throttle and let it stop flying yeah hand launch most of the time because it is tiny wheels you're not going to roll over grass very very well but yeah other than that it's a
[41:00] good airplane all right agree there are many many more out there oh absolutely, it's a good airplane. All right. Agreed? There are many, many more out there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's just about a small sample. These are just the ones we picked as our first thoughts. The ghost. Don't do that one, though. That would be a good one to build as your second airplane while you're practicing flying with one of these because
[41:27] trust me when you crash a balsa airplane and i have done that once twice 100 times whatever it's very demoralizing as opposed to a piece of foam they don't bounce nearly as well as a piece of foam a lot of times balsa when it crashes you're not gluing it back together it's done or there's a major rebuild involved or there's hours upon hours upon hours of fixing it and new covering and all that kind of stuff or sometimes with a full airplane it'll just get
[41:55] wrinkled and it'll be not pretty anymore but it's functionally fine or if it breaks some super glue or some hot glue or something like that put it back together and you're good some super glue or some hot glue or something like that put it back together and you're good that's yeah i've been bitten by ball suck crashes so often we're not poo-pooing ball says just as a trainer airplane that's different i have balls i love balsa the last airplane i bought
[42:17] was balsa but not as my first one anymore that's my That's my two cents. Not anymore. Yeah. Sorry. Didn't mean to rain on your parade. It's okay. Okay. Moving on. Receivers, transmitters, all that fun stuff. That's your electronics. That is the telephone that goes between your fingers and the airplane. I don't know how else to word it. Telephone.
[42:44] That's the telephone you hold versus the other telephone that sits inside of the airplane i don't know how else to word it telephone that's the telephone you hold versus the other telephone that sits inside of the airplane we're all going to have our own preferences on what kind to use and that's going to vary from different areas around the country too yeah and it's it's going to depend on what your preference is on what you want to buy
[43:04] It's going to depend on what your preference is on what you want to buy. Spectrum makes good ones. Radio Link makes good ones. Flysky makes good ones. They're a little bit cheaper. Spectrums are a little bit more expensive. Probably the most common radio available. Futaba. Airtronics. Airtronics. Airtronics. Is that a thing much anymore, though? Not so much. It's still out there.
[43:31] JR, D-Force. JR, yeah yeah there's a lot of manufacturers out there jetty that really want to spend some money yeah not as a beginner nice stuff though yeah but yeah like we it's been a couple years ago but what did we give away we gave away was that the fly sky sky fsi6 okay that was a good one like we was actually not a bad radio. After what it was. It was just we are so accustomed to our radios that we have that it felt toyish. But it got the job done. It worked beautifully.
[43:57] And the price for getting into the hobby was great. You could not beat the price. Right. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing. If you're starting out, you're not sure, go as cheap as you can with a lot of things. Go to the flying field and see what other people in your area are flying. Yeah. Because they'll be out there to help you. Because they all program a little differently. That's the important part too. I didn't think of that. Yeah. Yeah.
[44:17] They're all different and they all have their own idiosyncrasies that you might not know until you don't know you need to know. Right. I think when you're when you're when you're buying I will say this if okay so you let's say you you've started with a ready to fly airplane that came with its own transmitter and you're you're at the point of now buying your own radio system and I think we've said this before, but spend more than you're comfortable spending. Spend until it hurts.
[44:50] Because, and the reason I say that is because if you've now learned to fly and you've made the decision now to stay in the hobby and expand your skills and maybe fly some stuff that's a little more advanced, those additional features on those more expensive radios are really worth the money that you spend on them i agree yeah so i mean i it's easy to sit here and spend someone else's money right but fun but seriously like once you're to that point of buying
[45:19] your own radio system that didn't like come with a ready to fly airplane or whatever, spend more than you want to. Go at least one step above what you think you need. Yeah. Because it's surprising how quickly you can outgrow, a entry level radio. Yeah. And I've always been kind of the opinion that if you buy something that you want, that you think you're going to need, you're going to forget about the money you spent on it later. But if you're using that cheap thing,
[45:52] you're going to hate it every time, wishing you would have spent the extra money as opposed to just doing it right the first time. So what radio would you guys recommend for somebody to buy their first radio system? So if it's not one that came with right an actual airplane yeah at least six channels at least it all depends on price sure and because that's the other thing there's so many different levels
[46:18] of transmitters but i would go honestly probably like the what's the, is it a? NX? NX-7E. Yeah. And that's what the Spectrum brand radio. Yeah, that's what I was going to recommend. That's the new white one that came out. It was like a year ago. Yeah. It does look kind of toyish. Sorry. It does. It's weird. But it feels good. It does, actually. Not as good as the IX. Well, but I mean, it's also not. It's a mid-level radio.
[46:44] Yeah. But it's a radio that you can absolutely grow with because of all the programming options that it offers. But you will find limitations with it. Eventually. Once again, it's mid-level radio. But yeah. Yeah. Depends on, like if, no one knows when they get in the hobby, if they decide to stay in the hobby, no one knows where they're going to end up. Right? True. Like four years ago, I didn't where they're going to end up, right? True. You have goals, but they change.
[47:07] Like four years ago, I didn't think I would be ready for a turbine-powered airplane. Me neither. And so four years ago when I bought my IX-12, I thought, oh, man, this radio will be it. This is the bee's knees. This is, yeah. And then I quickly discovered, well, not quickly, but I discovered over time that, well, I do need a few more channels so I can control more functions and a little more programming options, a little ease of programming. A little faster. Faster process.
[47:37] Yeah, so I mean, like, you don't know where you're going to end up in the hobby. So spend more than you're comfortable spending on your first radio system. And DX70 was going to be my, or NX70. Yeah, not DX anymore. NX70 was going to be my recommendation also. Dave, do you have a recommendation for the first radio? Good radio, I should say. Yeah, basically what you guys are saying. The Spectrum radio is readily available. Most people are using
[48:05] them and if not you can actually find help with those pretty quickly and easily i thought you would have gone with something different i am changing radio brands and for life me i can't remember the name of their six channels so i'm just going to skip it right now what brand are you going with i am switching over to free sky okay that's the fr sky yeah far sky it is f r s k y yeah firsty so they do have a really nice six or seven channel radio that would be
[48:33] ideal for a mid-level beginner that's pretty reasonably priced maybe less than the spectrum brand yeah surprisingly affordable for the options that it provides. But if you're going to need help programming it, they're not nearly as common. So if you're not comfortable programming it, you're going to have a little trouble unless someone in your area is using one to help you out with. Yeah, ask your buddies.
