Ep 99: Jeffrey Arsenault

[00:00:10] Hello everyone welcome to the rc plane lab podcast i'm ron and i'm tom today we're talking with jeff arsenalt he is a friend of the podcast and has been listening pretty much he says since

[00:00:20] The beginning jeff how you doing i'm good thank you for having me it's a real honor to

[00:00:25] Be here well i don't know about i don't know about an honor but but okay yeah we'll go with that

[00:00:30] But i know we appreciate you being here this should be a fun conversation so yeah yeah for sure can you

[00:00:35] Tell us a little bit about yourself sure so i have the good fortune of having married my my high school sweetie so we've been together since 1981 we have one daughter so we enjoy her company with along with that of my son-in-law and then our pride and joy is our four-year-old granddaughter so so luckily our our family is is all very close with the exception of my brother down in virginia but otherwise everybody is within

[00:01:07] About a half hour of here so we'll see everybody tomorrow for easter dinner

[00:01:12] Any any kids also in the hobby were you successful in getting the kids no i my i don't

[00:01:19] Know my granddaughter is she's kind of a busy girl she absolutely she's the queen of the field she loves to to come to the field fool around take night nature walks and and run around but her attention span is not quite there yet i've tried it a little bit with my with my daughter and son-in-law but believe it or not my dad who's been a full-scale pilot since the the 60s i bought him a little aeroscout for christmas and plan on teaching

[00:01:49] Him this year so he's got the the bug to give it a try as well so that would probably be the only family member i can get into the hobby well that's one more than i've been successful with

[00:01:58] Right yeah i'm the same way there's still hope for piper i'm hoping she will be able to get into it as much as i was hoping cody would but yeah time will tell time well she's

[00:02:12] Already been on the simulator so yeah she has she's enjoyed that but that's a start game to her which is fine it could turn into turn into like a life size yeah that's true i told her

[00:02:25] Once she can take off and land we will build her an airplane all right and she wants it to look like

[00:02:30] A cheetah i don't think i've said that yet so she wants it to look like a cheetah a cheetah yeah okay

[00:02:33] She's big in the cheetah so hey who knows orange and black two pinkier planes a result of my granddaughter so that's her favorite color right on yeah do what you can do what you need to do

[00:02:44] Even if it's the the worst looking airplane in your opinion if that's what they like that's what

[00:02:49] You go for yeah exactly right yeah i built a i built a little mini telemaster a couple of years ago we had rented a house for a few weeks up in up in maine and i framed it up over the holiday and then i grabbed the the hot pink covering material and then my wife took her to like i don't know michael's or one of those places she got these big foamy stickers i didn't think i didn't know but i practically crashed the thing once i put the stickers on it it was so much drag on the wings

[00:03:16] That it wouldn't fly yeah yeah that's awesome you live and you learn right that's right exactly so yeah you said telemaster you're big into telemasters aren't you yeah i don't know why you

[00:03:31] Know i've got a i've got a thing for for the for the big high wing airplane so so i've got three of them and i don't know if if the 40 or the 60 size kit became available i'd probably scoop those up as well i don't know it's just one of those that way back when i got started in a hobby i remember having someone having one just that gentle flying on the wing kind of a thing and just seemed to have enjoyed it so

[00:03:55] I don't know you like what you like oh absolutely yeah and i'm that way with sticks i mean i'm sure you've heard me go on and on and on about how how such a good airplane everybody ought to own one and clearly you feel that way about the telemasters and i don't disagree

[00:04:10] I like ours absolutely even though it came out of a trash can but that's that's the best kind i mean because we actually you took it literally from a trash can and flew it again yeah

[00:04:22] That's like the best best story yeah talk about adopting dogs and saving dogs lives i saved that telemaster's life i mean i don't know if that's something kind of the same is it really it was headed for the dump i mean there's a little difference in wood and an actual dog but that's nothing against dogs we have a rescue also yeah so do we that's that's weird thing to say

[00:04:43] So your your biggest telemaster jeff is a 12 foot gas power telemaster what what like what brand is that or is that a like a kit built or what is it yes so it was the hobby lobby and i don't know

[00:04:59] It's one of those i had eyeballed that for a while back when hobby lobby was still around i think that that kit was it had peaked at about a thousand or twelve hundred dollars for the box of sticks and i just came up i just came upon it i think it was on rc groups and i picked the kit up for five hundred dollars the guy had never opened it up and it's one of those that when you get that kit i mean it comes in a box the size of a coffin and the landing gear alone probably the span on the landing gear is got to be two feet kind of a thing

[00:05:31] So that that you're into something pretty big i mean you're basically making plywood when you

[00:05:35] Build it so right yep yeah there's you've sent us some pictures too and that is that's an impressive

[00:05:41] Airplane yeah it's beautiful what size motor you got on that so it's funny i started off i as i mentioned i got back into the liquid fuels over the last few years so i started off and i had a i think i picked it up as swap meet i had a rimfire 50 cc electric so i went i set that up i flew it for the the first season on electric but the problem was is i had four or five hundred dollars of batteries in it for about a four minute flight it was like flying an edf jet kind of a thing yeah so then i swapped it out to dle 55 since then

[00:06:15] It was flying on a 12s 8000 pack something like that so you're not going to have six of those in your in your battery can yeah no and that's that's a

[00:06:25] Good motor too that type of that type of battery scares me to death so yeah well i don't know why it

[00:06:31] Scares you it's no different than a smaller one it's just bigger i know so i guess it is a little

[00:06:35] Different but i mean bigger and more capable of death and destruction but yeah exactly

[00:06:40] Okay so before because i want to talk about a couple of the other airplanes on on your list

[00:06:45] But before we by the way before yeah i just want to comment on your list i love it like it's a it's like a great mix of nitro gas and electric i'm sorry what was that thank you the last one was what

[00:06:58] Electric oh yeah you for some reason you didn't say that out loud there was something to be said

[00:07:03] I i like the smell of nitro the gas is economical but man there is something to be said for the the never worrying about or really ever worrying about a dead stick with electric it's plug it in it works every time i mean we fly here in the northeast we've got kind of a hearty group and we fly 12 months a year so it's a little more of a challenge with the nitros to to fly that on a

[00:07:29] On a 20 degree day kind of absolutely oh yeah i i agree with you 100 yeah you were preaching to the

[00:07:35] Choir i mean like what you said is my exact thoughts on things like well with the exception of i like nitro i don't want to own nitro i've said it so many times before like i like the smell i like everything about it i don't like owning them because i don't want to deal with everything that goes the mess yeah so get it but before okay before we go any farther let's talk about first off

[00:08:00] What's your number so i've got about i came up it was funny i actually had to go look around so i came up with about 25 flyable aircraft i've got at least a half a dozen in storage i end up as a as a pretty good builder guys kind of give me the i'm i'm kind of past taking them a complete destruction kind of a thing and try to rebuild that but guys end up with airframes they pick them up

[00:08:30] Cheap somebody gave them to them yeah and so i've got so i've got a couple of neat ones that are up in the rafters right now one of them i tom maybe you've been around a long time it's one of these it was a scratch built i've got the original sketches on it i can't remember what it's called but it's one of those big high wing must be a hundred inch wing but three channels the cylindrical fuselage on there so i'm hoping to get to that this summer i've got a big big satabria up in the rafters that's probably

[00:09:02] A quarter scale airplane something like that that a good friend of mine gave me there's a handful of those guys there but about 25 flyable right now yeah that's a great

