Ep 3: RC Planes for Beginners

[00:00:05] Welcome to RC Plane Lab, a podcast for anyone interested in rc airplane. We’ll share tips and tricks on how to build models and talk about successful flights, epic crashes and everything in between. Visit us at rcplanelab.com to sign up for our email list and to ask us questions. You can also text us or leave us a voicemail at 818-351-9846. Please help us out by rating and reviewing us in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now here are your.

[00:00:35] Hosts: Ron and Tom. Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I’m Tom and I’m Ron. This is episode number two that kicks off our regular release schedule. We hope to give you guys an episode every week, but please excuse us if our schedules force us to miss a week every now and

[00:00:52] Then, yeah, that happens from time to time. It does not a plan, but we’ll see how it goes. Yeah, okay, on today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about rc planes for beginners, so let’s talk about what. Do you need to fly an rc airplane? Now, there’s a few things you’re going to need. Obviously, you’re going.

[00:01:09] To need a transmitter in an airplane, probably going to need a place to fly them, right, depending on the type of airplane. You’re going to need a battery, a battery charger, maybe some fuel if you if you choose to go the gas powered or nitro powered route, and probably would be really helpful to have somebody to help you with the hobby. Yeah, I think that would be a good place for people.

[00:01:32] To start actually right, reach out to your local, your local flying club. Most of the time, a club will actually get you out. Let you fly an airplane right before you make any kind of financial commitment.

[00:01:44] Right, for example, our, our club- we have a dedicated trainer that the club owns and that we use to then introduce people to the hobby. So most clubs have something, I think, similar to that. Yeah, because

[00:01:57] This can be fairly expensive to get into, can be, doesn’t have to be, doesn’t have to be, no right, but it’s it’s. It’s good to kind of dip your toe in the water before you dive in, I guess, yeah, to see if it’s something that you really want to want to try. It’s fun. Once you get started, and I think most people that do will kind of be taken by it and want to buy their own airplane and then another airplane, right, and then another airplane, and then another airplane, yeah, and then another airplane, right.

[00:02:25] Right. So for everybody listening, the, the perfect number of airplanes that you should own is actually a formula, really. Yeah, and the formula is n plus one, whereas n is the number of airplanes that you currently own. I like that. So that is the perfect number of airplanes. Yeah, because, oddly enough, you can always find room for another one. Yeah, it’s weird how that works, but, yeah, someone, someone to help them in the hobby. I think is definitely a, an instrument for success.

[00:02:56] Yeah, and you can do it. You can get started on your own if you don’t have a club around. You can. There’s a lot of good youtube videos on how to get started. There’s a lot of good podcasts out there- well, at least one good one that we know of. I hope you’re talking about this. Of course, I am okay good, shameless plug, but no like. Seriously, though, if you can talk to somebody local, I would recommend doing that first. If you can’t do some research, kind of look up how to fly.

[00:03:25] Right, buy a simulator, oh gosh. Yes, I mean I’m glad you said that, because I was. I was hoping we were going to get to that soon because, as some of us know, simulators, when you crash, are really cheap to repair. Yeah, you just hit reset and you go again like magic. Yeah, so I actually bought.

[00:03:47] A simulator after I bought an airplane- okay, and had a couple flights on under my belt before I bought the simulator and it made. It made learning much, much quicker, much easier and much cheaper, much.

[00:03:59] Cheaper, yes, so I, I would recommend doing that first. When I, when I was working back in the hobby shop part time, there was many times where I would actually recommend buying a simulator to customers before they bought their first airplane. Yeah well, number one: I mean it’s great entertainment. I mean regardless of what the simulator costs. I mean even if it’s a hundred bucks or whatever, it’s great entertainment. On a rainy day when you can’t fly or can’t really do anything outside, you fire up a simulator and learn a new skill. Yeah, so yeah, simulators are.

[00:04:35] Definite, definite, plus. Yeah, I actually. The first time I went in to buy an airplane, the gentleman that owned the hobby shop had a, a nitro plan hanging up and that’s what I wanted first. And he told me: buy this rtf kit and get yourself comfortable with that, and then come back and see me in a couple months and we’ll get you something different, which is what I did. But before I bought the, the nitro plane, I ended up buying a simulator to practice up first. Yeah, I noticed, I said rtf. Some people

[00:05:06] Might not know what that means so why don’t we let’s cover a few terms okay we’ll start with rtf.

[00:05:10] Would you like to define it for me? Sure, so rtf means ready to fly and generally speaking, it’s. It’s just like the name suggests you. You buy a box with an airplane in it and it has everything in the box to make it ready to fly. That means it has the transmitter, has the airplane, has all that other stuff that we said you might need to go flying, already in the box. You put a few things together really quick assembly, charge up some batteries and you go fly.