[48:56] So that's why I'd recommend going back to the spectrum just because it is most common at this time. most common at this time not only is it most common but i'm going to say i would venture to say it's probably one of the easiest to program easiest to use has the nicest user interface radio system of almost if not all of them out there yeah i don't disagree i
[49:22] i don't know you you pick up a radio, and if you've got any kind of, I don't know what the word for it is, but like if you have any experience with. Any common sense with layouts and stuff, you mean? Yeah, like menu. The menu makes sense. Trees and things like that, like fault tree if you're into fault isolation and stuff like that. You'll pick up the programming really, really fast. Yep. Dave? Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. If you have another opinion. No, I'm good.
[49:54] This is your time to spit it out. For a beginner. Right. Beginner to advanced beginner. Yeah. Be great. Yep. Cool. Unless you have that extra help. Yeah. True. Because I'm going. Unless you have that extra help. Yeah. True. Because I'm going to have to learn all this myself. So you can be the extra help for somebody else. Yeah. There you go. Perfect. What's next? You want to go on the battery stuff? This is all you. Why? You're the electric guy. No, just as much as I used to.
[50:28] Yeah, we'll go through some battery stuff pretty quick. I don't think we need to delve too deep into stuff. Okay. We talked earlier, battery types. You got your LiPo, which is the most common at this point. Oh, it is, yeah. As a drive battery. As a drive battery, yeah. As your main battery for an electric airplane. If you have glow-powered airplanes or if you're using the gasoline ones, you'll have NIMH, nickel metal hydride. Even those are not as common now.
[50:59] I mean, even gasoline-powered airplanes are switching over to high-voltage stuff which is lipos. Yeah, two-cell lipos and stuff. Or lithium ions, whatever. But so that's… But that's another chemistry that's out there. Nickel-metal hydrides and NICADs both, which are the nickel-cadium. Those are old-school batteries, but they're still around. Those are traditional batteries that were used back in the day. They're still used as receiver batteries and gas planes. NICADs, really?
[51:26] Yeah, there's still some applications for them. I haven't seen a NICAD in a while. I mean, either. That's okay. If they're still out there, that's something you might see. And I wouldn't trust it. Don't go digging too deep in my closet of stuff. I think. Yeah. Anyway. Wouldn't surprise me that he has a ton of them in there. Yeah. But anyway. So, charging. You have to use a dedicated charger for LiPos. Most of the time now I'm talking about LiPos. Yeah.
[51:57] I'm not going to worry too much because if you're getting into the hobby and you buy an electric airplane, it's going to be powered by a LiPo battery. Yes, exactly. So obviously you have to have a charger specifically for LiPos. Most of your, and I say most, most of your newer batteries have balance leads on them. And when you charge, you actually have to charge by plugging in not only your main power connector, but also a balance lead that balances the cells that are in the LiPo.
[52:23] 2S LiPo has two cells, so there's two separate batteries in there that you run in series in order to get your higher voltage. So chargers are specifically designed for those batteries to not overcharge them, to not charge them too fast, to not hopefully cause a fire. When you are charging, you want to make sure you're close. Yeah. Don't leave. Always be by a LiPo battery when it's charging. Yeah, LiPo batteries, they come with hazards or precautions you should take. Yeah. I mean, yeah.
[53:03] And we don't want to get everybody scared. These are not inherently horribly dangerous items. They're safe. Things can happen. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And we don't want to get everybody scared. These are not inherently horribly dangerous items. They're safe. Things can happen. Right. They're safe if properly cared for. Exactly. I have, knock on wood, not had a lipo fire, but I also take care of my batteries. Right. So I had one go kaboey, so. Yeah. Luckily, that was outside.
[53:23] I was right there with it. Yeah. So, yeah, luckily that was, I was right there with it. Yeah. so yeah, never leave them on a chart or on a charge and never leave them unattended while charging. here's a question cause you're supposed to charge them in lipo safe bags. Who does that? Do you guys do that?
[53:40] The short answer for me is no. because I, I have at home when I'm charging at home, I have a ceramic plate that I charge them on and I'm there. I'm nearby. So if something happens, it's on a plate, I unplug it and then I've got an ammo can that I can throw it in to get it outside of the house.
[54:09] of the house should i yes i should it's a habit that you should get into just for the just for the simple fact that if the worst should happen and you're not there the bag will contain whatever happens to the battery should the bag will contain the flames right right so Not going to prevent everything. Yeah, so certain places I do in a bag, like way back when I used to race RC cars, every time I charged a battery, it was in a bag. Yeah, you have to. Because we abused them. Yeah.
[54:37] For racing, we did. Did you race with lipos or was that all? Oh, okay. Yeah, we did terrible things to our lipos. We did bad, bad, bad things. So we absolutely charged them every single time. And survived, okay. Yeah, we did terrible things to our LiPos. We did bad, bad, bad things. So we absolutely charged them every single time. And survived, yeah. And never had a problem. Luckily, yeah. Luckily, I never… I did puff a few, but I never had a…
[54:55] But by and large, overwhelmingly safe technology as long as you handle them per the instructions. And it's super easy to do nowadays and the batteries come with instructions the chargers come with instructions just follow them yep yeah so monitor your charging you are supposed to use a fire resistant bag liposafe bags and all that kind of stuff i do sometimes depending on where i am but charging here at home while i'm
[55:26] three feet away doing something else no i usually don't yeah just because it's easier it's quicker it hasn't bitten me yet so i don't know when to bring this up so i want let's talk about storage charge lipo batteries are weird because from the time they are manufactured they start eating themselves and they're degrading they degrade most at levels other than what is considered a storage charge which is about 3.8 volts per cell
[55:58] so if it's fully charged it's eating itself much faster than at storage charge it's eating itself much faster than at storage charge. Bad or low batteries are bad also. So if you're not going to use a battery right away, like pretty much right away, obviously if you're going to fly tomorrow and you're charging batteries and all that the night before, that's fine. That'll be perfectly fine. Right.
[56:28] But don't let them sit for a week, a month, a year, whatever, without putting them in storage charge just because LiPos are expensive and take care of them as much as you can. Chargers have settings built in to take you to 3.8-volt storage charge. Some of them you can change, 3.7, 3.9, depending on what the battery manufacturer suggests. When you are storing them, cool, dry places where they're supposed to be. I keep mine in the fridge.
