Ep 198: Winter Plans

[00:00:12] Hello, everyone, and welcome to the RC Plane Lab Podcast. I’m Ron. And I’m Dave. Dave, how are you? I am good. How about you? Good. We actually have not talked to each other for quite a while. It’s been a bit. It’s, I don’t think we’ve recorded for a little over a month, month and a half.

[00:00:27] Month and a half, give or take.

[00:00:29] It’s been weird. Yeah, it has. But we’ve got some stuff to talk about. Not a huge long list. I’d say very little stuff. But we do have some stuff to talk about. First off, did you see the Northern Lights a couple nights ago? I did not.

[00:00:42] I went and looked last night. Last night was terrible. And I didn’t see anything. The night before, I was up to my elbows in the aquarium.

[00:00:50] So the night before, last, we went outside and looked. The first night where they had it. And it was, of course, pictures make it look so much better than it looks with the naked eye. Right. But this time, you actually could see the colors. Like, you could make out the red. You could make out the green. And, like, Piper and I were outside and we were watching. You could actually see them moving across the sky and that kind of stuff. It was kind of neat.

[00:01:13] That’s cool. I’ve never, ever been able to see it. I was hoping, possibly, I could see this one.

[00:01:18] Yeah.

[00:01:18] I am in the city. I probably should have made an effort to get out of this town.

[00:01:21] But yeah, that probably would have helped because out here, like I said, without all the city light pollution and stuff, it made quite a difference.

[00:01:31] My coworker lives up on the north end of town. And she was able to see it without her naked eye. And, of course, the pictures look much better anyway. But she was able to see it without the camera.

[00:01:39] Yeah.

[00:01:40] Even if she was in town.

[00:01:41] So, yeah, that was interesting. Like I said, we’ve only seen those a couple times, which is weird because it’s been how many years that I’ve lived here, never even thought about seeing something like that. And now, what, twice in a year or whatnot, it’s been a lot. I know this is bad radio, but there’s a couple of pictures.

[00:02:04] Even without my glasses, I can see very bright green.

[00:02:08] Yeah.

[00:02:08] Young green.

[00:02:09] And there was actually some purples in it and stuff this time, too, which was kind of cool.

[00:02:13] Yeah. The picture she was showing me had a lot of pink and purple in it.

[00:02:16] Yeah. The pink is the easiest to see with your naked eye. Cool. But, no, it’s kind of neat because, like I said, it doesn’t happen very often. I can’t remember a time before earlier this year, which was the first time that it was supposed to be a thing. Yeah.

[00:02:32] That we could see. I’ve always wanted to see it. Just never been able to do it yet.

[00:02:36] Yeah. So now I don’t have to go to Iceland, I guess. I’ve seen them in person. So I think it’s Iceland, right? That has them? Or Greenland? No, it’s Iceland.

[00:02:43] Any of the northern latitudes. You can go to Alaska, Canada, Iceland, Greenland. Where do you go to Greenland? I have no idea. Exactly.

[00:02:54] Yeah. So, no, that was kind of cool.

[00:02:55] Apologizing to the listeners that are actually in Greenland.

[00:02:58] Who knows? We might have some. So should we talk about some new planes that came out? Sure. Let’s go for it. So there’s actually a new company out since last time we spoke that has started selling some airplanes. They’re not in stock yet. They’re supposed to be in stock January 26th or January of 26th. But Apex Aerotech, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one yet or not.

[00:03:23] Not one I’ve caught up with yet, but I am sure it’ll be flooding my inbox before long.

[00:03:27] So that was, this is Jace Duccia and his family have started their own RC airplane company. They have the first two airplanes they’ve come out with. They have a 60-inch Slick 360, ARF and P&P, two color schemes. And these are all done by, I guess, Clint Sweet Designs.

[00:03:47] That doesn’t mean anything to me. But unfortunately, it might be either. That’s not my realm.

[00:03:52] Yeah, but they look really nice. So they have an orange Banshee scheme, which is cool. It’s like the in-your-face.

[00:04:01] That’ll be right up Tom’s line there with the orange.

[00:04:04] It’s kind of like the in-your-face schemes where they’re really, I don’t even know how to describe them, but they look cool. And then they have a blue and red Apex scheme. The ARF is $424.99, and the plug-and-play is $1,024.99.

[00:04:20] That’s a huge break difference.

[00:04:22] Well, when you look at everything that you get with that, it’s not terrible.

[00:04:27] $424 Seems like a pretty reasonable.

[00:04:29] But yeah, you got to get all this stuff to finish it up. It’s in the line with Flex and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, they’re really not, that price doesn’t surprise me. Let’s put it that way by the time you get everything else in it. It has the quick-attached wings, canopy, everything you’d expect from a modern, high-quality type of airplane like that. Apparently, it flies really good.

[00:04:52] I’m sure if I flew one, it would not look as good as any of the videos that I’ve seen it fly, because there’s a little bit of a gap in skill. I was going to say there’s a little bit of skill not included. But the plane can do things that I couldn’t do. They also are coming out with a 102-inch Slick 360. Same color schemes. And the ARF is $1349.99.

[00:05:20] Okay.

[00:05:21] It’s not bad for a larger aircraft. If 3D is your thing, it’s worth checking out, I think.

[00:05:27] Absolutely.

[00:05:28] I’m not quite there yet. But I say I would like to be, but then I never do anything to get to that point.

[00:05:34] Because I hover a slow-ultristic, and that’s about as 3D as it gets.

[00:05:38] That will hover. So, there you go. Also, I have one more, then you can talk about yours. One that I’m kind of excited about. I don’t know if I’m going to order one yet. Depends on how the winter goes with stuff. The UMX Erratix 3D Flat Foam 450mm airplane came out.