[00:05:42] Yeah, normally it’s a couple hours. Put it together right, put the tail on, put the wings on. Usually some decals charge a battery. Sometimes you have to bind, sometimes you don’t. I think it depends.

[00:05:56] You probably do. It’s probably a good idea to rebind anyway, but the instruction manuals are usually really good about. Yeah, they’ll tell you step to step by step what to do so. But that’s an rtf. So what about an ARF? Or an ARF? So that is an almost ready to fly. It’s a bit of a misnomer, so it’s. It’s. It’s kind of almost ready to fly. It’s most of the construction has been done for you, so there’s some minor assembly usually required that requires glue usually.

[00:06:26] Gluing wing halves together, gluing the tail together, managing the control surfaces, gluing them on things like that, and usually some bolt-on type stuff. You bolt the landing gear on or the motor or what have you. But generally speaking, an ARF will not include any electronics and more often than not it won’t include any kind of power source, either electric or nitro or gas. Okay what?

[00:06:51] About you might see bnf on a box at the hobby shop what does that mean yeah bind and fly that’s what.

[00:06:57] That stands for, and that means everything in the box is usually kind of included, including the electronics that you will then bind to your existing transmitter. So that sort of implies that you already own a compatible transmitter with that particular platform, and so servos are installed.

[00:07:16] Already on those or okay so it’s pretty much ready to go it’s pretty much a ready to fly minus your.

[00:07:23] Transmitter minus your transmitter, and sometimes they come with the batteries and chargers if they’re smaller airplanes, and if they’re larger airplanes they usually probably don’t come with that, or maybe.

[00:07:31] They’re available with that you just have to check what’s on the on the end of the box to.

[00:07:35] See what’s included. But okay, almost, a ready to fly minus the transmitter. Okay, what about a pnp? A pnp stands for plug and play and it is basically like a ready to fly minus your receiver. So this implies that you already have a radio system of your own transmitter and receiver, that you then take your receiver that you already own and you plug it into the airplane and then it becomes ready to fly.

[00:08:00] So with pnp it doesn’t matter what kind of radio system you have. As long as you have a receiver, you can plug it in and you’re good to go. Generally speaking, that’s correct, okay. So for the next one: we don’t see very often anymore. What about my favorite? Yeah. What about a kit? Yeah, so a kit is.

[00:08:17] Basically just a box of wood. Right, generally speaking, it was a box of wood. Sometimes those parts were die cut, sometimes they were pre-machine cut and sanded, but they were wooden parts that you glued together to make an airplane that you then covered with a covering of some kind and, yeah, no electronics or anything like that. It was just literally a box of wood.

[00:08:44] A set of plans and an instruction manual. Well, and sometimes it would include, like, maybe push rods or landing gear- if that’s made of metal, sometimes, right, right, yeah. Or wire sometimes.

[00:08:56] There was. There was a- sometimes a hardware packet in the kit that would include, like landing gear wire or push rods, like you said, or engine mounts things, or a cowl or a cowl. It might have some pre-formed parts in there also. Yeah, that’s the way I. That’s the way I got.

[00:09:14] In and I don’t regret doing it that way at all yeah it’s good to build I enjoy building but I don’t.

[00:09:21] Know if I’d want to start out that way, right? Well, I mean, and the stuff that’s out there today is super, super convenient and you can get flying so quickly. Now it just it still amazes me even to this day, from where I came from, the options that people have now to get in the hobby.

[00:09:38] Are almost endless. Well, not only that, but there’s a lot of technologies out that help you fly. Also, if you’re in the hobby shop looking at airplanes, you might see something on the box.

[00:09:49] That says as3x. Yeah, as3x is a is an active stability on three axis. Thank you, yeah, I always get the get the acronym messed up, but basically what it is, it’s a receiver with three gyros in it, that sort of correct automatically without any pilot input flight conditions. So it makes for a smoother flying airplane and easier to fly airplane and it is a tool that helps people learn to fly that.

[00:10:21] I think along with some of these other technologies that we’ll eventually get to.

[00:10:26] Could also be a crutch. Yeah, as long as you’re using it, right, it’s. It’s not made to be flown with forever. It’s made to be a training aid, right, normally. Right and normally. There’s three modes on it, I think right most of the time. So you’ll have one where it’s got full control over the airplane. You’re telling it what to do, but it’s not going to let you roll, it’s not going to let you go climb too high, it’s not gonna let you dive too fast, right? Second mode is going to give you a little bit more freedom, but it’s still going to kind of be there in case something happens. It’s.