[56:53] I don't anymore because I'm getting in and out of them too much. But I probably should start doing that again. Yeah, so, I mean, that's probably one of the best places. It's not freezing. It's low humidity. So, it's probably one of the better places to keep them if you have room. You don't want it to be in extreme temperatures. So, if your car is going to be hot, anything like that, you don't want to keep them in a car all day because that will make them degrade faster.
[57:26] Also, don't want to over-discharge them. That hurts them more than anything. That hurts them a lot. So a discharged LiPo battery is actually not at zero volts. So like your old NiCads and that kind of stuff and nickel metal hydrides you could run them pretty much all the way down i mean it wasn't good for them but yeah right whereas doing that on a lipo is terrible so when it's fully discharged it's still what is it three point oh my mind just went blank I just went blank.
[58:09] 3.4 volts of cell, I think. Dave, do you remember? Around 3.5 volts. Yeah. Is a fully discharged battery. So it's still going to have voltage. It's still going to show something. So if you don't have a current enough. What is the nominal voltage of a LiPo cell? 3.7. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't have an actual… Your question threw me off for some reason. If you don't have an ESC that has low voltage cutoff on it, then it's not going to stop working when it gets to low voltage.
[58:43] So you'll need some sort of battery alarm or just check your battery when you land and see what your voltage is at so that you kind of know and you can set a timer on your radio right and then set a timer based on how long you flew it's not perfect but it's going to be better than like i said on some of the older systems running it down most of your speed controls have some sort of cut off when the battery voltage gets too low. On anything new, it will. Yeah, most anything new.
[59:07] And that can be set up different ways, too. It can either pulse the motor or just slowly decrease power or just flat off shut off. Yeah, the pulsing is the most common, I think. Yeah, given an option, I would set mine off just to reduce the power. It's like, oh, it's not climbing very well anymore. I probably ought to land. Yeah. So don't over-discharge. Make sure your connections are tight when you plug the battery in. And clean. And clean, yeah. A loose connection can cause more
[59:38] resistance and cause heat, which is something you don't want either. Check your batteries often. which is something you don't want either. Check your batteries often. Make sure they're not swelling. Make sure they're not puffy. If they are, get rid of them. And if they're deformed from a crash, get rid of them. Don't use it. Don't keep them inside. If it has a dent in it, don't use it. Yeah. Just don't risk it. And don't keep them inside.
[1:00:03] Yeah, definitely don't take it in the house and throw it in the trash. Disposal, you can go to hobby shops that are local find out what to do to get rid of them call your local waste management place best buy i'll take them best buy i'll take them there you go but just dispose of them properly one of the things that i think we all use, battery checker. And they are so incredibly cheap. They're really cheap. Well, unless you have the spectrum one. But anyway.
[1:00:31] I think I paid $3 for mine. I probably could have bought $14. But anyway, mine also does, the battery checker I have does more. It also does the servo tester. It does the programming for batteries and stuff. Anyway. And then another accessory that's good for them, like we said before, fireproof bags. I do keep, like, store all my batteries in fireproof bags. I just don't charge them in them. 50-caliber ammo can. That's a fireproof can, so, yeah.
[1:01:04] I figure if you can hold a 50- cal, they can hold a lipo. Yeah. Make sure when you charge them, they're not hot, because a lot of times they can create some heat when… Charging at high rates. Well, when discharging. Or when discharging. So make sure you let them cool down before. Yeah, don't bring them out of the airplane and go, oh, it's kind of warm. Yeah. Oh, plug it in and go. Yeah, plug it in and charge it right back up. Okay, so now that we've talked about regular batteries,
[1:01:27] I kind of want to bring up the Spectrum Generation 2 G2 smart batteries. I know you guys are not huge into them as much as I am. I am, it's funny because you talked about like, build a plane for your first plane. Do all this, do all that. I am the's funny because you talked about like build a plane for your place first plane do all this do all that I am the lazy flyer like I want stuff to be as easy as possible and as brain dead
[1:01:54] as possible I don't know why I just like ease so spectrum has what they call their gen 2 smart batteries that do not have a balance lead on them. Everything is built into the battery itself and to the charger. It has one extra wire that is a data wire that is ran between the connector. They're called IC connectors now instead of the old EC connectors. IC5s, IC3s, all that stuff. But anyway, so having that, we didn't actually talk about how to charge a regular
[1:02:26] LiPo battery, did we? Go ahead. Do you want to take that one really quick? Like charge rates and all that kind of stuff? Just really quick. And about how long it takes to charge? Yeah. Well, so like, C rating comes into that and batteries, these LiPo batteries have C ratings usually printed right on the face of the battery on the label. And generally speaking, a safe charge rate is 1C, right? It takes longer, right? About how long? Well, it depends, right?
[1:02:55] So, yeah, one hour, give or take. You can certainly charge at higher rates if the battery is capable of a higher,… If it's listed on the charge rate. Right, exactly. So the process normally goes, you plug the battery into the charger, the charger either automatically recognizes that it's a LiPo or you go through the menu on your charger and you set up the, okay, this is a 2S. So you're plugging two things in. Yeah, the battery, it's the main lead
[1:03:26] plus the balance lead either onto a board or it can plug directly into the charger in the case of our spectrum chargers and then you yeah you select the charge rate one amp two amp based whatever on your c rating is so let's for example a 3s 2250c battery probably well on the label if it doesn't specifically tell you what c rating to charge at generally speaking one c is going to be safe
[1:03:57] and we're not taking them down to zero right like you talked about earlier we don't take them down to zero volts so there's going to be milliamps already in the battery so you're not charging it from zero to 2200 in this example you're charging it from 500 or so depending on where you took it off sorry just interrupt a 2200 milliamp hour battery is 2200 usable milliamp hours. Oh, so from 3.5 to… Right. Okay. So from when it's dead to fully charged. Sorry.