[00:05:59] It’s a good size UMX plane.

[00:06:02] It is so cool, though. It’s the baby brother to the Big Erratix. And if it flies as good as that one did, then it should be interesting.

[00:06:12] Everything I’ve seen, it looks like it does fly quite nice. The noise is a little off-putting to me. Really? It’s a dentist drill sound.

[00:06:20] Oh, see, I never thought of that, but now it’s probably going to ruin it. Thank you.

[00:06:23] Yeah. You’re welcome.

[00:06:25] That’s not cool.

[00:06:26] No, it’s not. So, I’m just wondering if changing the pitch on the prop or something would change that whine. It might. Or flying differently.

[00:06:33] Maybe you don’t have to be full throttle all the time. Who knows? I was watching videos, and it’s like, I can’t volume off.

[00:06:40] See, I’ve seen a couple of them. It hasn’t hit me that hard, so. It will now.

[00:06:45] Yeah, thanks. $169.99. Runs on a 2S, 280 to 350 milliamp hour battery. It reminds me a lot of the UMX Yak 54 that I had, that little 3D platformy thing that they came out with way, way, way back when. Yeah. And that one flies great. Yeah. So, I can only imagine this one would fly better.

[00:07:07] Yeah, it’s low risk. You can bounce it off of stuff.

[00:07:11] Yeah. It’s a little bit bigger, like the Erratix is bigger than the Yak. I want to say the Yak was like 30 millimeters less.

[00:07:22] It’s sizable when you get down that small. 30 Millimeters is quite a bit.

[00:07:26] Yeah. I don’t remember. I wanted to say the other one was a 420 or 430 millimeter. I should have written that down. But I know the old one, like the one that I have, is a 1S150. Yeah, so the 2S power system is going to be. It’s going to be so much faster. So much more power. Yeah. And then with it being a little bit bigger, it’ll probably fly a little bit easier too. I haven’t seen how it comes in the box though. It’s a bigger box. Is it? It’s a good size box.

[00:07:55] So hopefully it is a one piece airplane then they don’t have to worry about. Nice. Yeah. That’s from what I’ve seen.

[00:08:00] Now, the ones I saw were pre-production. So the boxes were just plain white. but, it looks, yeah, it looks like a standard UMX, just bigger.

[00:08:11] Nice. I want to see one. I’m sure you’ll have one soon. Maybe. We’ll see. yeah. So $169.99 supposed to be released here maybe tomorrow or the day after actual shipments and stuff. I don’t remember. Coming soon. Before long. So what do you got? You got a couple?

[00:08:27] Yep. Motion RC has got a couple of new free wings. I guess Motion is the, U.S. importer for free wing from what I understand.

[00:08:38] Oh, okay.

[00:08:38] I don’t think anybody else has it, So that’s anyway, I have to do some research on that. They’re showing two: one that’s really got my interest in, one that doesn’t really have my interest that much.

[00:08:53] Okay.

[00:08:53] We’ll go with the one that’s not too much interesting to me. it is very cool though. free wing Zeus 45 NT turbine ready. Arf.

[00:09:04] Nice. Nice. See, that should be the one you want to get into turbines.

[00:09:08] And I don’t like the way it looks.

[00:09:10] Oh, okay. Nice. Well, I find you a better airplane than that you like more to get into turbines.

[00:09:14] .

[00:09:15] See, I’m pushing the turbine thing. I’m been thinking MIG. Oh, that’d be a great turbine or airplane to start with.

[00:09:23] Either a 15 or a 17. I haven’t dug too hard, but. Nice. Maybe. Maybe. How big? Like, what are you looking at? Or what are you thinking? Not looking at. small to midsize. definitely probably on the smaller size.

[00:09:39] So, like a 60-ish turbine size or something? Yeah, maybe. Okay.

[00:09:44] I don’t know.

[00:09:44] It just depends on what I can find out there.

[00:09:46] Okay. But I haven’t really started too much.

[00:09:49] I can’t afford it, so.

[00:09:51] Eventually.

[00:09:52] Yeah. I get it. Anyway, if the right MIG falls into, like I said, I can’t even decide between a 15 and a 17. So, if the right one falls into my vision.

[00:10:02] Yeah. See, I’m glad you’re actually thinking about it, though. That’s, you’re getting there. We’re getting you. Yeah. It’s baby steps. We’re getting you there. Baby steps. But, yeah. That’s okay.

[00:10:12] So anyway. Zeus. 45 NT. Turbine ready. it’s an ARF plus. Comes with everything except for your power system and, receiver. Okay. So, it’s got, the fuel tanks. It’s, the bubble trap. It’s got, electric retracts that are ABS capable. I wonder what that means. Yeah. So, I’m sure.

[00:10:40] Probably have to get a different controller to make them ABS.

[00:10:43] Yeah. I, I, I did a little bit of research and I haven’t came up with an answer, so. Okay. We’ll keep looking into that. it’s got the retracts. It’s got a six axis gyro.

[00:10:55] Okay.

[00:10:55] Of course, with the brakes, and you need to supply your own 1200, excuse me, receiver pack. So, like, 1800, three, three, three, something on that lines. And then whatever your, turbine requires.

[00:11:15] So, it just takes two batteries then? Just the two batteries. So, the one battery runs brakes, gear. Brakes, gear, radio system.

[00:11:24] Okay. I don’t know. I don’t know what else it would be, but it runs all that, then just one for the power of your PCU. Any lights did you see? I don’t believe it had any lights, but,. I get it. It’s okay. Maybe. Like, that’s not high on my list of things I would look for in a turbine.