[00:09:12] Number and that the one you're talking about like maybe a a quaker or something like that maybe yeah

[00:09:17] That's it yep something like that i i wanted to say the valkyrie but it definitely isn't that that level of matchstick building kind of a thing but but similar to a quaker exactly so

[00:09:28] Yeah yeah i've never actually flown one of those i've i've seen a number of them and i've wanted to actually build one for quite a while but i just it's one of those things i just never got around to but neat looking airplanes look like they'd be a great sunday easy relaxing just just float around low stress airplane agreed the three

[00:09:49] Channel stuff is i've i've got a handful of them i do pretty well with that but it's like flying you fly a three channel airplane it's like flying a regular airplane with expo on a hundred it's bury the stick wait for it wait okay there it goes yeah yeah yeah no that's a great analogy actually yeah yeah no i've had i've got a good friend of mine that's a very good 3d pilot and me in on the box for a minute and about 10 seconds later how the

[00:10:17] Hell do you fly that yeah that's funny so let's let's read through your list here and then i want to like i said i want to talk about a couple of these tom you want to take it or you want me

[00:10:29] To oh yeah i'll i'll start here i guess jeffrey do you do you want to read your list it doesn't

[00:10:33] Matter i mean whoever oh go ahead you guys go and i'll i'll answer anything that you might

[00:10:38] Like so so so yeah you got the got the list broken down here by flyable and then kits so we'll i'll run quickly through the flyable ones we've got the 12 foot telemaster which is gas i've got an 8 foot telemaster or mini telemaster you have the pilatus porter which you have

[00:10:53] Nitro what do you got power in that one what size is that that one is i think that's a os

[00:11:01] 52 four stroke on there and in in full disclosure i actually gave that airplane away to a good friend of mine i had forgotten i had even given it away he's kind of transitioning from from foamy's to to something a little more substantial that was a that's a great little flying airplane honest i don't know what lands relative with no flaps on it it lands a little hot so it's a good transition airplane yeah but i

[00:11:30] Love the four strokes on there this you can't beat that sound me i agreed you are correct so next we've got an s-boc which is also nitro we've got a peat and poke which is a great plane's take on a

[00:11:42] Peat and pole right yeah exactly that one is that's a fun little flyer that's you don't want to fly that on a windy day and that needs as much rudder as a helicopter to to get around kind of a thing that's lots of yore on that one so yeah but that's a cute little cute little plane i

[00:11:58] Built that about 10 years ago yep and then we got a sig mini rascal which if everybody's familiar with the rascal the mini version flies just as good as the the bigger ones so like what's a wingspan on the

[00:12:10] Mini one oh 40-ish 45 something like that i think that they started off it was it was supposed to be like i don't know what was it tom the old brushed speed 400 i think that one has a i think that's got like a little 450 size it's sized up for a little

[00:12:29] Brushless motor in it okay okay we've got a bruce tharp delta vortex which is a delta wing obviously given the name bruce tharp flying wing which another flying wing that's the straight

[00:12:41] One right oh no that's the the flying king that's the in the photos that's the the coast guard one so it's got like i think they call it a trihedral wing on it i've got a little drop box for parachute guys in that one oh really oh that's awesome okay yep

[00:12:58] Cool all right so next you got a 60 size stick everybody ought to have a stick you've got the calypso is that the the calypso is that the that's the sailplane right

[00:13:08] Yeah sailplane exactly and i've got that one i've had that for years that thing's got hundreds of flights on it that's another one that i use for for night flying i know we're going to chat about that a little bit but basically on that one i just hot glued and stuck leds all over it so there's no you can't get too much mischief with that airplane it it does everything you want it to do when there's not a lot of emotional attachment to it at

[00:13:33] This point sometimes that's not a bad thing well you've had it so long how can you not have an attachment to it yeah see ron and i differ on that like i i get attached to things especially the longer i hold on to them the more i get attached to them like my contender i've had for years and ron is one of those if it's old i got to get rid of it no that's age doesn't necessarily have

[00:13:55] Anything to do with it it's condition and how much do i like it oh okay if it's something that needs a lot of work and i don't want to work on it then i'm fine just passing the buck to somebody that wants

[00:14:04] It i see that's me yeah it's funny you're talking about work i spent the last few weeks in kind of repair mode so i'm typically in build mode and i had i don't know to make that 25 list on there i had seven or eight airplanes that they probably didn't need any more than a half hour or an hour of attention and it's like oh i'll get to it i mean that the stick actually i had a bad servo on that i didn't fly that last year for the sake of the four screws

[00:14:32] And a electrical connector for a servo so yeah oh i hear you yeah and funny you should say that because the past few weeks i've been putting air or getting airplanes ready that i haven't just for whatever reason gotten giving them the attention they need and yeah half hour work and i've got three airplanes ready to go that i didn't haven't flown for the last three or four years because i didn't have 30 minutes to spare yeah yep i know what you mean all right so next we got a turbo timber yep we all know what that is two

[00:15:01] Blade 450s helicopters yeah so i haven't touched those in a while so the the guys that i hang with there's a lot of peer pressure so a bunch of those guys have recently gone hog wild into helis and i'm sure i'll get sucked into that vortex very soon that we all went through the fpv racing quads a couple of years back spent a whole bunch of money went all crazy with that and yeah and then i don't know kind of

[00:15:31] Wore off kind of a thing so so i'm under i'm under severe pressure to to step up my heli

[00:15:38] Game this year so we'll see how that goes well good good luck put standing up to the pressure we we we all know how like our buddies sometimes can influence our spending yeah don't give in bullies yeah yeah we got a hobby king albatross here what's the world war one bird right no

[00:15:56] That's the the the twin engine like i think that's like world war ii so that one i hit that's another peer pressure peer pressure purchase i'm seeing a trend here yeah so we got a nitro eindecker which one is that oh that's a small one i i picked that up at a hobby store up in up in maine last last summer so that's got like a i don't know 35 or 40 size so it's

[00:16:24] Probably a 60 inch wingspan it's three channel yep cool 60 size cub we got a quarter scale cub an assassin assassin combat wing that's the one i was looking at her that's one with the two tails

[00:16:38] Right nope that's the the assassin's a foamy that's the what is that crash test hobbies or something like that they show it flying into a brick wall the the delta vortex was the one with the the twin tails that's a that's a screamer that that flies very very well okay all

[00:16:57] Right so then we got a blade mantra fpv wing yeah i don't know what that is at all do ron

[00:17:06] Yeah i don't know it's probably like a 40 ish inch wingspan something like that it's got probably the only airplane i have with safe on it but it's a it's a nice fpv platform so i'm trying to think what's that like 4s 1500 pack something like that but nice flyer just flies right out of your hand for a hand launch kind of a thing so piece of cake that way so the fpv i have

[00:17:33] To ask so i'm older right and so i've tried the fpv thing with the goggles and stuff and i can't do it it makes me nauseous yeah i don't know if it's because i don't have the reference the peripheral i'm assuming you must do okay with that because you've you've got it was it was

[00:17:49] Funny so myself and and and a good friend of mine we decided to to try it out so i think actually i think the first plane i had it on was the the timber and just stabbed up a mount on it and i don't know we tim and i picked it up in a matter of an afternoon kind of a thing and we're able to take off and land under the goggles i have to sit down to do it i really i can't stand up doing it i get the i get the leans but but i don't know i seem to have picked that up right away and then we were flying the the