[1:04:31] To put 2500 milliamps back in at 1C is going to take… An hour. An hour. So just go through how you actually charge on your charger. What steps does it take to go through the charger? Not the smart chargers. Okay, so i have a we're going to talk the different what the different between g2 batteries and what we used to do okay so you're selling the old use then well i'm discussing the difference all right so i
[1:04:53] have a i have a high-tech x2 it's a two-port charger i can do two at once so i plug the battery in the main lead and then i plug the balance lead into a board that's part of the charger. And then I scroll through a menu and I select the type of battery. So in this case, lithium polymer, and then I select the cell count, three cell, and then I select what rate I want to charge it at. And I'm guilty. I charge normally a little bit higher than 1C, but I choose my charge rate, 1C,
[1:05:25] and then I hit start and it starts charging. And then it shuts off automatically when the battery is. So what is 1C of 2200? 2.2 amps. Yeah. So 2200 milliamps. It's 2.2 amps. Right. It's the same thing. 3000 is 3 amps. Yeah. Sorry, I guess I figured that math was pretty easy. amps right it's the same thing and that's three thousand is three three yeah sorry i guess i figured that math was pretty easy but yeah 20 well it is but for somebody that hasn't done it before
[1:05:51] if you've got a 5 000 milliamp battery and you're going to charge at 1c you're going to charge it at 5 amps so there you go okay and usually that takes about an hour to get full charge. And then depending on the balance, how long that takes, it can take up to a good amount more time. If the batteries are not, if the cells are not equalized and I haven't been religious about balancing it every single time.
[1:06:21] Because on my charger, you can select whether I want to balance charge it or if I want to quick charge it. And quick charging it kind of ignores what's going on with the balance lead. It gets them all close, but not exact. But it charges a little bit faster. But to be honest, the one hour, right? Let's say I'm charging for one hour. The largest part of that is the end. Getting the battery to 100 which is why a lot
[1:06:47] of times i pull the battery off when it's 90. really i do okay because it's that extra 10 makes no difference in flying yeah that is true it might add 15 20 seconds whatever okay i can live without that if i don't have to wait an additional 20 minutes for it to charge. Correct. So that's the process I use with my high-tech charger. So that's all fine and dandy. There's nothing wrong with doing it that way. You have to know math.
[1:07:20] You have to make sure that you don't do it wrong because if you – go on. Well, there are safeties. Well, there are safeties. Like the charger will compare the values that I've selected with the values that it's reading from the battery. And if they don't match, it will not charge the battery. Yeah, mine goes, hey, dummy. What you just told me doesn't line up. So if I dumb thumb and I put in 3S and I'm trying to charge a 2S,
[1:07:41] it's going to see all this extra voltage and say, hey, no, something's wrong here. We can't charge this. So there are safeties built into my charger. But it will not know if you're charging a 1300 milliamp hour battery and you accidentally put it to 13 amps or whatever your charger will actually go to. No, it does not. Right. So you can overpower that accidentally. You can, sure. And if you're not sure what you're doing
[1:08:05] as a beginner right it can be it may like i said to us as we've been doing it for a while it's not right it's not rocket science it's not difficult but if you're just learning and there's so much information coming in it can be overwhelming so having said that i'm a lazy flyer and like things to be easy the spectrum gen 2 batteries do not have the balance lead anymore. That's all taken care of inside the battery. And like I said, there's an extra wire in the center of it.
[1:08:33] And then that wire talks to the charger. So the charger we both have, Tommy, reads the information off of the battery when you plug it in. And then it knows what the battery is you plug it in and then it knows what the battery is knows what the cell count is knows how big the battery is like what milliamp hour battery it is and it also knows what to charge it at like what C rating so the gen 2 batteries are 5 C rating so if you have
[1:09:00] a 2200 milliamp hour battery that you would charge at 2.2 amps. Hold on, I should have done the math earlier. What is that, 12 amps? 12-ish, yeah. So you can charge 12 amps-ish into that, and it charges much faster. So you're charging these batteries instead of an hour. I'm usually from dead to charged 10 to 15 minutes. Very nice. You don't have to worry about the settings being wrong. You don't have to go through all the extra menu clicks. And I know it sounds silly.
[1:09:34] Like I know it sounds lazy and I'm admitting to that. But you don't have to go through all the extra work of charging a battery. I can give it to Piper or my wife and say here throw this on the charger they can figure it out without having anybody else worrying about having the settings be wrong or anything like that just the ease of the batteries makes it worth the extra expense and being able to charge them faster to me means i don't have to have as many batteries
[1:10:04] that's my that's all i wanted to say on the different types of batteries and how to charge them. Yeah, I own both. I have several new G2 batteries and the super expensive 2200 charger from Spectrum. But I still have a lot of older batteries that I charge on that high-tech charger. The convenience is nice. I don't disagree. And the fact that you can charge them fast and it doesn't require more batteries, it does kind of save money over buying more batteries.
[1:10:38] So, I mean, it's what you want to spend the money on, right? Well, it definitely saves charging time. it's what you want to spend the money on right well it definitely saves charging time like i know people that have 15 of the same battery for an edf to go fly for an hour and a half yeah whereas you can go and charge these batteries fast enough if you have two or three instead of 15
[1:10:58] you're going pretty much back to back by the time you're done with these. But here's, honestly, here's like, so we fly at two fields. Normally, we have our home field, we have our field that's closer, and then we have a field that's a little bit farther away. The field that's farther away has power and all that so we can plug our chargers in
[1:11:16] and recharging is not a problem at all. Our field that's closer to us, no power out there. So there's no way to power our, our spectrum chargers. And that sucks. That's kind of where the advantage of my high-tech charger comes in. I can plug that into the 12-volt battery on my vehicle and I can charge my batteries at the field with that locally. So that, small pros and cons, but just something to think about when you're shopping for chargers.
[1:11:47] The convenience of these new Spectrum G2s, you can't dispute that. They are super, super convenient. As long as you have power. Yeah. And it's much easier for a beginner. Yeah. Because there's no thought involved. Yeah. There's nowhere for you to make a mistake. You plug the thing in and the charger and battery talk to each other and do everything else for you yep it's pretty awesome actually so okay beginner friendly
[1:12:10] not so much wallet friendly very beginner friendly and they make a range of chargers you don't have to spend what we spent on ours yeah we chose to do that because we wanted the super fast charging for the bigger batteries bigger batteries some of the entry ones they have like the s155 i think doesn't charge more than four cell batteries but the ones we got will do i don't even know eight cells i think something like that whatever i'm not positive
[1:12:36] so yeah that's chargers so there you go let's see let's talk quickly about some common mistakes yes read the manual why i don't like reading manual there's always good information in the manual like you will miss some good stuff yeah yeah but again assuming by the way the manual is correct well okay yeah sorry i didn't mean to throw that in there i mean i wasn't going to say, but when you were talking about the G2 batteries,
[1:13:06] and you were talking about how they communicate and everything's perfect, as long as the battery, the little thing in the battery is programmed correctly. Because you had a battery that you couldn't use because it wasn't correct from the factory or whatever. Yeah, there was one. But they took care of it, so it happens. Read the manual. There's really good stuff in the manual. Especially when it comes to the batteries and the chargers. Yeah. The safety. Exactly.