[00:11:39] No, but if it’s a foamy, I could see lights in there. At least wingtips and landing lights, maybe. Yeah. Of course, it won’t open when I need it to open..

[00:11:48] That’d be nice if it did, though.

[00:11:50] Yeah.

[00:11:50] But, I don’t know. so anyway, that’s a Zeus, and they’re looking at $869. So, I don’t think that’s too bad of a deal for a complete minus power system.

[00:12:01] No, it’s really not. I mean, you’re still putting $2,200, $2,300 into it on top of that, but it’s not bad.

[00:12:09] Just for a so-called bare airframe, but not. It comes with everything.

[00:12:14] Yeah. No, that’s cool. Yeah.

[00:12:16] So, that’s neat. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a foamy, offered as a turbine ready. I’ve seen a lot of conversions.

[00:12:25] Yeah. Yeah, there’s, I don’t know what, there’s another one I think I’ve seen that you can go either way. I don’t know what it was.

[00:12:34] Anyway. Cool. That’s what I normally look for, but that’s, I saw that, and I was like, that’s pretty slick.

[00:12:38] Yeah. I didn’t even notice that one. Cool. and, the second one is a completely different end of the spectrum. it is a 64 millimeter BAC lightning. So. Well, that’s close. It’s still the, the jet type airplane. It’s still a jet, but it’s small and electric and.

[00:12:56] Oh, the other one was small. Just gas.

[00:12:59] Oh, yeah. Oh, we forgot to mention the size. It’s a 1200 millimeter or 47.24.

[00:13:04] The turbine. Turbine. Okay. So we’re looking. That’s small.

[00:13:08] That’s, that’s on the smaller side. Yeah. And it’s also just set up for the, 45. So.

[00:13:14] That’d be a good plane though.

[00:13:16] Looks fast, slick. Nice. -huh.

[00:13:21] Looking at the lightning, it’s 64 millimeter, 4S. it is set up for, and I’ve got this all out of order. It’s 583 millimeters, or 22.95. Pretty heavily swept wing.

[00:13:37] Yeah. Okay.

[00:13:38] It’s got a 64 millimeter, 12 blade motion, free wing, fan in it. So it’s going to sound good. It’s going to have that crushing sound, not that high pitch wine.

[00:13:49] Yeah.

[00:13:50] It is set up for a, 4S 28, 40, motor at 2700 KV outrunner, 40 amp ESC. and it’s designed to run on 4S 1800 to 2200. So very economical, common packs. Very common. And, approaches a hundred mile an hour. Nice. So, and it’s silver. Good. That’s exactly right up your alley. Yeah. I actually almost pulled the trigger on it a couple of days ago, but one thing killed me. And it’s the store of your life.

[00:14:30] You don’t like the canopy.

[00:14:30] I don’t like the canopy. That can be painted though. Yeah.

[00:14:33] I don’t like that it matches the rest of the airplane. Like the same silver seems like they used on the rest of the airplane for the canopy. Yeah.

[00:14:40] It’s, yeah, it’s, it’s not doing it for me. I think there’s a better way of painting the canopy.

[00:14:46] Yeah. But it’s neat though. Cause it’s, it’s different. You don’t see that kind of airplane often. Nope.

[00:14:51] It’s the over under shotgun style.

[00:14:53] Yeah. That’s what I was going to say. I like the, the horizontal as opposed to, or I’m sorry, the vertical as opposed to horizontal. The vertically stacked engines.

[00:15:00] Engines.

[00:15:00] Yeah.

[00:15:00] And that also gives you a good grip to throw it. Oh, I bet it would. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Yeah. Cause that’s not, it doesn’t have the retractable gear on it still.

[00:15:09] No, it’s got fixed spindly gear. If you want to do that. Yeah.

[00:15:12] Which nobody would.

[00:15:13] No.

[00:15:13] It’s great for taking off and landing, but it looks stupid in the air. Yeah.

[00:15:17] Yeah. This thing needs to just, it needs to be hand chucked. and $189. That’s not bad. Not bad.

[00:15:26] Just throw your own receiver in it.

[00:15:27] Yeah. I’m surprised you haven’t got it yet.

[00:15:29] Especially since you have all these fancy receivers now. Yeah. Oh, they’re like $20 a piece.

[00:15:36] Actually I do not own that many free sky receivers yet. I’ve got so many, spectrums that I’ve just been using those up. Oh, I thought you ordered a few extra. I have a few. I’ve got, I don’t actually have anything that would work really well with this. Everything I own right now is eight and 10 channel receivers. It’s a little, little overkill.

[00:15:56] Yeah.

[00:15:57] There’s, they’re relatively small. They’d fit in it. I’m sure they’d work just fine, but a little overkill for something like this. I don’t know. I’ve got, I’ve got maybe six or eight free sky receivers, but most of those are just sitting in a package on the shelf right now waiting for airframes.

[00:16:15] I know. Yeah.

[00:16:17] Just in case. No, I get it. That makes sense. actually for the most part, I bought the eights and tens just to play with them to figure out what makes them tick.

[00:16:26] Yeah.

[00:16:26] So far so good. Nice. so that’s all I’ve got on that. Cool. Nice. What else? You want to talk about winter projects? Sure.

[00:16:38] What do you got going? I don’t have much.

[00:16:40] Yeah.

[00:16:40] I didn’t think so. I don’t want to over promise and then under deliver. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve done. Is there an e-streak? I might have done. No, that’s not even on my radar to be honest. I rebuilt mine. Yeah. Yeah. Did we know that? I don’t know if we knew that. I don’t think we talked about that. It’s rebuilt, ready to go.

[00:16:56] So, so do tell, how did you rebuild it then? so everything from the middle of the wing saddle Ford pretty much was pulverized.