[00:18:20] Race drones we were clocking over 100 miles an hour with no problem at all in fact we used a joke it's like if i had one twice as fast i could still fly it it was i don't know just one of those that i've never been prone to motion sickness so i just seem to have gravitated to that pretty quickly it's not something i do every weekend it's something i like to do it for fun the other good thing is that if you get visitors kind of a thing is to give them a ride along so let somebody else wear the goggles sit them down and then you fly line of sight and let somebody enjoy the view

[00:18:52] Kids especially like that my granddaughter loves it so sure well that's one thing i've not done

[00:18:57] I've not actually tried it sitting down and and i absolutely i understand completely what you're talking about with the leans because i i got it too so all right so maybe i'll try it sitting down one of these days i mean it might work yeah we've got a robin hood 80 this is a tri motor that's the red one right yep in the front yeah that one right there yeah that was a bash that actually came

[00:19:16] Out pretty nice yeah funny quick story on that one on the maiden day on there so it's got kind of rotating on motors on the wings i think that's got like three 32 size motors and i didn't know it but i spun a prop on the left engine on takeoff just as it came up in fact my friend had actually recorded it the prop spun up must have gone 100 feet in the air and so maiden flight i get it up and i'm like oh my gosh this is a handful i mean i need so much rudder to get this around well yeah when you only got two of three engines turning

[00:19:50] It was a handful now i know that you guys are big and talking about it that airplane literally flies like it's a gyro i don't know whether it's the the the the gyroscopic procession from the outboard motors on there with that center one on there but that's super stable it's that one's a lot of fun to fly sounds pretty good in the

[00:20:13] Air too with all three spinning so yeah we have a we have a tri motor project too that we're gonna put together one of these days so hopefully we have the same i mean do we really it gets pushed

[00:20:21] Off so far well are we gonna i mean balsa gotta get some balsa yeah i guess you're right old school

[00:20:27] Model works javelin and then a gremlin i think i know what a gremlin is but i'm not gonna say it this

[00:20:33] Time so why don't you tell us what a gremlin is sure so that is that's actually what is that ra cause jim jim heath he's actually a local guy up in massachusetts so that is a foam wing you cover it with packing tape it's designed for combat and the fuselage is actually a a piece of square pvc tubing probably three inches in diameter and then you slap the fins to it on the photos that that i had shared that's the airplane that's sitting on the workbench okay so

[00:21:07] That's the one that's on the bench okay and we're calling that a gremlin as we all yeah we're all shuffling here so the the one with the green tails and the and the blue wing exactly okay exactly sir yep well it looks like it would be a lot of fun to fly and you do this do you do this combat yes

[00:21:24] Yep i haven't that one we've done combat with the assassin there's two of us that have the gremlins now so we haven't tried that combat flying is ridiculously difficult to try to even when you even if i line up and say hey come get me and i'll hold the steady line it's almost impossible to

[00:21:43] Run into someone so it is i i agree i've said it a few times on the on the show before it's extremely difficult to to intentionally fly into another airplane in the air but for some reason it's extremely easy to run into one on the ground or on your approach and landing or whatever or when you're

[00:22:00] Flying around five midairs to my credit and just all just all how did that happen

[00:22:08] It's it's always a surprise yeah yeah exactly never expected all right so that's a grim one okay

[00:22:14] And then and then the last one is just a stupid airplane so a friend of mine and i i think we chipped in i don't know 40 or 50 bucks a piece a few years ago at joan now so somebody had built a sig cadet put a big old balsa nose on it and then put two two edf motors on the wings oh so it makes a lot of noise it only it's got needs it eats batteries like crazy it only flies for about three minutes but yeah it's a conversation piece yeah so we usually take that out for fun flies or something just because it's it's it's a goofy balance set up on

[00:22:48] There i think we fly it with that it sounds wild it does it does and i think it it takes two like four s four thousand packs to to get your three minutes of flight and then you gotta jam another i don't know another 6s pack in there for weight and balance

[00:23:05] It's kind of a kind of a different setup on there yeah so what edfs did you use for that like what i

[00:23:11] Have no idea what's on there whatever you had it was like i say it was it was literally in a pile of airplanes and we looked at it my friend and i joe were just like yep we got to have that and 30 or 40 bucks a piece saying that it's the guy and and then we we flew it down there that week and it flies good with the with the two edfs on there flies like a cadet yep no kidding yep it's not even with all a cadet will hold a heck of a load i think so even with all those batteries on it you don't notice that it slows up nice for landing

[00:23:42] That's awesome yeah i love it all right moving over to the kits then quarter scale champ

[00:23:51] Which kit is that so that's a a wendell hostetler kit so that one is that one is that's a big one that's been a challenge that one's been a challenge so i don't know let's see last winter i framed up the the wings the ailerons and the tail feathers no problem at all i snuck a couple of kits in and then i i jumped into the fuselage this winter and i don't know i'm a decent builder but every stick i glued on there i was second guessing myself so i've got the fuselage done

[00:24:23] It is a absolute work of art i mean it's it's one of those that i hate to cover it it's it's just absolutely gorgeous with the curves and everything that you get and and the construction is super light so i had just somebody had mentioned i don't know maybe it was on your show or one of the other shows but about using a fish scale to weigh things i didn't own one of those so i bought one for 15 bucks or whatever it was kind of a thing so i weighed up all the pieces on it and the airframe right now this is just sticks only

[00:24:55] But four and a half pounds for 109 inch airplane so yeah that's just insanely light so that'll get i don't know probably a dle 20 or something like that perfect this this summer i'll get working on it and it'll be it's a lot of work for an airplane of that size for certain

[00:25:12] So yeah all right and then we got a great plane stinson the great planes t-34 oh did you want

[00:25:18] To say something about the stinson no no those are just the those are those big master builder kits on there so this those will those will be a couple of year labor of love certainly for that stinson that's a quarter scale airplane as well right we got

[00:25:32] A couple of lazy bees a giant one and a regular one is this the clancy design exactly exactly so i had

[00:25:40] One that i ended up giving to a friend that's another one it's that three channel wait for it wait for it that's with that that crazy wing on it it's actually pretty maneuverable so looking forward to to getting to that guy yeah that's good to know because ron has

[00:25:56] One now i just bought one at the toledo show and have not had a chance to fly it yet because there's a lot that has to be done to it after getting it home and carrying into it but is it

[00:26:06] The small one ron it's 36 40 inches something like that probably 60 inch or so wingspan i would guess oh okay the bigger one so yeah but they're a handful on the ground on the small lazy bee i used to typically hand launch that just because it was it was so it's so close coupled with the gear it was a handful on the ground for sure yeah i can imagine

[00:26:29] Just by looking at it but what's weird about this one and we've tried to figure out who made it like it looks like an arf to me or it does yeah it doesn't look like it was scratch built but the windows instead of the normal round windows that you get on lazy bees these are molded plastic like they're they're molded plexi but they're i don't know what do you think that is inch and a half tall by five inches long square square windows yeah and there's three on each side yeah so it's odd yeah

[00:26:58] We can't we can't place who who made this one but i mean it looks just like every other lazy bee except for the square windows yeah so anyway anyway good to know then we got a p51 kit here which one

[00:27:11] Is that i'm not sure what that one was so that came partially framed i think i bought that as a at a swap meet oh it is oh it's going to be a 60 amp so i don't know what that would be six scale something like that it was it was partially framed up so that's just in the in the collection for the