[1:13:27] All the stuff that we've talked about is covered in the manual and a lot better in most cases than we've covered it. There's some important stuff in the manual like center of gravity and how to program the speed controller and just all this information. to program a speed controller and just all this information. Me personally, me being old school, the very first thing I like to do when I buy a new airplane, doesn't matter what it is,
[1:13:51] I like to get the manual and I read that thing, at least the English portion, from cover to cover. You probably do that in bed before you're going to sleep. Of course. I download the manual before I ever get the product. I do that too, actually. That way you kind of have an idea. I download the manual before I ever get the product. Oh, nice. I do that, too, actually. That way you kind of have an idea. Do you read it? Oh, sometimes. Skim it.
[1:14:10] I mean, I'm not as page-by-page, word-by-word as you are, but I definitely look over the assembly to see what I'm supposed to do. I look over CG, obviously. I look over all the… What is CG? CG, yeah, we didn't cover that. Center of gravity. that's where the airplane balances on the wing because it's very important specific spot yes yeah too far forward or too far backwards is bad yeah pay attention to that it's in the manual that you should read
[1:14:37] control throws are in the manual yeah yeah yes if you have your controls set up too high you could stall the wing even at full speed and most manuals I've seen lately, they even show you the proper direction that the controls should be moving with a given stick movement. Yeah, we didn't talk about that either. Lots of good information in the manual that you should read. Don't skip the manual. Yeah, good idea. Next, this is one I've been…
[1:15:04] Me too. Okay. I think Dave too. I've been. Me too. Okay. I think Dave too. Dave's guilty of this too. We all are. Overconfidence. Overconfidence. I'm totally confident. I can fly anything. See? See? Perfect. Like, generally speaking, I think we all feel that way. Well, I'm thinking more as a beginner. Right. well i'm thinking more as a beginner right because my first few flights were maybe not as polished as they should have been i have had multiple airplanes in a tree
[1:15:39] recently even well last year i guess what and you put like oh okay i hit a tree last year that's fine no i mean like actually stuck in a tree where it was up for like a week and i had to wait for the wind to blow it down it's not been a problem lately no yeah it's been you wouldn't be flying though at this point that's all the wind but anyway so yes overconfidence is one of
[1:16:03] the things that will get you in trouble if you are not humble and know your limitations yeah yeah don't don't start your first flight with trying a loop or a roll or anything like that yeah because that'll come back and bite you yeah you're at a lot of different angles and you're not sure how your plan is going to react and you're not sure how you should react when that happens and then you'll get there yeah exactly but you're
[1:16:29] not there yet if you're just starting out yep also covered in the manual normally yeah next thing common mistake improper setup yeah also i I mean, you can avoid a lot of that if you read the manual. Like, I hate to beat on that, but there is a lot of information. Those companies that produce these airplanes, they spend a lot of money on R&D and they put the information that they learned about that particular airplane from their R&D in the manual for your benefit. Yeah.
[1:17:07] You may as well read it. It's good information. Plus, it's exciting to learn about the airplane you just bought, right? Yeah. The control throws and the center of gravity are the big ones. Recently, I've worked with a lot of secondhand aircraft that we don't even know what they are. We can't find – there's no manual. So, it's all, it looks about right. Yeah. Guessing. Yeah. But that also is pulling on. That's a skill that you develop over years of exposure to the hobby. Yeah.
[1:17:33] Decades upon decades of experience you guys have. Really, years wasn't sufficient? Decades is much more accurate. Yeah. it just occurred to me, i made a major mistake last weekend test flying that cub i never checked the center of gravity oh my that's not like that is definitely not like you huh so you're saying you're a little overconfident and you didn't read the manual because there wasn't one and your setup was improper there was a manual check
[1:18:05] i was wanting to check yeah wow it just occurred to me i never checked the center of gravity on that airplane okay yeah well experience i've had this aircraft before and i know this setup it balances but but yes i should have checked it you're still pulling from your dad's gonna go in my book now it's like oh my gosh you better check that yeah yeah wow it turned out fine though flew great but yeah that doesn't always happen yeah that hardly
[1:18:32] ever happens to be honest i just can't believe i just did that though wow and setup doesn't old people doesn't just apply right to the control surfaces and the directions they move it's also how they're connected right right? No slop. No slop in the linkages, or make sure the linkages are attached. Make sure they're going the right way. Make sure that everything is tight that needs to be tight. So improper setup, yeah. Covered in the manual. Well, yeah, I mean. Mostly. Mostly.
[1:19:03] Flying in poor conditions, Tommy. Why would you not want to do that? That's another mistake that you could make. 30 mile an hour winds on your third flight is probably not a good idea. Yeah, I would say when you're starting out, try to stick to favorable weather conditions. Five miles an hour winds or under. Yeah, especially when you're… For new. Yeah, if you've chosen a really lightweight airplane as your first airplane… Without stabilization. Without stabilization, which…
[1:19:33] Why would anyone do that for their first airplane? But maybe they do… Yeah, don't… Because they built it from Balsa and have no stabilization put in it. Don't fly, well, they're not light then if they had built it from Balsa. That's true. But you do wanna push yourself after a while in small baby steps. Yeah. So you need to learn how to fly in the wind and with a crosswind. You do, crosswind, yeah. But like when you- But easily ease yourself into it, Jim. Yeah.
[1:19:54] And wind is what we're talking about when we're talking about conditions, really. We could also be talking about improper locations. And lighting. Or I was gonna say time of day. Or distance away from you. Fly close so you can see orientation. Yes. Yeah. Far away in the dark is a bad idea. Right. Especially if it's windy. I know it's really. And you're in town. It's really enticing. Right. Especially in the summertime. we've got sunlight here anyway, 830, 9 o'clock at night.
[1:20:23] And that is like the perfect time wind-wise. Like the golden hour. Yeah, because there's no wind and the conditions are normally calm. But that sun, when it gets below a certain point, it drops very quickly. Yeah. And at those angles that the sun is shining, sometimes it makes it very difficult to determine what direction the airplane is flying, whether it's flying away from you or if it's flying towards you, if it's upside down, if it's, I mean,
[1:20:50] just when you're starting out until you're comfortable flying, just avoid flying at dusk or dawn or pick a nice day. You may be able to see the aircraft perfectly fine, but when you come into land and it drops below the tree line, you can't see it. But you do have, once you've mastered all this, you do have night flying to look forward to. Oh, yeah, for sure. LED lit airplanes. There's a lot of stuff that you can branch out into. Yeah, you got to master the basics first. Yep.