[00:17:05] Mm-hmm.

[00:17:06] So, ran it through the bandsaw, hacked off what was left. Really just a nice smooth cut. Nice smooth. I actually kind of wanted to, taper it, give it an angle, a little scarf cut, but decided that was way too much work. It was just easier to run it through the bandsaw. So we got a.

[00:17:25] That’s an interesting place to have a seam. Yeah.

[00:17:31] And then I took the plans and traced out the Ford part of the fuselage from a little bit behind where I cut it off all the way forward. cut out brand new fuselage sides, brand new formers. and, then laid with the remains of the fuselage on top of the plans and cut off parts of the, the new fuselage that I cut out until it matched.

[00:18:02] Okay.

[00:18:03] I measured twice, cut six times, but, been there, done that. Yeah. It’s like, nope, still too long. we should have made like an electro streak XL or something. I actually thought about it because it ends up being tail heavy. So I thought about adding another inch to the nose.

[00:18:19] Yeah.

[00:18:19] But I didn’t want to mess it with it too much.

[00:18:24] Did that.

[00:18:25] So scarf that on there, pass it on the inside. I put a popsicle sticks, which you noted as reinforcement- on the inside, as well as a low plywood plate over the scab.

[00:18:42] Yeah. It’s a good idea.

[00:18:43] Yeah. But the popsicle sticks were a placeholder to hold everything in place while I adjusted the nose and got everything squared up.

[00:18:49] So are they out now?

[00:18:51] Nope. They stayed in there.

[00:18:52] Oh, Dave. Hey, they’re free. Sort of. They still have the coloring on them from the popsicle. Some are blue, some are red. I made sure to lick them clean. I hope you’re talking, you had clean ones though, right? Like craft sticks? Nope. Are you serious?

[00:19:08] Yeah. Serious. Every time I eat a popsicle or a fudge bar or whatever in my workroom, I clean them off. I spray them with Windex and throw them in a jar.

[00:19:16] Oh my. So that is, that’s frugal. That is the definition of frugal.

[00:19:21] Hey, I bought them. I’m going to use them. They make really good, epoxy stir sticks and things like that.

[00:19:26] Okay. Yeah. I think I bought a thousand, actually, no, we have three boxes. There are a thousand pieces each of those craft sticks. So that’s what I use. But did you get a tasty fudge bar to go along with it? No.

[00:19:39] No.

[00:19:39] I did.

[00:19:42] But then they’re stained and ucky. the ones that are really stained are the ones that come in the corn dogs. You’re kidding. You don’t.

[00:19:49] Yeah.

[00:19:50] You don’t keep them.

[00:19:50] Oh, thank God.

[00:19:51] No, I keep them.

[00:19:52] Are you serious? Yeah. What? Oh, Dave. They work good. Do you, I can give you like a thousand of them and that should last you forever and I won’t miss them. Would you like some? I probably got 500 of them. No.

[00:20:03] I don’t have that many popsicles. And corn dogs? Because I reuse the sticks. I don’t use a new one.

[00:20:09] Oh. Oh my God. So, yeah. I told you I’m cheap. Yes. You guys know that. Yes, but that takes it to a new level. The inside of your electro streak has stained popsicle sticks. These were the cleanest ones I could find.

[00:20:24] Anyway, let your streaks back together. Good. the big expense on it actually was having to buy a new, spinner and yoke. They’ve discontinued the old plastic one. They’ve replaced it with aluminum one. And quite frankly, the yoke and spinner, were very nice aluminum, same size. Everything, everything matches right. It was just aluminum. the thing. The thing that killed me on that was the shipping. The shipping was more than the parts.

[00:20:48] Yeah. So, it is what it is. You should have bought an extra set just in case. I did. Oh, good.

[00:20:53] So, I have two of them. Knock on wood or whatever to be. Well, I can go back. They’re the same ones that belong on the Excalibur.

[00:21:01] Oh, okay.

[00:21:01] So I’m going to go ahead and pull the plastic one off the Excalibur and just go ahead and update it to the aluminum. Then I’ll have the black plastic as a backup.

[00:21:09] As a spare? Yeah.

[00:21:10] Nice.

[00:21:12] So, anyway, that’s my most recent project. You haven’t flown it yet, have you? I have not.

[00:21:17] The weather around here has been kind of….

[00:21:19] Kind of crappy. Let’s be honest. Yeah. It’s been windy. Yeah, very windy. And then we got cold, and now we’re getting warm again.

[00:21:25] Yeah, we….

[00:21:26] But it’s going to be windy again.

[00:21:26] We had snow Monday, and it’s supposed to be 75 Saturday.

[00:21:29] Yeah. Yeah. And I think the day before it snowed, it was in the 50s. Yeah. And it snowed pretty good. I mean, nothing really stuck very well, but we had… In town, I didn’t have much, but I had a little bit of snow on the windows when I went to go to work. Yeah. But looking out, like, the front window and stuff here just reminded me of winter already. Yeah.

[00:21:49] I saw some pictures from East St. Louis, not East St. Louis, East Central Illinois, and there were cars in ditches and stuff.

[00:21:57] Nuts. Anyway, the weather around here has been kind of eh. Not ready for that yet. Especially with the time change, too. Now, it was 445 today, and it was almost pitch black outside. I’m like, are you kidding me? Like, not fair. Yeah.

[00:22:09] I get off at 430, and I’m having to drive with the headlights on.

[00:22:12] Yep. I know the feeling. So, winter plans.

[00:22:18] Any big plans? Next project would be to attack that electric cub that I got from you. Strip it down. The Launderon’s cracked in it, so I need to fix that. Basically, it’s just going to be a recovered job. Fix the Launderon. I think that’s all it’s got wrong with it. It flew fine.