[00:10:56] Gonna. It will help with wind and all that. It’ll keep you level when you’re supposed to be flying level, and then you can turn it off completely and that’s when you’re actually flying the airplane right, which is what your, your goal should be right. Your goal, your goal, should be to be the pilot in command, right. Yeah, you don’t pilot in command. You can use, you can use those for help right when you’re learning. But once you’re past that, you shouldn’t necessarily need to be using that at all. Exactly, and it’s the same with the, the safe technology that’s on some of these other ones.

[00:11:27] Right, which is: yeah, that’s another, that’s another auto sort of correcting technology, and I think they’ve even taken it. I haven’t explored it fully, but I think they’ve. They’ve taken the safe technology now to where I think, when it’s on its full control, I think it will like: only let you even bank just up like 15 degrees or something like it. It’s amazing how much control these things can actually.

[00:11:52] Take away from a pilot- yeah, there’s actually some out now too- trainers and such- that will have a geofence which is just an invisible boundary and if it goes too far away it will come fly back to you. Yeah, you can. You can even like for people learning to fly. If you don’t have the buddy box system, with that plane, you can actually push a button and it will just sit there and fly in circles on its own so you can hand it over to somebody else. If you’re diving or something like that. It will actually go into level flight and just fly in circles until you can hand the transmitter over.

[00:12:24] To somebody else to fix it for you. That’s oh, and for anybody listening, a buddy box is a, a system that we use- experienced pilots use to train new pilots, where we actually tie sort of two transmitters together electronically, via accord or new ones, or wireless, yeah, bluetooth, and we can take control of the airframe or the airplane whenever the student gets in trouble. That’s a.

[00:12:49] Buddy box. Yeah, so you push a button when you’re the one, when you’re the trainer, you push a button and then that gives the other person control. You have to hold the button down the whole time or else you get control back. So they have control. When you have the button pushed down, you let go. If they get in trouble, you can just let go and take over, and that way you don’t have any bad endings.

[00:13:11] Yep yeah so I mean did you want to maybe touch on the different types of.

[00:13:18] Construction. Yeah, so biggest differences you’re going to see is foam and like a built-up model, which is usually balsa, wooden type model- my favorite, mine too- for getting in, though I think you ought to look for a good ready to fly kit made of foam. Yeah, and, and I’m- I’m the old guy in the room-

[00:13:42] Old school guy loves kits, loves wooden airplanes and even. Well, I do too. Even with all of that and coming in the hobby, how I got in the hobby many, many years ago building my first airplane and such. Even today I it’s hard for me not to recommend kind of what you’re talking about.

[00:14:01] Well, it’s just so much easier. Yeah, it’s so much cheaper, cheaper. That’s really that’s the thing. And when you get the wooden built-up kits, you don’t get the, the stability control, the as3x, the safe technology. Those are, those are made for beginners, right, and most of the time, beginners just.

[00:14:22] Start with foam airplanes and there’s there’s lots of options out there with the foam oh yeah and they.

[00:14:28] Change yearly they do. It’s hard to keep up with what’s new and what’s good. Technology moves so fast. I agree. I got online the other day just to do a quick kind of search because I knew

[00:14:39] We were going to talk about this and, man, the options that are out there, just it’s staggering. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s honestly. There are so many options out there without somebody giving you their recommendations. It’s actually kind of I would think, for a newcomer to the hobby would be almost intimidating. Yeah, would you, would you say, would you have a, like a recommended size airplane that you would recommend to somebody just getting in? Let’s see, I prefer going a little bit bigger.

[00:15:07] I know they have some small 12, even 24 inch wingspan, but to me 36 to 42 is a good wingspan. Yeah, it handles the wind better. Right, you’re gonna have a little bit of weight to it, so it’s gonna fly a little better. I think. More important than size, though, is going to be wing configuration. Most of your- your trainers, will have dihedral built in, right for those that don’t know what dihedral is, if you

[00:15:34] Want to tell us. Yeah, sure, so a dihedral is the it. Basically, if you, if you look at the, the leading edge of the wing head on, you’re looking right at the wing. Dihedral is a reference to the angle that the wing makes towards the center. So, if you can imagine, you take half the wing, lay it flat on a table and the opposite wing tip is probably going to have some sort of gap under it under a flat surface, if that makes sense. Yeah, so if you’re looking at it, it’s going to be a very shallow v, exactly, exactly, and generally speaking, the more, the more dihedral or the more v-ish, the

[00:16:07] Shape generally speaking the more stable the airplane itself is yeah and that so the reason.