[1:21:17] Let's see. Another mistake is not pre-flight checking. We drill this in. Yeah, I know we do, but I'm guilty. I've done it so many times. Really? Well, I mean, not lately, but like starting out, oh, I'm at the field and my nitro engine is running. Oh, let's go. And then your ailerons are backwards because you didn't check them. Or you forgot to turn the power to the radio system on. Yeah, yeah i mean a proper pre-flight is essential or something look it over before
[1:21:52] every flight you don't have to take it apart look it over for any obvious damage from the last flight if you bounced it hard take a look at the landing gear take a look at the landing gear look at the prop maybe if it's not protected like the aeroscout just have a quick look at it and make sure the controls are going right and i always do that it just becomes a habit it does absolutely so i always stand behind the aircraft pull back on a stick up push forward down
[1:22:16] right left right left throttle clear and then you can do it so fast it takes less really less than a second but don't just wiggle them i know people go out there and go yeah that doesn't everything moves and they go no you have to physically right right left left but see i don't it has to be a conscious effort to make sure that that it does that the controls are moving in the correct direction because if you're
[1:22:39] doing what dave's talking about yeah everything's moving. Okay, here we go. But I do it fast, and I do the wiggle thing, but I know, based on doing it long enough, how I'm wiggling. I know how to wiggle and make it jiggle, but I know how to move the sticks quickly enough to where you can tell, okay, left is left, right is right, we're good. I don't have to do it. I need that right aileron to go up.
[1:23:04] Yeah. Well, yeah, like I start to see it go good. I don't have to do it. I need that right aileron to go up. Yeah. Well, yeah. Like, I start to see it go up. I don't wait for full deflection and all that kind of stuff. It's just a little bit to make sure we're going in the right spot. Yeah, the next half second is not going to hurt anything. Make sure it doesn't bind at full travel. Yeah, I don't think that hurts anything to make sure you're getting full travel. No, it doesn't.
[1:23:16] But I don't all the time. Full travel. I mean, like, beginning flights of the day when you're first starting to fly the airplane is different. And I will do a little bit more on that, but not like, I'm not going to sit there and go, okay, left, left, up, oh, pull down, okay, it's going up. I don't mentally have to think about it. Oh, I could do it in less than five seconds. No, I understand what you're saying. You do it quickly and off you go.
[1:23:38] But when you're starting out, make a conscious effort to make sure when you move the aileron stick to the right, the right aileron is moving up. You're right. Left and left. You're correct. And so on. This came back to bite me last summer when I flew the wrong airplane. I caught the controller going backwards. I actually flew somebody else's airplane because I picked it up in the dark and they were identical. Why did this bind come off? I have to rebind this thing.
[1:24:04] It wasn't your airplane. So, yeah, pre-flight. It'll catch things. and they're identical why did this bind come off i have to rebind this thing airplane so yeah pre-flight you look it'll catch things it's quick to do and it's we'll save it'll save your bacon and even my hand launch stuff i'll send somebody out to the field to throw it for me yeah while they're holding it i will go through the up down left right throttle clear i've yes
[1:24:23] having thrown your many airplanes i can confirm you do that. Because you don't know if they're walking out there and they caught an aileron on their pant leg. Exactly. And knock something loose. You don't know. So those last second runway checks cannot hurt. And what's, yeah, what's 10 seconds? I mean. It doesn't even take that long to be honest. Next thing, panic and overreaction. Yes. This is a fun one
[1:24:52] i've done that some people freeze something that's not something you want to do i've seen people just stand there and watch the airplane crash doing nothing fly the thing to the crash site i was just going to say that fly it to the ground fly it until it's underground yeah yeah yeah you fly through the crash you keep flying don't give up it. I've seen airplanes disappear into the corn and come flying right back out. I've seen it also. Mm-hmm.
[1:25:09] But yeah, like what you said, Dave, I've seen, I don't know how many, several. Six. People, they get confused, disoriented, and they just lock up and they stop reacting. Yeah. They stop trying to fly. Don't do that. No. At least if you're going to crash, make it spectacular. Exactly.? Aim for something. Yeah. Try something. Like if you've got enough altitude, try moving,. And a lot of times if you pull back on the stick, on the elevator stick, let's say,
[1:25:40] you'll know right away whether the airplane is upright or upside down. And then you can quickly yeah but don't give up on it that's that's like the number one it's going in and there's just no make sure to slow it down as much as you can get that throttle down yeah save some equipment if you can yep for sure let's give up on it though also neglecting your post fight maintenance oh yeah if something ever happens make sure you make a note of it.
[1:26:08] Make sure that you have something to do on the airplane. That way you don't forget next time you go out. Especially if it's something that's not super visible. Right. Like you cracked a landing gear. Right. But you may not see that. Right. Yeah, like I have an airplane that I need to put a wheel back on that I keep forgetting to do because I don't have the right nut. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's right. But I will do that before I fly it. But I remember it.
[1:26:32] And I don't want to take it to the field and be like, oh, I forgot when I retract the landing gear and then it falls out. That's a good idea. Put a poster note on it. That way you'll see it. Last mistake I could think of was choosing the wrong plane. Yeah, Dave. I've covered that. i think i know what you're talking about yes choosing a plane that is beyond your scope of skill yeah the air force does not put you in an f-15 on the first day nor should you that's a good analogy i like that
[1:27:00] it makes perfect sense right that's why we recommend the planes we recommend and don't be overconfident that kind of goes with the choosing the wrong plane thing yeah so there that. That makes perfect sense. Right. That's why we recommend the planes we recommend. And don't be overconfident. That kind of goes with the choosing the wrong plane thing. Yeah. So there you go. Nice. Those are some of the most common mistakes. There's certainly many, many, many more mistakes
[1:27:15] you can make. And I've probably made all of them. I think we probably all have. I've got some that aren't even on here. Yeah. Right. One of the other things that I think this probably can be the last thing we talked about. What happens when you have a mid-flight malfunction? Oh, you mean like a brownout? And anyone want to explain brownout? That used to be. I'm sorry. Everybody. Yeah. Oh, I don't have a signal. A brownout.