[00:27:31] Moment yeah i gotcha a gentle lady that's a gladder we got a sig cobra that's one of my

[00:27:37] Favorites i got a bunch i i i just didn't have a chance you probably would have appreciated it and then around that time when i bought that i bought a bunch of kits they were all had to be made in the 70s and 80s balser sheeted foam core wings kind of a thing yeah you'd probably recognize them better than better than i would well i don't know i've i'm not doing too

[00:28:01] Well here on identifying some of these airplanes i've noticed that you've been so yeah the sig cobra like i said the that's the small one then they do a king cobra which is the 60 size i used to have a king cobra that had retractable gear and man that thing was like awesome it would go exactly where you pointed it it was fast too at least the one the one i flew anyway cessna 182 sig liberty sport yeah that's a great biplane i've had one of those yeah so that one so i i cut a

[00:28:34] Deal or my friend cut a deal with me so i have a dear friend that is is not a builder so he picked that kit up about a month ago and made a deal with me and said hey listen if you put you put the labor into it i'll provide all the materials the motor the covering the servos and and we'll go hapsies on the airplane so i'm looking forward to to dig into that i have not built a a biplane previously i'm not overly concerned about the the framing it up and putting it together it's more the rigging that that gives me a little night sweat so see how that goes well the sick liberty

[00:29:08] Sport is not not as difficult as some but yeah there is there is you do have the guy wires and all that stuff that you got to put on there and they are functional if i remember correctly on that airplane so that does add to the time it takes to put together at the field but when it's together boy is it pretty okay half a cub we got a balsa usa stop with pup that's good to see and many more

[00:29:30] Here at the bottom i guess writing stuff so many more yeah so a little story on those kits so i kind of i don't know about three or four years ago i kind of went on a buying spree and i must have picked up at least 20 at least 20 kids i was buying them on ebay and rc groups and then i was like many of us we never bring home the receipts or anything like that so i was having them shipped to my office so so i had a little hidey hole at my office on top of our little it room

[00:30:01] That that we have it's kind of like a almost like a tool shed within the building and i was i was hiding them up on the the shelving over there so during covid i got kicked out of my office and was required to work from home which was fine and then one day i got a call from our operations manager and it's like jeff you got to get these things out of here i'm like why what's who's bothering he goes no no he says we had the fire inspector came in he he went nuts he saw that box a pile of balsa wood so now i had to load the back of an f-150 full of full of kits so

[00:30:33] That's one bad thing the other thing is find a place to put them and then share with your bride of nearly 40 years that you're just peeing away the retirement fund on balsa kits so so just all worked out in the end yeah to me the fact that you had a hidey hole at work

[00:30:51] Just so that she wouldn't see them that to me is awesome i just like the yeah the the wheels are turning in my brain it's like oh that's genius why didn't i think of that where could i put some

[00:31:05] Well see we just use the excuse of that's not my airplane i'm storing that for tommy or another friend of ours or something like that so yeah you could use that one sometime yeah yeah you're

[00:31:15] Welcome to use any of those ideas by the way and i'm probably going to incorporate some to some degree the idea of hiding stuff at work that's that's a new one and that's genius i'm telling you the other one you can use is my friend gave it to me yeah yeah i've used that one absolutely that one's

[00:31:34] In the in the repertoire so yeah you can't use that all the time no because then it becomes unbelievable right exactly so every now and then that's a oh and actually that's happened in real life too so

[00:31:45] It's not always stretching the truth sometimes it's completely true yeah and we don't

[00:31:51] Need to know which ones are completely true and which ones are yeah not so jeff i'd like to

[00:31:56] Know we we talk about it occasionally on the show your first memory or that of the rc or or what kind of prompted you to get into the hobby i'd be interested because you you and i i feel like we're we're kind of brothers in the in the sense that we like kind of the same things i'd be interested in knowing like what your first memory of the hobby is or what maybe prompted

[00:32:18] You to get into the hobby yeah sure so it's it's kind of funny but me like it's it's got to be what now it's got to be over 50 years kind of a thing but my dad's poor bloody fingertips so he had bought me the little cox pt-19 control line trainer that had to be i was just a little boy so that had to be like 1969 1970 i can't even remember where we flew it it's a local highway here that was not completed we were flying it on an off ramp i can never be worried that somebody was going to come and arrest us kind of a thing i don't guess i was a nervous

[00:32:51] Kid but i remember flying that so he'd fly it and and i'd watch it but i've always had a love of aviation my dad as i mentioned earlier he's been a full scale pilot since the i don't know 1966 or so something like that so hung around at airports most of my life so he still owns a 1941 aranka chief no electrical system hand profit he flies it as often as as weather allow him

[00:33:22] So so like i say i've had the aviation bug my entire life yeah and then as a kid i had literally every cox and testers those control line models that were available we lived on a on a nice cul-de-sac and it was i don't know you hate to date yourself but it seemed like a different time there was always 20 kids outside and there was a couple of us that had them and we fly at this little cul-de-sac at the end of the street the neighbors didn't mind and everything was good yep i so go ahead sorry

[00:33:54] Tom no i'm just agreeing with the good old days yeah yep yep you hate to say you're old but yep it

[00:34:01] Was good all day so yeah so bloody fingertips i i'm familiar i'm familiar with with the affliction trying to start those little cocks little bastards man those things i'm telling you

[00:34:16] So i yeah my my memory doesn't quite go back as far as yours so but yeah that that's quite a memory like almost a almost a memory that would like come back and haunt you right i mean like if my first memory was of somebody getting injured in the hobby maybe hey maybe this hobby is not for me right but when you're a little kid somebody gets a paper cut

[00:34:42] You think they were amputated so it's my granddaughter's the same way today if you have a a little nick she thinks that you're ready to lose the finger so part of the other hobby back then if my dad listens to this he'll he'll probably be upset is that we had this other it was a cox messerschmitt something or another and it had all kinds of tail elevator deflection and had a foam wing and i think i got that for probably my 10th or 12th birthday i wasn't quite ready to fly it he tried it

[00:35:13] Went up and it met its very timely demise in pretty sure it was just too it was

[00:35:20] Just too squirrely so yeah i never had any luck flying flying the cox control line stuff if it wasn't the for the if it wasn't the engine then it was i didn't have anybody to help me launch the thing or i just so i like i got right into rc i didn't have control line

[00:35:37] Kind of as that jumping off point yeah surprisingly we we went to the joan elephant a couple of years back and remember it was 2019 they have a control line set up and we went over and tried it and i was shocked and picked it up like i had been doing it yesterday kind of a thing so i mean still got dizzy i mean you can't walk out of the ring i don't know how those guys do it but but the actual controller but i think after doing rc for so long i think that we we toned down our our stick deflections as it were and we had

[00:36:12] No trouble at all there was four or five of us that tried it and we all picked it right up without issues so so jeff do you belong to a club yeah so i actually i belong to to three of them today so yeah so rhode island is a pretty small state we're only about 30 miles wide and 50 miles north to south so i belong to three of them so i belong to the rhode island quarter scale modelers south county radio control club that was my very first club when i got into the hobby in the mid 90s into the seaside of it and then i'm most active with

[00:36:45] Rhode island aero modelers so i serve as the the club's vice president and the instructor we've got about 80 members probably half of them fly on a pretty regular basis it's a good it's a good club we reinvest back into the club with our dues a few years back we probably became the first club in the area that actually brought power into into the field which is really nice i mean that that you can charge and work at our work tables we have a extension that we one of those big heavy duty extensions that we bring out from the