[00:22:36] I mean, it was a good flying little airplane.

[00:22:38] And the motor’s tight on it, so I’m wondering….

[00:22:40] I would put a new motor in it.

[00:22:41] I’m thinking it might need a new motor.

[00:22:42] I would put new servos in it, too. Those were slow.

[00:22:44] They were GWS servos, if I remember right. Yeah, those are being yanked out.

[00:22:48] Yeah.

[00:22:49] Good idea. They’re fine for, like, a little lightweight, foamy, flat plate. Fine. But, yeah, they’re going to get replaced with something a little nicer.

[00:22:58] That would… Yeah, that would do well with a little bit more power and some faster response time on the servos, to be honest with you. Although it is a cub, so… And we don’t know anything stupid, but… No, but it would be nice to have it respond in less than one and a half seconds to your input.

[00:23:13] Put an input. Wait. It’s moving.

[00:23:16] I see it. I see it. Hold on.

[00:23:18] So, anyway, yeah, it’ll get a servo upgrade. And I’ll look into that motor. It might just be bearings. They make it a little tight. They might need those, or I’ll just replace it. They’re not expensive.

[00:23:29] No, I mean, for that… It’s 450 size, I think, if I remember right. Yeah, you can get ones on Amazon for, like, ten bucks at this point. Yeah. So, nothing to it. It’s probably worth just doing that anyway. Although you like the old stuff, so… Yeah.

[00:23:42] Can I put a plastic stick in it?

[00:23:45] It’s yours. You can do whatever you want.

[00:23:48] And then I’ve got that little willy-nilly kit that I was going to use, the jumped-out parts from the UMX A10, so….

[00:23:54] Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. What one did you… What kit was that?

[00:23:58] I can’t remember which one it is. I really can’t remember what it is. But we’ll talk about it down the road when I dig into it. When you get to it. Yeah. Okay. But it’s going to use the jumped-out A10 parts.

[00:24:12] That’ll be cool. Yeah. So, turn the little mini-ducted fan. That’ll sound good. Yeah. I like that little A10. Yeah.

[00:24:19] The parts of mine were from the two-cell version, so it won’t be as cool as yours, but….

[00:24:23] It’ll still be cool.

[00:24:24] Yeah.

[00:24:25] Well, nice. So, I don’t have a lot of plans for the winter, but I have started making a list of a couple things, so I know I have to organize… Like, I need to pull everything out that I have and just go through everything and see what’s good, what’s bad, what I need to keep, what I don’t need to keep, because I’m running out of room. I need to find a better way to store all of my airplanes. Not all of. Most of them are good. Let’s put it that way.

[00:24:51] I think I have, let’s call it four problem children that I need to figure out. Yes, the ones you’re pointing at that are sitting in my kitchenette going from floor to ceiling, because I have no place to put them. Kind of looks like a stonehenge or something of airplanes. Plainhenge. But, so I need to find a way of keeping those nicely without getting damaged and out of the way here.

[00:25:22] I also need to finish a couple of the ones that I have sitting out in the way that I have sitting out, because I’m still kind of working on them. I have that Siegel Models Pilotist PC9 that I, I don’t even know if you can say I’ve started on, because I really haven’t, but all the pieces are out, so it looks like I have. Yeah, I see it every time I come down here, so it keeps getting moved. I’ve hinged a few things, and yes, we’ve moved it because it’s in the way.

[00:25:50] But I have everything I need, so it’s just me being lazy, I guess I could say, or busy with other things. I’d like to work on the big glider, especially since Tommy has a nose done now, that I can’t use that as an excuse of not having it done. And I have that little flying wing thing I need to build and get out of the way. The assassin or whatever it was. Oh, that one, yeah. The crash test hobbies.

[00:26:18] I really would like to get that done, because it’s also sitting out there, just in the way. In the way. But that’s my only, like, I don’t want to overthink of what I can do in the winter, but that’s probably a realistic goal of setting for some of those. We also, I’ve had, since we last time did the Electro Streak build log, or build, had a lot of people asking if we’re going to be cutting more of those kits. Yes, that’s still kind of in my plans.

[00:26:52] I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the year. So we’ll probably talk about it in the next couple episodes or so. Hopefully I’ll have a timeline done. But what I’m going to do, instead of having them order one and then me have to do it, I’m going to get everything done and built first. like, print the plans, everything cut, and packaging ready to go. So, and then, first come, first serve, this is what I have. Once they’re gone, that’s all I’m doing.

[00:27:22] Throw it out there and have it for sale. Right. Get them. As opposed to, knowing beforehand. That way, I’m not holding anybody up or nobody’s waiting on me after they’ve bought them.

[00:27:37] Once you get the machine and everything set up for that, you can cut those pretty quick, right?

[00:27:40] Yeah. Depending on how many I do, I’ll probably do another 20-ish or so. That’ll take a couple days. Just by the time you get everything sorted out, printed, packaged, and all that kind of stuff. I was going to say the packaging probably takes longer than… It does. And it’s a small laser cutter, so it’s not like I can do, full sheets of stuff in there, unfortunately, until I buy a bigger one.

[00:28:01] This is just a small one that I have to pre-cut the wood before it goes in and change it out every couple minutes, so it’s laborious. Let’s put it that way. Sit down and watch TV while you’re… Yeah. There’s a TV in the garage, so I could do that, but just that way we can get, like I said, more people building it. It’s cool seeing all the different ones that people build, and I would like to see more of that. It’s not my own, I guess.

[00:28:27] Yeah.

[00:28:27] That’s never going to happen, is it? One day, one day, maybe. And along the same line, we also had some people ask about another winter build. No.

[00:28:41] This week, this winter, it’s just not going to work.