[00:16:13] For that is, when a wing is flat, it creates more lift than when it’s not flat, so it’s going to level itself out, as that is that one wing when you’re banking in a turn is that one wing is more level with the horizon, is going to create more lift than the wing that’s kind of up in the air, and so they will kind of equalize themselves out in order to fly straight and level. Yeah,

[00:16:40] I’d say that’s a fairly accurate, easy description. Yeah, yeah, so there’s a lot of. There’s a lot of other factors, well, aerodynamic factors, things like that. But yeah, that generally speaking. Yeah, if you can imagine a flat wing gliding through the air, just a completely flat one, it’s going to produce the most lift when it’s kind of horizontal to the surface in the vertical axis, right that.

[00:17:04] Makes sense. Yeah, yeah, without getting into it too much. So exactly without the dihedral, when you’re flying at 30 degrees or whatever, you’re going to stay at that angle. It’s not going to be self correcting, right? Exactly which is what makes it so much easier for a beginner when you have that dihedral built in, because you don’t have to worry as much about what angle you’re at. And I could be.

[00:17:23] Wrong, but most of the most of the airplanes I looked at online the other day when I was looking, most of those they all had a fair amount of dihedral. Yeah, trainers that are designed to get people in the hobby are going to have a lot of that. Yeah, trainers do, yeah, and that’s. I mean that’s.

[00:17:40] Just easy for somebody to get started with without having to worry too much about their attitude in the.

[00:17:45] Air right what would you say to newcomers about airplanes that really look cool and look like.

[00:17:53] Airplanes, I would say those are awesome, but don’t begin with them, yeah, yeah, I mean, trainers are made as trainers for a reason: they’re made to fly well, they’re made to be forgiving, they’re made to be easy and quick to get in the air. They don’t necessarily look like well. I shouldn’t say that it’s possible. They don’t look like real airplanes. They won’t look like a cessna, they won’t look like a jet fighter or even an old like world war ii bomb or anything like that and the

[00:18:25] Reason is those are harder to fly. Yeah, generally speaking they are. Yeah, so stick with the trainer. That’s what it’s made for, exactly. Save that for your third or fourth or fifth plane. That’s when you can kind of get into what, what kind of airplane when you. That’s when you can buy.

[00:18:42] What you like, the looks of right. Yeah, so, so we’re. You’re talking about dihedral and, and usually scale or real looking airplanes that you would see out on a on a ramp somewhere are going to be lacking that, that dihedral function that you were talking about. I think dihedral also plays into to one of these other topics we wanted to cover about how many channels would you, would you?

[00:19:09] Say you should begin with: yeah, I’d skip right past the three channel and go to four channel. Yeah, why is that? Well, so my first plane was a three channel. I- I happen to agree, by the way, but, yeah, explain that. Yeah, so my first plane was the three channel. It had a lot of dihedral built in the wing. It was self-riding because of the wing, but it did not have ailerons, right, so that’s all it flew. Well, sure, you can get three channels that fly okay, but the difference between that is when you’re going to a four channel, your, your rudder control changes hands. So I’m pause that for just

[00:19:46] A second. I’m sure for our listeners I’m gonna channels. We’re referring to the number of functions that the airplane can accept from the transmitter. Yeah, it’s how many separate lines of communication?

[00:19:56] There are between the receiver and the transmitter so a three channel has what three channels then.

[00:20:01] Three channel has your throttle right, has your elevator and has your rudder, and then so a fourth channel adds what ailerons? Which? Those are the ones that are on the wing, correct, but that’s what controls your role, controls the role about the longitudinal. Yeah, right, yeah, I just wanted to make a quick note of that because there is a difference, yeah, three channel versus four channel. So usually, when, when new folks come into the hobby, and if they really do enjoy it and they have a successful entry, let’s say, into the hobby, they’re going to graduate to a four channel or more airplane.

[00:20:37] Right, yeah, so yeah, I think I think you- and I think pretty much along the same lines here- just go ahead and avoid the three channel type airplanes right off the bat. Yeah, because you don’t learn bad habits.

[00:20:49] Like I said, switching the rudder from thumb to thumb is something that you don’t want to have to relearn. When you’re going from a three channel to a four channel, it just makes it more difficult. Taxing on the ground, it makes it more difficult. When you’re trying to take off. Just stick with the.

[00:21:05] Four channel to begin with and you’ll be fine, right, so yeah, so we kind of covered the, the, the construction, different types of airplane, things like that. One thing maybe we could, we could talk about is the, the difficulty, should the need arise, to repair an airplane, and there’s different types of repair techniques for different types of airplanes. I’ll say that repairing a wood airplane is going to be more time consuming and if it can be repaired, yeah, it’s.