[00:37:20] Utility shed and we're able to bring the power right to the tables and then this year in the next couple of weeks we're going to be putting a a second shade structure in we bought these nice permanent they're actually carports are like i don't know what they are 12 by 24 or so something like that yeah and that was our big purchase for 2022 those structures are about three thousand dollars a piece so we put one up last year we'll we'll put the other one up this year we have a special club rule nobody's done it yet but if somebody puts an airplane

[00:37:54] Into the top of one of those structures they have to sign their name on the inside of the side of the structure for for all to see forever so so so far so good we haven't had we haven't had one of those incidents but it's kind of kind of a fun group to

[00:38:10] To make up a little rule once in a while well yeah it's nice to have those shade structures there too because sometimes yeah you're out there it just gets hot yeah it does yeah and i mean that at least in our field if i fly nitro so it requires a certain amount of tinkering and i don't have an amount i don't have any hair on my head so i have to wear a hat but if i forget my hat and yeah it gets burned pretty quickly out there so having those shade that'd be nice

[00:38:36] What i'm impressed by though is you you're a member of three clubs and vice president of one of them yeah but that there's that amount of people that close to where you can support three separate clubs yeah that's pretty awesome i mean like how how far of a drive is it for you to get

[00:38:50] To the like to your main so i can get the i can get to two i can get to the two of them within i don't know seven or eight miles the the my my primary club is what's that like six miles from here the other one is probably 15 miles away and in reality i don't get i probably spend 80 percent of my time at the at my primary club and in reality these are smaller clubs on there flying fields being as difficult as they are to come

[00:39:21] For the 60 or the 80 kind of a thing it's like okay let's make a little contribution keep them in business make sure that we don't lose a flying field as a result of a few dollars on there but they all the clubs typically have nice fly-ins they do do a nice job with a couple of nice cookouts a year so for for 80 bucks a year kind of a thing you have a couple of fun flies it's for me i have the good fortune to be able to afford that and it's certainly

[00:39:50] Worthwhile to me yeah well yeah that's nice having that may so we have one really around here that's even an option and that's a 20 minute drive for us yeah 15 ish for me 20 for for tom yeah i mean

[00:40:02] It's a nice facility i mean we have we have the advantage of having that huge runway and it's it's an active it's an active airport with a grass strip active private airport well i mean so yeah i mean it's on the maps and all that sort of stuff and anybody yeah you don't have to have permission

[00:40:16] And stuff to land there but i've not seen anybody except the guy that owns the place with a couple of

[00:40:21] His there's a few of the few of the friends that have space there but anyway yeah it's not to take anything away from our club but it is kind of inconvenient occasionally like if we want to just get a quick flight in especially with some of our larger airplanes it's

[00:40:38] A half hour minimum by the time you load the car and get there and then unload the car and you're

[00:40:42] Ready to fly so it'd be nice to have something really super close like that do you guys fly off of grass or do you guys have have a at your primary club do you guys have like so so all grass at all

[00:40:52] Of them so so kind of the funny thing with with my primary club red island air modelist so we have they're not the longest runways i don't know the long runway is probably 400 feet but they're actually elevated runways and we're able to find the the story on it so we're on state land so we have a we lease we lease the land from the state for minimal fee we take care of the improvements to the the property the cutting of the grass and everything right but supposedly the story on it is is that navy seabees many many years ago had come in

[00:41:27] And they basically built a quarter scale airport or i don't know whatever scale 400 feet would be kind of a thing maybe it's a 10th scale and so so we have two runways on a on a t and it was built up and it's probably i don't know it's probably a two or three foot elevation from where you stand for the flight box up to the runway so that that creates some challenges until you get used to it just that line of sight thing the fact that you're probably about a two foot elevation something like that but it's kind of interesting

[00:42:00] It was built by the cv cbs back maybe in the 50s something like that it's it's been there as long as

[00:42:05] As long as anybody can remember so so when you say built up it's it's mounded with with dirt i'm imagining okay yeah because i was imagining just like a wall at the end yeah that's what i was

[00:42:16] Thinking first too i'll be darned huh you don't want to miss that like you don't want to land short

[00:42:22] No no no no that's a bad thing and landing long is a bad thing yeah i guess so for as much as we say

[00:42:29] Our field could be better that is one nice thing in the fact that so cut really short for the rc guys is about a 600 foot runway yeah right in front of where we fly but then the whole runway like all from end to end as well it's 5 000 it's almost 5 000 feet okay so that's that's a lot of beautiful

[00:42:48] Approaches yes too so yeah yeah no tree but the problem is that that our runway runs almost due east west which hardly ever do we have winds directly out of the east or west usually we have southwest to northeast winds so if they could have angled that runway about another 30 degrees or so that would have been awesome but yeah still but we have that we have

[00:43:11] The length for dead stick landings or missed approaches when which we use frequently

[00:43:18] Bring your hiking boots yeah yeah yeah that's the disadvantage to having a long runway it's a if you have to use it it's a long it's a long walk to go down there and get your plane at least most

[00:43:28] Of the time you can pick your plane up in one piece and it's not yeah in multiple pieces with

[00:43:33] Not walking as far yeah it makes it worth worth the walk speaking of picking up airplanes at the end of the runway for reasons that may be good or bad we always like to hear about crash stories no matter how painful they may be have you got any that like stick with you jeff yeah i got

[00:43:52] A couple so the first one was this was back in the mid 90s so i had i joined the club they they did some training i i picked it up fairly quickly and i just got my wings and then we had you get the the go fly itis kind of a thing so we'd had some several weekends really lousy weather so all of a sudden sunday night comes we got a just a dead calm evening so it's like i'm gonna go and let's see if i can sneak a couple of flights and so

[00:44:25] That was kind of strike one because i really shouldn't have been flying nitro by i mean i really nobody should be flying nitro by themselves that's true all alone if something happens just things can happen so so back then the club had two fields that we had access to we had the main field which was on a turf farm so unlimited runway kind of a thing there was no issues and then they also had the secondary field so it's like well i'll run over the secondary field nobody will bother me i'll be by myself so i'd never been there before so that was

[00:44:58] Probably strike two with that lack of experience yeah so off i so off i went i put the little i had my first plane was a sig lt 40 little os 40 up front on it so i fired that up got it going i made a couple of circuits around the around the field and then i was like i'm probably gonna have to land this thing so then it was time to to kind of survey the field i wonder what the approaches look like here and i was just so just so new and not such a novice that i didn't think about the approaches kind of a thing so you just wanted to

[00:45:31] Fly i mean exactly exactly so so kind of strike three on that one is that i really should have looked around and figured out had a plan before i took off where you took off yeah so i've only had two of these but it's kind of amazing how quickly a tree will just reach up and just grab an airplane out of the sky i'm sure you guys have experienced that oh yeah oh yeah a few times yeah so i so at this point now i'm all by myself on a sunday night it's probably i don't know how to be 7 38 o'clock at night so it's

[00:46:06] Starting to we don't have on the east coast we start losing that daylight in a hurry so back then i had this little geotracker convertible so i was able to drive it into the woods and it wasn't really deep into the woods but it was i don't know probably up 15 20 feet in the tree so so i drive the the geotracker out there i climb up on top of the frame of the car and i'm a pretty big guy and i got a stick and i'm poking the heck out of this thing to to get the the plane out of there and really kind of hoping not to get busted by some