[1:27:41] So brownout refers to a loss of signal or power or a loss of connection. In general terms, people use the term brownout for I've lost connection to my airplane, which is not actually what a brownout is. Correct. What is a brownout? A brownout? Well, I'm not exactly sure. Oh, okay. Battery voltage drops too low. And resets. And then resets itself. So your receiver reboots. Yeah. Because the battery voltage went too low. You get a voltage surge.
[1:28:13] It pulls too much voltage away from the receiver. It says, I can't operate like this and goes into temporary shutdown. But then that load goes away. The voltage jumps back up and it comes back on. Yeah. And so that's when you have no control over anything a lot of times scariest two seconds of your life yeah i've done that i actually and i'm not using that as an excuse i actually have done that don't roll your eyes
[1:28:35] actually have had that before and having said that the new shush the new power safe receivers which you don't have to worry about as a beginner, but there are ways to mitigate those things from happening by using the correct equipment. Let's just say that. But there's lots of different mid-flight malfunctions, and brownout is not the only one you could encounter. You could encounter lots of mid-flight malfunctions. I had three of them in one flight.
[1:29:04] Oh, boy. And not all of mid-flight malfunctions. I had three of them in one flight. Oh, boy. And not all of them are necessarily radio-related. Some of them can be ESC-related or battery-related or motor-related. You lose a prop on takeoff. I mean, there's lots of malfunctions. You lose a wheel on takeoff. The throttle linkage comes off and you're at full throttle for the next half hour. Yeah, so lots of different.
[1:29:24] The key to remember, though, is the first thing that you've got on there that you put in your notes there, Ron. What does it say? Stay calm. It's easy to pucker and quit. Yeah. You don't want to do that. No, don't. Don't give up on it. Right. It's like full-size aircraft. Aviate, navigate, navigate, and communicate.
[1:29:51] Aviate first. Do what you got to do to keep that airplane airborne yeah yeah then communicate by just yelling hey got it oh i've heard that so many times i don't got it yeah we used to say that a lot back in the 72 megahertz days. Anyway. Turn your radio off. Who's got their radio on? And if you have time. But assess the problem if you have time. If you have time. Sorry. So what does that mean, Tommy?
[1:30:28] If you can, determine the issue. And that will likely inform you of the steps that you're going to need to take next. So, yeah, what's next? Adjust the controls gradually. Why would you want to do it that way? Well, because you don't want to freak out. So stay calm and don't over-control your airplane. Just don't start slamming sticks around. You could make it worse. Make it much worse. Hence the figure out what's going on, get it back under control. Yeah.
[1:30:53] And then do your best to get it back to level flight. Yeah. And this all comes with experience too. Oh, I've been here before. I know how to fix this. Yeah. Yeah. There's, especially when you're getting into like turbines and stuff one of the things that i don't want to say was drilled into me but was talked a lot about when i was going over the basics of it was plan in your head as you're flying what is my next step if i lose
[1:31:22] power right now and one of the things with that is, obviously, stay calm. Don't freak out because as long as you're in somewhat of control and have enough altitude, you're going to be fine. But I don't know if I – well, we'll get into it, but I really don't want to get too much into it. But don't make the airplane dirty. So if you have retractable gear, if you have flaps and all that stuff, do not put those down until you have to. Make sure you can make it around to the runway.
[1:31:54] Make sure you have other options. Like a lot of people, when they have a flame out, the first thing they do, okay, gear down, flaps down. That's not the first step. Because it adds a lot of drag. A lot of drag. And it's going to reduce maneuverability. Maneuverability. And it's going to increase the amount of space or airspace that you're going to need to get back to the field if you can. Right. So, yeah. Yeah.
[1:32:21] So, that kind of goes with gradual return to level flight, but don't freak out. Yeah. Make a plan. Think about it. And if you're, if you are flying that way, by grab, by always kind of thinking a little bit ahead, what would I do if something happened now? What would I, it also gives your brain something to kind of focus on when an emergency happens so that you don't freak out. You've already kind of had your plan. Oh, okay, well, I thought about this two seconds ago
[1:32:50] and this is what I'm going to execute. So it kind of gives your brain something to do during that emergency instead of freaking out. So when it happens, you're prepared and you're not scared. And if you've got them, if your airplane is equipped with them use those emergency controls the safe button yeah right that's return to level flight yeah yeah yeah have that automatic if you can yep so cool and then last thing land as soon as you can yeah
[1:33:20] I mean that depends though I'm gonna be. That depends on your situation. So going back to when we lost the wheel on that FW190, I made the mistake of flying it a few times and thought, my God, this fly is good. Here, Tommy, try it. First thing you do is you go out and you take off, and as soon as you pull off the ground, wheel comes off. But that's not going to affect your flight performance at all. That's just going to be a landing issue.
[1:33:45] So in that case, you're more than welcome to fly around for a while. Absolutely. Which one did? There's no, yeah, you don't have to rush down. So we did. We assessed the problem. We don't have a landing gear. What am I going to do to land? I have the options of leaving the gear down and coming down on the concrete or the asphalt. I have the option of landing in grass. Minus one wheel. Minus one wheel. I also have the option of leaving the gear up and just doing a belly landing.
[1:34:12] Putting the gear up. Well, okay. Because we hadn't put the gear up yet. By the time I was thinking of how to land, the gear was up. But you're right. Assess the situation. Figure out what you're going to do. And we decided just fly around until we're done. Because's no safety issues right right gear up and in the grass yeah it worked out put off as far as you can the crash that might happen and enjoy your last flight
[1:34:36] yeah but i will say that if if something happens during a flight and you don't know what it was but you still have control of the airplane in that that situation, I'm going to say land as soon as you can every single time. I've seen some people fly around. They have flutter. They slow down and just keep flying. Oh, yeah, good call. Flutter is an aerodynamic unbalance of a surface causing it to literally flutter. An out-of-control oscillation of the control surface.