[00:21:37] Going to be much more difficult. Foam is nice because usually you can tape it, usually you can throw some popsicle sticks on it, maybe some bamboo skewers, just kind of get it put back together and you’re flying again. When foam breaks, it’s not difficult to rig it up and make it fly right, whereas that’s not something you’re going to do with a covered up wood airplane, right. Well, and then you’ve got you.

[00:22:05] Know, on a balsa airplane or a wood construction airplane you’ve got the like. You mentioned that the covering that is also then going to need patched even after you perform the repair. So that adds a whole another level of complexity. So the foam airplanes are great for beginners because, should the need arise, they are much easier to repair. Yeah, like I said, if you take some tape with you, take some.

[00:22:27] Skewers and stuff, you most of the time will be able to just kind of put it back together and get back up flying. Really, the extra weight that glue adds and tape adds is not going to make any difference to how it flies when you’re first getting into it. So right, you’re fine, just taking stuff like that for a hard landing, right, if you crash anything too much you’re not gonna be able to fix it.

[00:22:51] Whether it’s wood or foam, right which kind of which kind of ties into my the thing I’d like to talk about next: how much should somebody spend on their first airplane? I mean, if you crash it to the point where you can’t repair it, hopefully you’re not out a whole lot of money. So how much should somebody expect to pay, or could they expect to pay, depending on how they choose to get in the hobby?

[00:23:14] Yeah, so there’s a lot of different manufacturers out there that make radio equipment. When you buy, like an rtf kit, like, okay, so the first rtf kit that I bought, or airplane that I bought, I have nothing left of it. The airplane, like I said, it flew well, sure, but it outlived its purpose. Right now I wasn’t gonna fly a three channel and there was no reason because I, after buying it, I knew I wouldn’t recommend anybody else start off with one, so I didn’t want to give anybody else the bad habits.

[00:23:46] By learning how to use it also the transmitters that come with them don’t always come with full.

[00:23:52] Fledged transmitters. And I was going to say that, generally speaking, even if you had started with it with a- let’s just call it a foamy four channel airplane as a beginner, even if you had started that way, chances are, if you stay in the hobby, eventually you’re not going to own that airplane anymore, either because you’ve passed it on to maybe somebody else to get into the hobby, or you’ve crashed it to the point where you don’t want to repair it anymore, right where you’ve outgrown the transmitter, yeah, the transmitter. So I would say, even had they started with a four channel,

[00:24:22] Foamy. Eventually you’re going to outgrow it right and you’re going to want something else. So you’re going to want, like a modern computer type radio to where you can have multiple models on it. We both fly dx8s which are actually outdated. They’re a little older but they still work. They, yeah, they hold what? 30 Models, I think something like that. Yeah, so as long as you don’t have 30 airplanes, I think.

[00:24:42] You can hold more if you’ve got the cool little oh that yeah you’re right you can put an sd card in.

[00:24:47] There but I’m not either way I’m not quite there yet I think I’m at what 22 slots filled or something.

[00:24:52] Like that I so, yeah, I mine’s full. But I have a lot of profiles in there that are of club members when I’m right, helping them fly their airplanes or whatever. So, yeah, mine’s full. And but I mean I have the sd card that I can. But yeah, like you said you’ll, you’ll outgrow the, the, the airframe and the transmitter that comes with it. Usually so, but I mean getting back to the cost,

[00:25:19] That’s such a you can spend as much as you want to spend. I mean you can, you can, you can go into it and get cheaper equipment and they usually work just fine most of the time. You’re not going to have that for the long run. So start off really as cheap as you can go if you want to. Just if you’re not going to go fly with somebody to field, get your own airplane. Try it. Just try it out, see if you like it. I would still go with something in the 36 to 42 inch wing- spanish just.

[00:25:51] Because that, like I said, flies better than a small one. Right, they fly very well, you can get. They get a little twitchy. When you get down to that like 12, 18, 24 inch wingspan, they don’t fly nearly as well. They’re a lot lighter, they’re affected by wind. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say

[00:26:04] The bigger airplanes, and by bigger I mean the ones you’re talking about 36 to 42 inch or so. They’re a little bit heavier, so they’re not as they don’t get thrown around like a smaller airplane does. Yeah, and just like you said, yeah, it flies a lot better. And the other thing:

[00:26:20] Too. Though, if you do decide to go that route and not fly at a field like an ama sanctioned field, be very careful where you fly. Don’t fly over people, don’t fly around people. Just make sure you’re not being a bad steward to the hobby, right? Don’t give everybody else a bad name, because a lot of people overlook that. Yeah, don’t get permission before you fly somewhere. Don’t assume that you can go to your local church and just fly out of their parking lot or

[00:26:50] The local walmart or even parks, and you’ll find most. Most places. I can’t generalize, but most places that I have ever asked to fly a little electric airplane in the parking lot or whatever have never had a problem with that. Yeah, but it’s always better to ask, it’s definitely.