[00:46:37] Other member coming in yeah so not because you're in trouble just because it'd be embarrassing exactly so i get the thing out of the tree pretty much in one piece and i broke everything down put it back in again i slinked out of there and then as i was driving out i noticed that i cracked my windshield from standing on top of it to add insult to injury yeah exactly oh man i don't think my wife had even remembered that and then

[00:47:09] And then my most memorable crash so this one here this one is easy to validate lots and lots of witnesses on there so it's pretty funny i don't know i've told the story before to even non-flyers and they kind of peed their pants a little bit but okay so we talked earlier when we're talking about the list and that that big old 12-foot telemaster so i had about 300 hours of labor hours into that thing and a lot of money so it came out beautiful so it was finally on a nice august morning on maiden flight day i invited a few friends

[00:47:45] And my mom and dad my wife were there and i wanted to get it done as early as possible i didn't want to have 40 people watching this this maiden flight so it took off it flew beautiful that thing is 38 pounds so my legs were shaking so i did the the typical maiden stuff i really didn't have to trim it much and i'm not bragging but i absolutely greased that first landing i mean it was absolutely gorgeous yeah so because it's just a big old trainer at this point sure so once i calmed down i

[00:48:18] Charged up the whatever it was four or five hundred bucks worth of batteries to fly it a second time everything was everything was pretty good and no problem on the second flight and then i don't know we had lunch or whatever and there was now there was the full the full grouping of the club was there and everybody was like i'd really like to see that fly so i was i was willing to show off a little bit but the wind had picked up so at that field we have we just have the single runway probably a similar condition that you guys have and

[00:48:50] There's always a bit of a crosswind and i always consider myself to be i'm i live by that adage if you can't fly in the wind you you're gonna struggle so it was like yep no problem i'll take this thing off so i flew the plane for the third time put it through its paces a little bit everybody's hemming and hoaring and and iron yeah and it's a big presence this airplane it is oh it absolutely is i mean it's a spectacle to watch yeah balsa overcast or whatever you might want to call it kind of a thing

[00:49:24] Right so so i'm sure you guys remember the the old ads used to run in the ama magazine nothing flies like a telemaster and i've always said nothing floats like a telemaster master so and i admittedly i mean even to this day with you're flying an airplane that costs that much and it's that big and i always worry about the safety of it when you've got something that big so i had a bit of the yip still flying this big thing so i showed up a little bit and it was okay it's time to to come up and and land this

[00:49:55] Thing so i line up on final and we've got a decent approach and the power's off this thing is just floating and floating and i don't know i just it's the first time it's probably ever happened but i just kind of got into like paralysis mode and it's floating and it's drifting towards me it's drifting it's drifting and by the time i realized what was going on the thing was lined up on a collision course with the club port-a-potty so so for the so for the

[00:50:27] Whole world to hear i actually did hit the port i hit my truck the the fender on my truck or the bumper on my truck and the port-a-potty and then even funnier still is that literally my old high school teacher was in the port-a-potty when it happened and he came out wondering what the

[00:50:44] Hell went on so i was just gonna ask was anybody in there i thought my story of flying into a guy's butt was good but this is this is way better yeah so i gotta give a shout out to mr walter phillips

[00:50:59] I don't know whether he he he taught it at wallett veterans memorial high school for many many years i had him in the in the late 70s in the early 80s he came out no worse for where so god bless them so so the little moral to that story is that there were at least 20 guys at the field that watched this happen and not one of these bastards said go around

[00:51:23] Yeah thanks guys well they were all so mesmerized as at your amazing flying skills there you go exactly majestic airplane going around well like i said this this is a huge airplane it is there's there's and yeah in the air i bet i bet whenever that thing is especially when there's no power applied so it's quiet probably all you could hear was maybe a little bit of prop noise the windmill exactly i bet it was a beautiful sight honestly sure it was that's wow it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to say go around either

[00:51:57] It's one of those that you figure well he knows what he's doing that's all i could assume and then one of my one of my dear friends offered to design porta potty kill stickers after the incident so yeah i would have gladly put it on the airplane if he had if he did come true but yeah at the end of the day if you can't laugh at yourself once in a while life's going to be very hard for you so agree yeah we've all

[00:52:23] We've all had our mistakes so did it destroy the airplane i gotta ask it did does it

[00:52:28] No no luckily it it broke up the broke up the leading edge a little bit in in two spots actually on each wing now that i think of it was on each wing because it hit the it hit the bumper of my truck and then kind of peered around and and then the because i was right next to the porta potty and then the leading edge on the other side got dunked but luckily it was it

[00:52:51] Could have been way worse way worse oh yeah yeah wow that's that's up there that is i mean that's one of the better in my opinion it's one of the better crash stories i mean you've heard all the crash stories about re-kidding an airplane or whatever but if you can end a crash story by saying yeah i crashed into the porta potty that's that's up there with somebody in it with somebody it was your teacher it was your teacher yeah that's even that i mean i'm not

[00:53:18] Sure you could write a better one so you talk about the the different people that are always around when you're flying and stuff do you have a normal group of guys that you like to fly

[00:53:26] With or is it just whoever's at the field no so there's there's a core group and that really puts a smile on my face because i'm a 58 year old guy to it's it's difficult to make good friends as you get older and i'm blessed to to have there's certainly a core group of six or eight of us kind of a thing that that we socialize very regularly we know our spouses the grandkids their kids kind of a thing so just very very fortunate to to have that group and

[00:53:59] Overall at all three of the clubs there's a a really a good group a good group i really can't say anything bad about anybody at any of those groups on there so i don't know pretty welcoming group of people but yeah i'm blessed to to have a handful of of really

[00:54:15] Dear friends so yeah that's awesome generally speaking that's something i've noticed about this hobby i'm a member of several different hobbies but the but the rc community seems to be in in my opinion the most welcoming no matter where you go what i mean like you go to a swap meet we went to toledo everybody there was friendly i've been to various other fly-ins here within the state and they've always been very accommodating and very friendly and

[00:54:40] It's probably because let's be honest these are toys this isn't something that you can really i guess you can but you shouldn't take too seriously it's just something to have fun with that's true so it's not like riding a bicycle with a bunch of people that are trying to get fit stay in shape this is all about just having fun so well and that group and that that

[00:55:02] Group is kind of the the reverse or the opposite of that unless you're part of the the in group or click or whatever you call it maybe not as welcoming to that particular

[00:55:16] So so so like a bicycle gang that's just not cool people i don't want to yeah but i mean i think that that has something to do with it though it's just you don't do this for anything but fun right you don't do this for anything but what you get out of it there's no end goal of well this is going to make me lose weight or do anything like that this is solely they're cool fun toys that we all like so yeah i want to look at yours you look at mine and we'll we'll see whose wingspan is bigger

[00:55:46] I don't know nice crack yourself up sometimes i do sorry about that yeah so jeff you mentioned

[00:55:54] Joe knall so you have no aversion to traveling for rc events and things like that do you put the same sort of or would you would you travel for swap meets let's say did you

[00:56:08] Enjoy what it's funny i heard you guys over the last week or so talking about toledo i had actually thrown that out to to the guys that i hang with because i think i don't know i'd done the math and i think toledo was 10 or 11 hours for us and i travel quite a bit for work so i've always got a ton of hilton points and things like that and and i was up for for toledo and i couldn't get anybody to bite on that one so i would that