[00:28:43] No.

[00:28:43] Especially with Tommy being gone. Right. Maybe next year. Yeah.

[00:28:47] Just got to find the right project. Yeah, see, the Electro Streak had a purpose behind it, and I think that’s kind of what drove that, because with Tommy wanting a shiny and not being able to find a shiny, it was kind of build-your-own kind of thing. But we’ll see. We’ll see how next year goes. Yeah.

[00:29:09] It was a project we were all interested in, and something that has the right amount of definitely nothing too awfully bad, but….

[00:29:16] Right. And I’m not going to lie, once, like, we had talked before Tommy was unknowingly dispatched. That sounds like he just got killed. Yeah. Okay. So unknowingly, or quickly had to… Reposition. There you go. Thank you. We had actually talked about starting the Trimotor this winter, but that seems to be a project that has its own issues, not its own issues, its own hurdles of us getting it done. So that might be a next winter thing, too, as opposed to a group build.

[00:29:53] So we’ll see. I really would like to get going on that, because I think that would be a very cool airplane.

[00:29:58] It just constantly keeps telling you guys, don’t do this. Don’t do this.

[00:30:00] No, it’s us saying we’re doing other things, and it’s saying you need to build me. I’m going to blame it on us, not it. Okay. Yeah, and then also over the winter, I’m going to be doing some stuff on the trailer, hopefully, to get us ready for next year. I need an air conditioner. I need a few other things built.

[00:30:20] What did you see for that already?

[00:30:22] So I bought the… Oh, that’s called the standalone unit kind of thing. Kind of like a mini-split thing. No, no, no. No, this was the one for, like, your house that you can… You have to run the duct outside. It’s a standing… Almost looks like a big fan.

[00:30:37] All right, so yeah.

[00:30:37] It did nothing. It actually, I think, made it hotter inside. So after doing more research, I realized that that’s not a good thing to use for trailers. So I think I’m going to get a roof mount unit.

[00:30:47] Just a regular RV unit.

[00:30:48] Yeah. I found one I wanted, but it’s, I mean, I don’t need it now, so I might as well wait until February, March, so I don’t have, so it’s not my money tied up in it. But I did, however. I did get a couple cool things for the trailer. Oh, yeah? So I finally bought a generator. I was so jealous of Daniel’s generator that I knew I had to get my own, and I was planning on getting the same one that he had. He had a Generac something or another.

[00:31:15] Yeah, I can’t remember what size it is, but… I think his is a little bit bigger than the one I got. It’s, like, 50 pounds. It’s got a handle on it.

[00:31:21] Yeah, so mine’s, like, set up the same way. I didn’t show you a picture of it, but it’s a Cummins Onan P2500i. And bear with me here.

[00:31:33] His is really nice. Even though it’s a smaller physical size, it’s powerful enough. It powers my entire trailer with no problem, microwave.

[00:31:41] Yeah, so that’s what… Mine looks a lot like his, like, style-wise and stuff.

[00:31:45] Yeah, it’s almost like a kind of a clone, just not in the orange.

[00:31:49] Right. I mean, I think they all kind of look the same pretty much when you’re looking at a lot of that style, where it’s the quiet, like, the super quiet ones and stuff. But this is one, like I said, with Daniels, I was super impressed that I could stand, or I could literally straddle it and still talk on the phone and have no issues. Right. This is the same thing. So I found it.

[00:32:12] We had to take my sister’s camper in to be winterized because her husband also is deployed at this point, and she doesn’t drive it. So I took it in for her. And while I was waiting for them in the service department to, get it checked in and all that kind of stuff, I was kind of walking around and stuff, and I saw they had a whole display. They had a whole bunch of different generators out. And I was like, oh, that’s cool.

[00:32:33] And I saw some of these quiet ones and stuff, and they had one sitting out that was used for a really good price. And so I was like, oh, I’m not, you never know what you’re getting. But anyway, so I asked them about it, and they told me that one of their employees had used it at their house when we had storms. And so didn’t have a lot of runtime on it and that kind of stuff. They said it was very low run hours, but they couldn’t tell me how many. And you never know.

[00:33:06] You just can’t quite trust them. Not them, but just people in general when they’re wanting to sell something. So I told them, I was like, okay, I said, I’m very interested in it. I want to hear it run. So they had to go in the back, and they added gas to it because it had no gas and stuff in it. And, excuse me. And so we were like waiting for them to get that done. Then you could hear it start up, which it started up pretty quick.

[00:33:32] I mean, they were right behind like a door, so it’s loud enough to where you could still hear it run and stuff, but ended up, they had it run for five, 10 minutes, and I was like, cool. That’s fine. I’ll take it. So I bought it, got it home, started reading the manual for it, and there’s an hour meter on it. So I was like, oh, cool. Only way the hour meter works is if you’re running it. Like, you have to have it on so you can read it and stuff.

[00:33:56] It has a little digital readout and stuff. And so I started up, and where the hour meter is supposed to be, it just said zero. It had four zeros. I’m like, does this not work? Like, whatever. So I decided I’d plug a fan into it and run it for a while and stuff and just make sure everything was working okay. So I was checking it like every 15 minutes. So I started up, checked it fine, went and did some stuff, came back in 15 or 20 minutes, fine, still said zero.

[00:34:27] Came back half hour after it was running, still said zero. So I was like, it has to be broken. Like, that’s something weird. And so then after 45 minutes of it running, I came back and it said one. So it works. It apparently had been ran for between like, I don’t know, 15 minutes and a half hour or so. So apparently it counts in ones. It doesn’t do in quarters or whatever. Right. So it’s just whole hours. So it has an hour on it now after I ran it for 45 minutes. Cool.