[00:27:09] Better to ask and you should absolutely, yeah, especially if it’s not your property. Exactly, you just kind of have to make sure that you’re trespassing. Yeah, that’s true, I mean, and just remember these, these are toys, but they can hurt you, sure they can. You have to be careful. The propeller spins very fast. It can cut you, it can, it can be, it can cause harm, not only to.

[00:27:31] You, but to property. So I mean even these, even these smaller foamy trainers that are, let’s say, 32 inch, wingspans, though they weigh. What a couple of pounds, three pounds. Let’s say that something like that, traveling at 40 mile an hour, hits something, it could definitely do some damage. Yeah, I can don’t want that. Break a window down a car, yeah, yeah, there’s just a lot of stuff that.

[00:27:52] You have to be careful with right, but yeah, as long as you’re careful, know where you’re flying, get a good trainer airplane, get something that they can grow with you a little bit, yeah, but

[00:28:04] Just don’t expect to have it forever. I don’t think right and that’s. I think that’s a. I think that’s a, a fair trade-off for learning, because I suppose there’s somebody out there that will- will try the hobby and they’ll do it the right way and they’ll have the right equipment and they’ll have help from a friend or an experienced pilot and they’ll decide they don’t like it. I can’t imagine anybody coming to that conclusion: yeah, but it could happen. Sure, and better to have gone in and spent the minimum amount possible to determine that. Yeah, but that’s a, that’s.

[00:28:42] A cheap a cheap price or a fair trade-off if you ask me should you decide to continue in.

[00:28:49] The hobby because you did it the right way, yeah. And then if you go spend a bunch of money on your first airplane and you crash it, you’re going to be upset and you’re really going to be most of the time you’re not going to want to go back right. You’re going to take some time to kind of think about: what did I do right? How much did I just waste? Yeah, how much money just did I?

[00:29:09] Throw to throw away because I it’s easy to go to think those things upon your.

[00:29:15] First crash? Yeah, I’ll say that every time I’ve crashed on a simulator I’ve never had that thought. No strange, and you can fly a lot of different airplanes on a simulator. Yeah, learn a lot of.

[00:29:27] Different tricks too. Yeah, I do want to say one more thing. You mentioned just a little bit ago that you could go cheap on the equipment. I just want to, I just want to make a quick comment about going cheap on equipment. I’ve learned this lesson, unfortunately, more than I care to admit. You get what you pay for. I’m going to say that. So, yes, there are places out there that you can order stuff, for instance, I’m going to say, I’m just going to say electronics. Let’s say eventually, if

[00:29:59] You decide to stay in the hobby, you’re going to want more airplanes because remember, like I said, the perfect number of airplanes plus one, plus one. So the more airplanes you have, the more electronics you’re going to need. You’re going to need servos and a receiver and batteries for each airplane. You don’t want to have three airplanes and only one set of electronics for each one or for one and then be switching it. That’s just no fun and time consuming, right, sometimes the way we install the electronics, that’s just not feasible. So you’ll want electronics for each airplane and, like

[00:30:32] You said there’s cheap equipment out there, but don’t, please, don’t skimp on the control portions of your electronics, for instance the receiver, transmitter servos. These days, I mean, let’s be honest, depending they’re all made kind of in the little nine gram ones that

[00:30:54] You get for three bucks a piece I fly with those on smaller airplanes I’ve never had a problem I do.

[00:30:59] Too, but I have had problems with the chinese knockoff. I’ll just say it: receivers- I’ve had a couple of them- cause some nicer airplanes to meet their demise and I just I want other people to learn from sort of- and not that it was a mistake, but my lesson that I learned: don’t skimp, please don’t skimp on the, on the receivers, especially. My only thing with that- and I know the

[00:31:29] Receiver brand you’re talking about and I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna name it right, because I have flown with them also right, and they have been great for me, right, I’ve never had a problem with one of those name brand ones I have had a problem with. I have lost at least one, maybe two planes that had the name brand receiver and I had the same problems with those that you had with the, the knockoff brand. No kidding. So I mean it does happen, I guess. Yeah, that’s, that’s the unfortunate.