[00:56:39] The perry show i drool over that every year down in georgia when they when they have that in fact as a practical joke a few years back we had had a small local swap meet and one of our good friends i couldn't make it and was texting geez what what do they got what do they got kind of a thing so we went online and we we found some pictures from the the perry the perry show we had in a little vfw hall kind of a thing and we sent my friend joe pictures from the the perry show showing it's

[00:57:11] 10 000 airplanes for sale yeah just to tease him he caught on pretty quickly but i i certainly would i don't know maybe next year if you guys are there i'll i'll strung on a couple of guys i think the biggest complaint that the guys had is that unless nobody's got a vehicle bring big enough to bring back a lot of stuff you go out so to a show like that and it's like okay you put two guys in the car how big

[00:57:39] Stuff can you how much stuff can you bring back oh you'd be surprised yeah i'm gonna be honest like

[00:57:44] We yeah i have a lot in there yeah i have a fairly small suv we we we put now granted they weren't large airplanes true but we did fit a lot of stuff in the back of that car so if you're strategic about playing tetris and getting it all in the back it can it can be done but no i totally and the way the way gas prices are right now nobody can afford to drive a suburban 10 hours across the country to just to go buy a toy airplane but i'd do it yeah i would do it

[00:58:12] Tomorrow i would do it again if we could absolutely i i would love to go back to toledo i would like to do perry there's a lot of things that yeah i just well for me make the plans and make it happen jeff i

[00:58:23] Don't know about you but like you've been in in the hobby for quite a while too for me going to these swap meets and seeing an old top flight kit that i had when i first started it just kind of brings back the nostalgia and it just makes me feel good what i mean i mean yeah you could get the same thing looking through ebay listings or whatever but going in there and being able to lay your hands on it and get that get that old feeling back to me and maybe buy it and maybe buy it right but for me it's that that's a big

[00:58:54] Part of the of going to those swap meets yeah the closest thing that we had out here in the northeast i think the ama took it over for a few years was the trying to think it was in new jersey i'm trying to remember the club under westchester or something like that and they used to be a a big a big meet up there the ama took it over for a couple of years and i guess the attendance wasn't there it was probably a very expensive venue it wasn't like a convention center so they haven't had that the last few years but that was typically in february that that show

[00:59:28] Went back to the i don't know as long as 70s 80s kind of a thing probably 30 or 40 years so

[00:59:35] Any any time i i see even local small swap meets i think it's worth trying to go to them i totally agree you never know what you're gonna find yeah well there's no way to predict yeah what

[00:59:45] What you'll see you may you may go there and be completely disappointed but if you have low expectations then you don't get disappointed well and all it takes all it takes

[00:59:55] Is one airplane to make the whole trip worthwhile or one part or one piece or one thing you don't

[01:00:00] Have that you want yeah yeah and you said it well tom especially if you're kind of interested in in the unique if you're if you're a guy that's going to have the the latest extreme flight extra or whatever kind of a thing you probably you might not find that there but some old goofy 70s like you say quaker kid or something like that yeah that that'll ring the bell so yeah yeah we came back with a lot of that

[01:00:26] Stuff that kind of stuff for me i think the the lazy bee was probably my favorite just i've liked it for a long time i've wanted one and here is one let's buy it i mean it's you don't know

[01:00:39] Reasonable price too absolutely so i mean yeah i like i like going to swap meets and we're still

[01:00:46] Looking around because i don't have everything put away it's still all scattered it's still all

[01:00:50] Scattered here in ron's basement but one of these days one of these days all my stuff's put away i'm

[01:00:55] Just saying you didn't buy them by the way that lazy bee will do like an go to full rates on it bury the elevator and the rudder it'll do this not quite a spin i don't know what it is but just this insane looking spiral you'll scare the crap out of people that'll watching it come down kind of a thing make sure you're plenty high because it'll

[01:01:16] Lead up a lot of altitude in a hurry i was gonna say it'll probably scare the crap out of me too so

[01:01:20] I can't wait to watch ron do that practice on the simulator first yeah yeah so i think i know the answer to this one jeff do you prefer to build or to fly i kind of break it up into

[01:01:35] Third so a third fly in a third building and then i don't know a third let's we'll use a nicer word but socializing with friends at the field kind of a thing no that's i get that

[01:01:46] Yeah that actually makes a lot of sense it's it's fun to razz your buddies that are out there when they're flying and yeah just give them heck right right i agree oh totally agree and the

[01:01:57] Building part of it for me i've got a a little a little shed in the backyard my friends call it the the prison cell it's fairly small and i've got a lot of equipment in there but it services me well but we're empty nesters kind of a thing so if you've got a hobby that puts you 100 feet from the house on a on a cold winter day you

[01:02:17] Can't get in too much mischief so that's true yeah yeah i mean i'm right with you on that one this is this is such a great hobby to be in just for i mean family for everything it's just i don't know yeah

[01:02:31] I can't say enough about it i enjoy it yeah me too i as as most folks probably would agree i and i don't make any bones about it i i prefer the building and the tinkering and stuff but i can i can readily when somebody asked you prefer to build or fly i i can go right to well well i'd build i prefer to build when you're not sure like if you would rather build or fly i think that's a great a great mix because then you really enjoy the hobby in its whole yeah do you

[01:03:01] Know what i'm saying as a whole as a whole i mean yeah well in its entirety i guess is what i was trying to say but yeah i i feel like just because i prefer to build maybe i'm missing out on the on the

[01:03:14] Part of flying what i mean so i don't know no i i get what you're saying but everybody well i shouldn't say that everybody you you can have a preference and still enjoy flying if you prefer to build but you just get more out of the physical act of building than you do flying it doesn't mean you don't like flying doesn't mean you don't want to fly it just means that seeing something put together that you put together while you're working on it is more fulfilling than flying it but no we had

[01:03:44] Kind of a cold we had kind of a cold winter here and it's crazy i'd get up on a saturday morning at be out in the shed at 6 30 i've got a little wood stove out there depending on how cold it is there's not a lot of insulation it might take an hour or two to get it warmed up so you can work but i have no problem being out there at 6 30 get a fire started and then out there for the day at 8 30 in the morning

[01:04:07] And just just having a ball out there so very nice yeah jeff do you have a favorite airplane

[01:04:15] Yeah so probably the probably my favorite has to be that eight foot telemaster i've had that thing for for years so when i when i built it i had i built it with transparent covering which i love this airplane actually i think ron hates transparent

[01:04:35] Covering as he does well i'm you with your lighted telemaster have have given me a reason to like transparent because of that so in general with no lights with nothing yeah i'm not a huge fan of transparency but i'm i'm coming around because of that so i like i said i want to get back to this lighted thing and stuff after we talk about this but you are the one that is starting to change my

[01:05:02] Mind because of that airplane oh thank you that's awesome yeah so when i so when i was doing that i don't know why it had popped into my head it was like geez this would make a interesting night flyer so while it was in its bones i i really never i struggled like crazy with soldering and just one plug is that buy a good soldering a little solder station kind of a thing and then teach yourself that way you try to do it with something from walmart or radio shack you're gonna struggle like crazy but so what i did on this guy is that i wired on every on every

[01:05:38] Rib on the airplane throughout the fuselage every rib and the tail feathers there's a strip of led lights on there so it really it really glows pretty well and that telemaster it's guys guys harass me a little bit geez you fly in the trainer again and i don't know it's just one of those it's not a difficult plane to fly but it's it's it's it's floaty it's sloppy i'll say it's not the easiest plane to fly well but so with the flying on there that was the first time i had ever done it so