[00:34:57] So I think I got a good deal. Yeah, you did. Pardon me while I take a drink. So now when we go to fields that don’t have electricity close, I can use that and not be super loud. The other thing I came across, I got an email from Starlink offering a free mini dish as long as you have, it’s a free mini dish that you’re borrowing. And then when you’re done with it, you send it back to them, but there’s no like rental fee or anything like that.

[00:35:32] So it’s $5 a month for super slow internet all the time. But then if you want to get like regular service for it, you can do that month at a time. So on standby mode, which on standby mode, I can still like watch Netflix. It’s weird. That’s enough. That’s what kind of what I thought. But anyway, if you want the high speed stuff like we have at the rest of the house, it’s half price of their normal or normal plan to for the life of the dish.

[00:36:00] Kind of like an Adeline type of situation. Oh, excuse me. So anyway, so now anytime we go somewhere, we will also have high speed internet if we’re in a dead zone or dead cell zone or something like that with my trailer.

[00:36:15] We’re going to have that all built into it also.

[00:36:17] It’s going to be I’m looking forward to next year. Should be a good year.

[00:36:20] Give you a place to live when Crystal kicks you out.

[00:36:22] Just in case. You never know.

[00:36:24] That’s where you’re going to keep mine in the backyard.

[00:36:27] OK, I’m going to go out there, honey.

[00:36:29] So I was looking at trying to find up some parts to put a 12 volt outlet in the back of the truck. Oh, that’d be a good idea.

[00:36:38] A little generator, not generator, inverter.

[00:36:41] Not necessarily an inverter. Just have none of my chargers are AC. So just throw a 12 volt tap to the back.

[00:36:49] Oh, 12 volt. I’m sorry. You said 12 volt and I went to 120 volt for some reason. Just out of zero. It’s government work. Yeah, that wouldn’t be too hard.

[00:36:57] No, it’s not too hard. I just I’ve been back and forth. It’s like I don’t really want to use a cigarette lighter adapter. But then again, I can’t really figure out what I want to use that I can put post out that would be safe.

[00:37:13] So I have I think I have extra ones, too. This has been several years ago. I ended up buying its amount that you drill through like the side of a trailer or something like that. It can be thin, so it could even be just like sheet metal, but it’s two posts, a positive and a negative post that you can unscrew like the it almost looks like binding posts. Kind of like what you would use on like stereo speakers and that kind of stuff,. So it’s kind of like that.

[00:37:43] And then it has where you can plug the banana plug into the front of it if you just wanted to go straight in. Oh, yeah. Something like that would almost be perfect. Yeah. I just need to find a nice cap on it so it’s not live.

[00:37:54] Something slide around the bed and short them out.

[00:37:56] You could even like honestly throw in a on off switch and you’re on the dash or something.

[00:38:02] Yeah, there’s actually one in there that’s a mystery switch. Came from the previous owner. Oh, there you go. Don’t know what it does. That might work fine. Somebody’s house is turning on and off.

[00:38:12] Something’s going on. You just don’t know what. Yeah. So anyway, so that was the project, but that’s definitely a next spring deal. Yeah, it’ll be a lot easier to do that than it would be to run underneath your hood like you do now.

[00:38:26] Yeah, I mean under the hood’s fine, but it’d just be nice to be able to sit on the tailgate and have something at a better height, a flat spot to put a charger and a battery, so it doesn’t go flopping down inside the engine bay.

[00:38:37] Yeah, I agree. That’s cool. That’ll be neat. We have a lot of stuff to do this winter and then a lot of house projects too. It’s going to take most of my time, so we’ll see how all that ends up.

[00:38:49] I have plans, but plans fall through because life gets in the way. Yeah.

[00:38:54] Yeah. Nothing ever goes as planned. Mm-mm.

[00:38:59] So, other thing I forgot I wanted to talk about, I said a while ago that I got that robotic mower and I had a few people email me and ask how that was going and stuff and I pretty much told them, I’ll let after I’ve had it for a while. I think I’ve had it long enough to where I’m comfortable to talk a little bit about it because I’m going to be honest, at first I was not thrilled with it. Can you get a snowplow attachment? No. You can with other ones.

[00:39:28] Have you seen those?

[00:39:29] I have not, but I’ve seen where it’s like, that looks like you just found a plow on it right there.

[00:39:35] So, they do have some out. They’re a lot more expensive than the Limo. I think it’s the Yarbo or something. You can actually get like an actual snow blower attachment for it. Oh, a blower. A blower, yeah. And it’s, I think it’s like five grand.

[00:39:50] Yeah. Yeah. I can shovel a lot of snow for five grand.

[00:39:53] Exactly. But anyway, no. So, the first unit I got broke, they sent me another one. No questions asked. I was, I was happy with how that went because I wasn’t sure how, some people are, well, you got to do this, got to do that. It was a, here’s pictures, this is what happened. And the next day I got an email saying, hey, sorry, we’re going to send you another unit. But, so, sent me another one and it’s held up much better, but it does have some issues.

[00:40:24] So, there’s grass that gets clogged around the drive wheels, but apparently they have come up with a scraper attachment that they’re going to be sending me. and also, so the, the tracks, I guess, have wire wrapped in them. Yeah, that makes sense. That’s pretty common for a rubber type track. And so, I started to see some of that wire coming out of the tracks. Oh, really? Which I wasn’t quite sure about. So, I just kind of cut it off, with wire cutters and stuff.

[00:40:56] And it’s still been working, but I emailed them on that too. And I got the same response back. We’re sorry. We’ll send you another pair. And what made me think of talking about this now is because literally an hour before we got on, you record the UPS delivered those tracks, which I had actually forgotten about because that’s been like a week or so ago that I had emailed them on it. so yeah, just brand new tracks, no questions asked.