[00:32:00] Part of flying, like if I crash because I did something, I’m okay with that because I can learn from it. Yeah, if I crash because I lose signal, if I crash because a servo locks up, if I crash because any other reason that’s not in my control, then that’s when I really get discouraged and have

[00:32:23] A have issues, yeah, well, that’s understandable. But okay, well, I mean, I guess if there’s an upside to that whole debate, at least a if there is an upside, at least, because there’s never an upside to crashing an airplane, no, but if there is an upside to owning name brand equipment that fails, at least you have some sort of factory support. Usually fairly close by, because they’re all located in champagne, the headquarters for most of them are in champagne and the customer

[00:32:56] Service. That’s where they run out of, even if the product comes from somewhere else. Yeah, at least you have that. That’s illinois, right? Yeah, at least you have that right. So these other ones that, the ones that I’m talking about, that we won’t name, there, there is no, there is really no support, like even in my example, I called the place where I bought it and their answer was basically: sorry, yeah, I mean in that when it was a translation from another language that I got, okay.

[00:33:33] Well then, see, I’ve never called a place and had because of an issue like that, what, what, what should I have done then when I lost an airplane because of a name, brand sure, yep, a failure. Well, I mean first.

[00:33:47] Of all I mean if you can not now we’re hopefully a beginner we’ll never have to we’ll never have to.

[00:33:53] Deal with this yeah we’re probably getting off topic but I’m I’m curious so enlighten me please but.

[00:33:57] Yeah, in your troubleshooting, post crash or post incident, we’ll say: if in your troubleshooting you have definitely narrowed it down, like you’ve, you’ve taken your servos and plugged them into another system and all the servos are perfect, and the battery pack you, you hook it onto your voltage, your volt meter or your load meter, what, what have you, and it checks. Good, if you can ultimately narrow it down to the transmitter or receiver, then me personally, I’m calling the company and saying hey.

[00:34:30] Listen, I had this issue, everything. I’ve flown this system before, no problems. Usually it’s been my experience there. I’ll just go ahead and say horizon, customer service in this case- were very, very helpful to me and they, they offered to: hey, send us the stuff we’ll, we’ll run it through our diagnostics. Whether they did or not, who knows, but they at least they offered and I

[00:35:00] Went ahead and I did that. This has been a few years ago, but I sent them my dx8 and I sent them the receiver that had failed, or at least that I thought had failed, and the two satellites that were in it or what were with it, and they had it for I mean it was really quick turnaround. I think it was like a week and a half. I had it back in two weeks and I had a brand new receiver and three new brand new remotes. And they said that they ran a diagnostic on the transmitter and the transmitter was fine. And then they also told me what was wrong with the original receiver wasn’t kind of recovered under warranty.

[00:35:33] Because unfortunately it was a voltage spike, that this is what they attributed it to. But at least, at least I got something back and I got an answer. Yeah, and someone willing to help when you say remotes.

[00:35:45] For those that don’t know because that might be this is a beginner episode so right so some of the.

[00:35:52] Some of the- if you stay in the hobby, some of your more complex airplanes will have a more complex control system. So spectrum, in this case it was a. I think it was an ar8000, I think it’s forgive me, I don’t know for exactly what the model number was, but anyway it was a receiver and it used two what we call satellite receivers. So spectrum they use really, really short. So

[00:36:19] Satellite receivers the same as remotes when you say it that way I’m sorry yeah satellite and.

[00:36:23] Remote are kind of interchangeable terms when it comes to radio equipment and airplanes.

[00:36:30] But anyway, this one had two satellite receivers and they use these so that we can plug them into different or route them into different areas of the airframe to get a maximum exposure to the signal from the transmitter. So they’ll use a main receiver and then there’ll be two remote or satellite receivers that plug into the receiver and you stretch them out and into the airframe so they can get a better look at the signal from the transmitter. And normally you face those.

[00:36:57] Different, different directions. So pretty much it’s just a different antenna. Like more antenna coverage is what they’re going for in the airplane. Yep, easy to think of it that way. Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:07] So okay, but anyway that I just wanted to touch on the, on the cheap equipment. It is out there and even though we have differing opinions, I would say that even if you’ve had trouble with domestic real- I don’t want to say real, but the name brand stuff- at least you do have that customer service that you can call. Yeah, if you have an issue where the other stuff, one and done.

[00:37:33] Kind of a thing. And you’re right, I forgot. I did send in. I had some high dollar servos and I sent a bunch of them back to them and they rebuilt them for me no charge, and you’re. I think it might have been a month. I did it in the winter time so it really didn’t matter that much, but I had, I think I sent in eight servos or something like that. They went through them all and cleaned them and fixed anything that would have been wrong with them. That way I knew when you’ve installed them, yeah, when it was time for the next season of flying- that they were not going to give me any issues. Yeah, so that you’re right. That’s something that’s nice too, and I think if they’re out of,

[00:38:07] Warranty they charge you for that but under warranty I didn’t get charged anything yeah they.