[1:35:05] And that will destroy things. Airframe and electronics. Most beginners with your first plane are probably not going to have to worry about flutter because trainers, they don't normally go fast enough to do so. Go fast enough to worry about something like that. You guys witnessed it last year when I tried to fly the Duelist. Flutter on the on the elevator what did i do you came right in you slowed down i slowed down you assessed the situation you stayed
[1:35:31] calm yep i still had full control you did the engines were both still running but you didn't continue flying around for 20 minutes i had time to put the gear down because i still had power and i flew around made a regular approach and landed yep and i determined the cause of the flutter after the fact and that has now been fixed anyway yeah covering come loose in flight that happens too that happens yep land the airplane don't
[1:35:55] continue to fly around with that thing flopping around you're flying because it's not going to get better yeah it's going to get worse so there you go yep excuse me so let's go through the last little bit okay things to help prevent an in-flight emergency pre-flights check your control surfaces check your battery secure all the connections make sure everything is done correctly and up to par for flying
[1:36:21] maintenance you do need to maintain airplanes inspect for damage keep them clean loose nuts and bolts exactly keep them cleanish they don't have to be show quality but yeah a big old hunk of mud stuck to one of your tires or to an aileron or to something that's that's gonna possibly give you a bad day later get off update your firmware firmware comes out for a reason there are updates for it if you're not comfortable doing it right away
[1:36:52] because i know some people don't want to be the guinea pig you're not a guinea pig when it comes out to mass market it's been tested it's been it's run through the channels already keep your stuff up to date there could be bugs in the old version you didn't know about. There could be, I guess, bugs in the new version too, but just keep it up to date. Make sure you have proper setup. Balance your plane, Dave. Do a range test. For the first
[1:37:15] time in my life, I haven't balanced an airplane. And he admitted to it. Calibrate your controls. Make sure the throws are right. Make sure they're set up based on what the manual says make sure you are flying in a safe environment check your weather make sure you have open space make sure it's a free make sure it's a legal place to fly and this next one is big avoid crowds yeah don't fly over people just never don't do it yeah never fly above don't
[1:37:44] don't fly in a parking lot don't do it. Yeah, never fly above people. Don't fly in a parking lot. Especially when you're starting out. Especially. Because, I mean, it's so hard to predict, what's going to happen. Yep. So just don't put yourself in that situation. We don't want to see anybody. Yeah, try and stay away from things that could go bad. Yeah. Plan your flight. Make sure where you're going to fly. Don't fly behind you. Don't fly above you.
[1:38:09] Don't fly into the sun. Don't fly into the sun, yeah. When you fly above you, though, it gets very hard to tell orientation, and you can lose it very easily. Not to mention you get dizzy. That too. Make sure you set your timer. If you don't have telemetry coming back to let what your voltage is on your battery. Set a timer when you're first starting. Set that timer low so you can figure out how much you're using based on the minutes that you've flown.
[1:38:35] Make sure if something happens, you have an emergency landing spot picked out already. Practice on a simulator. Join an RC club. I mean, I think that's important. Absolutely. We've talked about batteries. Make sure you charge them the way you're supposed to. Take care of them. Inspect them. Store them well. That's pretty much all I got. Yeah. I mean, I pretty much echo everything you just said.
[1:39:04] Echo, echo, echo. Join a club. Yeah, and I, I pretty much echo everything you just said. Echo, echo, echo. Join a club. Yeah, and I understand, not every club is welcoming to new members. I get that. we hear horror stories. we talk to our listeners and, some of our listeners have told us, that they almost got out of the hobby because of their local club.
[1:39:24] Find another one find yeah but but the benefit of a club far outweighs in my opinion not joining a club because at least in the beginning when you're learning right exactly and by and large most clubs are going to be welcoming to new, and usually always, well, I shouldn't say always, most folks at the clubs are usually very happy to share their knowledge because they like to talk about airplanes. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.
[1:39:56] Yeah. We're all dorks with airplanes. Yeah, exactly. So I could, I cannot recommend joining a club and getting help from a fellow modeler enough. And read the manual. That's funny. One last thing. You say fellow modeler. Do you consider me a modeler? Yeah, you build models. Okay. I don't know if I would consider myself that or not. He's on the fringe. Yeah. But, I mean, you've started lots of lots of airplane kits
[1:40:29] so i've finished some stuff together i have finished at least one i can think of yeah yeah okay yeah i don't want to get off on that topic i just when you said it i was yeah just like huh we'll just do this because we like to make fun of r. We do. Well, that's fine. I'm glad to give you guys something to make fun of to make you feel better about yourself. We good? Anything else? Any last words of wisdom? Have fun with it. This is what it's all about.
[1:40:58] There's going to be downs to it, but have fun with it. If you destroy an airplane, it's just foam or wood. No big deal. And at the end of the day, they're're toys that's the biggest thing to take away no matter what we are grown men playing with toy airplanes fact keep that in your back pocket remember that and don't take yourself too seriously you're not curing cancer you're not it don't take it seriously it's fun yeah that's the point yeah we're supposed to be doing this for
[1:41:29] relaxation right enjoyment so try to get that in mind yeah that's all I got same here if you need any help with anything feel free to reach out to us right try to help you as much as we can yep forgot about that but yes and how can they reach out to us i have added dave so i don't know the phone number or oh craig a18 hold on and continue speaking continue speaking okay ron has to think about
[1:41:59] this well we have a contact us on a link on the website so if you go to our easiest way rcplanelab.com and hit the contact us it will send all three of us an email with whatever your topic of conversation is and usually ron and dave are pretty good about replying to emails i'm not so much i'm terrible about checking email but if you have a question for any of us specifically it's ron tom or dave at rcplanelab.com but we also do have a phone number you can leave a message
[1:42:34] ron has got the number 818 i just found it so you really put me on the spot area code 818-351-9846 so you can call and leave a message. Or text. Or you can text that number. That's right. I forgot that. We have that ability, too. And if it's not appropriate for Ron, he'll send it out to whichever one of us specializes in that particular item. Yes, which I've had to do that before because I'm like, what the? I don't even know what that means. Dave. And then Tommy.
[1:42:59] We also have a Discord channel. Discord is great. Yeah. A lot of people. And all three of us are on that fairly regularly. I'm on it pretty much every day at my lunch hour. Yeah. So if you've got a question, you can hit us up on Discord, which is also rcplanelab.com, I think. What? I don't know. How do they find us on Discord? There's a link on our website. There you go. Perfect. rcplanelab.com our website. There you go. Perfect. rcplanelab.com slash Discord. There you go.
[1:43:29] I make it easy. Yep. Thank you. Okay. Lots of ways to get a hold of us. If you have questions, let us know. Anything else now? I live for answering questions, so please send stuff. Anything else now? No, I'm good. Dave? Balance your airplane. Anything else now? I'm going'm good. Dave? Balance your airplane. Anything else now? I'm going to keep this going. Goodbye. Goodbye. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast.
[1:43:57] 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 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.