[00:41:21] I haven’t. I mean I haven’t- paid anything extra. This is all under warranty. So it also used to have issues. I only say used to because I think it’s a different time of year. That makes it not as bad now. But the design on this is not great because the charging contacts are underneath.

[00:41:40] And where the dirt and crud.

[00:41:42] Right. And so I’ve had issues earlier in the year, with grass that was wet from growing. I mean, not like wet from rain, just grass juice, right? getting on them and then you’d have to clean them off. since I’ve only been mulching leaves and stuff here in the last month or so, I haven’t had any issues with that. Self-cleaning. Yeah, pretty much. But they are working on a, they’re working on a fix for that that will be sent out to everybody too. Cool.

[00:42:10] So once again, everything is, they’re being taken care of at least. and then the other thing, it came with the two and a half amp charger that sucked. It was taking like five or six hours to charge on that. they sent me a 10 amp charger, which is what, everything’s supposed to be coming with. They just didn’t have them ready at first. And now it charges within about an hour. And so I can cut a lot more in a day.

[00:42:35] So it’s, it’s feeding itself pretty quick.

[00:42:37] Yeah.

[00:42:38] Yeah. So, I mean, knock on wood. So far, so good. So far, so good. If everything continues to go well and see, that’s a nice thing too. So we’re coming into our non-mowing season where all these other countries are getting into their mowing season. So they’re going to have some growing pains over there that I should hopefully not have to deal with until spring when they have fixes and stuff. Yeah. Updates, updates, updates. Right.

[00:43:03] Oh, and that’s the other thing we get like over the air updates, like once a week, they’re constantly improving things and working on them. And I can tell a big difference in, in, in the performance it has now and how it mows and how it responds now, as opposed to when we first got it.

[00:43:18] So, so it’s like, is it the logic changes for it, how it deals with obstacles?

[00:43:22] How it does a lot of stuff has gotten better. It’s much smoother. It used to be a lot more jerky, like with takeoff, with turns and all that kind of stuff. They’ve kind of got that smoothed out to where it’s not.

[00:43:33] It, it, they ramp speeds up a little slower.

[00:43:35] So it’s got a little bit more control. I’m sure that’s going to be better on the, the drive gears and stuff in the long run too. Get that shock out of it. Right. they’ve done some updates with how your settings and stuff for mowing have gotten a lot more, I don’t want to say cleaner, but a lot more, user-friendly and warding and all that kind of stuff too.

[00:43:57] But yeah, so far it’s been a good mower. User interfaces have gotten better.

[00:44:01] Yeah. Cool. That’s neat. So far. Yeah. That’s honestly about all I have to talk about.

[00:44:08] I still keep my 1983 John Deere alive.

[00:44:11] Yeah. Well, honestly, like I have not touched our riding mower for probably three or four months now.

[00:44:17] Yeah. Mine’s about ready to be ejected out of the garage so I can put the car back.

[00:44:21] Yeah. It is that time of year. Yeah. Put the Mustang away for the year. But it’s like I said, I’ve, I’ve enjoyed having a little bit extra time back. It’s not been problem-free. Don’t think you’re going to get one of these and then just let it go and not have to do anything with it. Like you still have things you have to do. It’s gotten stuck a couple of times. It’s,. Does it send you a message saying, hey, I’m stuck? It does. It does.

[00:44:44] And that if the blades, and that’s one of the things in the update too. So it used to be if it mowed over something big and a blade got caught and stopped moving, it would just keep going. And it would cut like half. So you got big streaks. Right. Now it stops and says, hey, I have a blade jam, which, I mean, it’s only happened to me two or three times. Please come help.

[00:45:08] And that’s usually when it’s in the fall and you have big branches that have come down that’s going over those. So it’s been, yeah. It’s never actually gotten, like when we were testing the one at the field, if you just had a very, a little divot, that thing would get stuck and you’d have to go, unstick it. And this thing has never actually gotten stuck like that.

[00:45:31] Like I had one time, I don’t know how it did it, but it got stuck on a, a root that was coming up around the tree. how they kind of come up, they come up and it had mowed up to it and it was trying to back up and that got caught underneath the mower deck. And it was backing up with so much force that it actually bent that branch. And when you looked at the, like the grass around it, it had dug itself down like a quarter inch to get itself out and it got itself out.

[00:46:03] The grass was a little worse off, but I, that’s okay. We live in the country. Yeah. It’ll, it’ll grow back. So yeah, I’m happy with it.

[00:46:11] Like I said, we’ll see in the long run, but yeah, good.

[00:46:16] Anything else?

[00:46:18] No. I would love to do more airplane stuff, but it’s just not been lately.

[00:46:22] We’ll get there. I, this is going to be a good ish winter, I think.

[00:46:27] Yeah.

[00:46:28] Maybe. I’m trying to stay optimistic.

[00:46:30] You gotta, we got some stuff coming up, so.

[00:46:34] Yeah. Oh, that’s right. There’s a couple of swap meets coming up, aren’t there? Yeah. I’m only going to make one. And I’m going to make any because I’m teaching class again. Oh, you suck. I know. Okay.

[00:46:43] And I do it for free, which sucks even more.

[00:46:46] Why? That’s just not fair. Okay. Anything else? Are we good? That’s it. I’m good. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Until next time, I’m Ron. And I’m Dave. Good night. Good night.

[00:46:59] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions, or to give any feedback, connect with us at rcplanelab.com or email us direct at either ron at rcplanelab.com or tom at rcplanelab.com. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please subscribe, rate, and review us on your favorite podcast app. Until next time, may your landings be gentle. Thank you.