[00:38:12] Even covered shipment back, something we really didn’t cover yet. Electric versus nitro versus gas- do we want to kind of just go over that real quick? I would stick with electric, yeah, and I have to agree with the, the quality of stuff that’s out there and the cost. It just makes sense. It’s easy, it’s inexpensive, there’s a very small learning curve. All right, you turn it on. Maybe you have to make an adjustment in the transmitter, but the instructions tell you how.

[00:38:43] Yeah, and then you’re ready to go. Nitro used to be my go-to for getting new folks into the hobby, but it’s expensive because you have to buy the fuel, and then 30 bucks a gallon or so. There’s a definite learning curve. You have to know how, or know somebody that knows how, to tune them, if they usually they require kind of constant attention. They tune changes with weather or things like that. And then the gasoline powered airplanes. Those are usually bigger airplanes.

[00:39:18] That a beginner just I don’t want to say out of their price range but yeah even if it’s in their price.

[00:39:23] Range. I wouldn’t start with anything like that, yeah, yeah, you’re better off. Like I said, I think you’re better off sticking with an inexpensive electric, just to get into it, make your mistakes on that one and then, as you learn more, you can get into nitro, you can get into gas. They all have their pros and cons to them. So just stick with inexpensive first, get into it more, learn some more and, if you have, if you’re ever out and you’re getting ready to fly, if you have any issues whatsoever, if

[00:39:57] You see anything that’s wrong. If there’s anything that makes you go like what I don’t know about that, just don’t go home and fly your simulator, yeah, that you purchased. First figure out what’s going wrong. If, if anything is off, just do not fly, yeah. So many times we’ve we’ve seen friends.

[00:40:17] Pile in an airplane just because that something wasn’t right yeah that if you had done a good pre-flight.

[00:40:23] Check you would have noticed in a couple seconds that something was off right let’s figure.

[00:40:31] It out. Yeah, we’ll talk about pre-flights and in another episode at some time. But yeah, so many, so many crashes can be avoided by just using sound judgment. Yeah, and, and don’t be too excited to do something if something is off, right. That sort of ties into this next thing I want to talk about: just because you can do something, talking about the simulator using your judgment, just because you can do something cool on the simulator, it doesn’t necessarily translate to the.

[00:41:02] Real airplane yeah I’ve I’ve lost airplanes because of that airplane one airplane I shouldn’t say.

[00:41:08] Airplanes I’ve lost one airplane because of that I would love to hear that story well the long story.

[00:41:15] Long story short of that, one practice on the simulator doing flat spins worked perfectly on the simulator. I had it down, I could easily go up, get into one, get out of one, pull out of it and come land. Next day went out to the field with my little nitro katana and got it into a flat spin. It wasn’t as flat as I would like it on the on the simulator, but got it into a flat spin and it did not recover at all the way it did on the on the on the simulator, which is to say that it did not.

[00:41:51] Recover at all. It long darted right like head first straight down into it. It split it into it was. It was not pretty, I will say. However, I went home that night I put it back together- you did- and went out the next day and flew it and it crashed, and that was one that, getting back to what we were talking about before, that one bothered me more than the first one because it was not something that I had done, right. I mean, I guess technically it was my fault because I didn’t recharge.

[00:42:23] The battery, but I would expect to be able to get more than 10 minutes flight out of a out receiver or out of a receiver battery. So, once again, if I had done a pre-flight check on that, I would have probably noticed that the battery, the cells, were not up to up to snuff. So yeah, pre-flight.

[00:42:45] Yeah and we’ll we’ll cover a proper yeah we will pre-flight in another episode yeah but because it’s.

[00:42:52] Important, oh, very important. So, yeah, if you see anything wrong, like I said, just don’t don’t fly right- yeah, so reach out to us if you have show ideas, questions, anything like that. Yeah, my email.

[00:43:04] Address is Ron at rcplanelab.Com and mine is if you don’t want to talk to Ron you can talk to me.

[00:43:10] My name is Tom at rcplanelab.com. Yeah, or, like I said, give us a, give us a call, or you can text us at area code 818-351-9846. They can text us. Yeah, oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that works too sweet. Yeah, so easy today, I know. Reach out however you want. Yeah, so, but yeah, for this week, I think we’re done.

[00:43:34] Okay, and yeah, I thank everybody for tuning in and listening to us ramble and talk about rc planes for beginners. Yeah, until next episode. I’m Ron. I’m Tom. Hope you enjoyed this episode of the.

[00:43:50] RC Plane Lab podcast. For topic suggestions, to ask questions or to give anything back, 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.