[01:06:14] Sometimes we have our our club meetings we'll move those to the to the field in the summertime yeah and that was my my very first night flight experience with that and there's some factor factor to that it doesn't matter it doesn't matter how many lights you got on them they all seem to everything i've flown at night today all seems to have some angles where it's gone for a second and it's with some experience it's like okay i know it was going away from me give me a little left turn it'll come back oh there it is again kind of a thing but

[01:06:45] The the night flying is definitely a challenge these guys that fly 3d at night and things like that it's nothing but nothing but kudos to those guys like the

[01:06:57] Fact that they can fly 3d anyway kudos to them because i at my age i'm not even going to try but

[01:07:03] Yeah doing it at night i can't imagine nope absolutely not and this guy here being such a favorite i actually have skis and and floats for this plane so i was without exaggerating that i could very well have a thousand flights on that airplane it's just one of those that i you get a a dead calm sunday morning kind of a thing guys will be yelling at me you're done yet kind of a thing because i'll i'll shoot 20 touch and goes with that in a row and

[01:07:34] It's just it's just an honest flying airplane so yeah that's enough on the telemaster oh no it's not

[01:07:40] I really think that the that the flying at night is something that i think it adds a whole new dimension of something else we have interest and something that we haven't done until just recently until you got the the shiny well that was dusk that wasn't even night like right but i'm not comfortable enough at night that's the latest i've ever been out and tried to fly an airplane

[01:08:02] Yeah i agree same with me and i can't wait to do it our field butts the the main north south highway route 95 so we're i don't know a third of a mile off of that highway and i always have to think how cool it must look or we we have to expect a 9-1-1 call kind of a thing for ufo or something like that on those nights from highways well now

[01:08:24] I've seen i've seen some of the some of the youtube videos and then when i was flying with the club down in texas a while back some of the guys had the flying wings that just had the strip lights basically where a spar would be yeah and that would change colors and all that and would do all these crazy things that flying wings can do electric and i always thought the same thing is like man if i was if i didn't know what that was and i was somebody living over here in this cul-de-sac and i saw this thing buzzing around i mean and they're quite maneuverable i would have thought that wow man i should probably call somebody this thing

[01:08:57] The aliens are coming to get me or something exactly maybe i'm saying if you're not accustomed to seeing something like that i mean it is by definition an unidentified flying object to you you are correct so i think it'd be cool i can't wait to get more into that yeah me too what were you saying

[01:09:15] Jeff i'm sorry we got you off oh i was going to say on the so i've got that little assassin combat wing and we buried lights in that thing and that that plane flies well at speed but it stalls it falls out of the sky when it stalls so at night we really struggle keeping orientation with that luckily they can they can fall out of the sky without worst damage on them is the the o-ring that holds the prop safer on there but

[01:09:46] Those are extremely challenging at night so anybody that's really flying that well god bless them

[01:09:51] Yeah so back to the telemaster not to go back to what first off what motor do you have on that what

[01:09:57] Are you running on it that is you're talking about the lights yeah that's probably i think a rimfire 55 it's funny when i built it the guy says oh geez that'll never fly with that motor so that's a rimfire 55 and i think i use a six s 5000 pack in it and okay i'll get eight nine ten minutes out of it kind of that's not bad no i

[01:10:21] Wasn't sure if it was electric or if you had a nitro yeah that's electric and then with your lights they're all white lights or do you have colored ones in there based on no they're all all white

[01:10:32] Lights but with the with the red and blue transparent covering you get your orientation change that way so okay awesome and i just use a little simple i got it on a switch in there that's a you've got a a big battery area so i think those are all 12 volt lights so you put a little 3s 1300 pack in there to run those lights all day kind of

[01:10:55] Thing so i was going to ask you too if you had a separate battery for that because you're probably safer doing it that way probably yeah so that's awesome i would not want to think about the lights

[01:11:03] Going out oh it's getting dim oh it's gone where is it why i hear it it's over there somewhere yeah

[01:11:12] Fly by ear it doesn't work very well so no that that's pretty cool like i said i i think that's something we want to get into yeah just as something new in the hobby so and then you said you also have the the clip so is one you use for night flying yep yep so that one i just

[01:11:29] Like i said i've had that playing for years it's it's pretty war weary at this point and you can buy them on amazon you can get a strip of 20 feet of lights for 10 kind of a thing and then you got the little you cut them in half at the at the copper tabs and just wire it up accordingly so i laid lights top and bottom on the wing on that and along the fuselage and it just with the with that foam on there it almost it illuminates the it can illuminate the wing a little bit so actually works pretty well yeah

[01:12:02] I have the perfect airplane at home for that i think do you what do you got what's a kit but it's a laser works 40 size it's a long john but it's basically a stick and i was going to go with

[01:12:14] Transparent covering on that anyway so there you go see i was i was thinking about getting a night radian like i think that would be something that would be cool kind of cool to get to they're not too expensive so i don't think so a couple hundred bucks maybe a little more than that that one has

[01:12:27] The color changing lights right that's the whole design yeah which that would be cool to do your own

[01:12:33] Also yeah but yeah like i said i i'm in love with your telemasters i mean it's it's a plane that now because of what we did with the trash can telemaster does hold a

[01:12:46] A little special place in my heart wait a minute are you saying that you are feeling sentimental about the trash can telemaster well yeah well that's the first time i've ever heard you say that you were sentimental about any airplane see i disagree with that i'm very

[01:12:59] Sentimental about the yak oh well that's true so there you go that's true but flyable airplanes

[01:13:04] I mean well it will be oh you got to take that dick don't you well so jeff i have i'm a huge proponent of the stick airframe so that's my like whenever i go flying and i know i don't have a lot of time to prepare i know the stick is always ready to go so that's my go-to do you like i'm thinking it's the telemaster but do you have like a go-to airplane that hey i've only got 20 minutes to get ready to go fly i'm gonna grab this airplane and go fly

[01:13:31] Yeah i've been flying so let's see it was last year i guess i built a little sig four star 40 i don't know 50 size four stroke up front and i love the big airplanes but there's something to be said for that 40 60 size airplane that you can it's two screws one aileron connection you're off to the races zebra pack so and i i like you i love those i love those classic airplanes so that's been kind of my

[01:14:01] Go-to i flew that on skis this year as well that's that's worked out pretty well that one i cheated a little bit i know that you were talking about it i don't know over past couple of shows that one i actually i had a little trouble on my low side on that one we just couldn't seem to to tune that to get it to idle that well and i put one of those sullivan remote glow drivers on it that you program with the radio and that's as reliable now as an electric

[01:14:30] Motor kind of a thing oh i'm sure yeah i'm sure in in operation it works fantastic just be careful of the of the the three pins exposed on the back side of the control panel i heard that story yeah

[01:14:43] Expensive very fast mistake anyway yeah that that is a great flying airplane i've had i think i've probably had two or three four star 40s over the years excellent flying airplane it's actually a great second airplane like if somebody's great i agree it lands nicely it slows up well it does yeah it has no real bad habits it stalls straight ahead and it it it doesn't do any weird tip stalling or anything like that unless you build wash out into the wing accidentally

[01:15:14] But anyway yeah that that would be a great to go to almost as good as a stick

[01:15:21] I'm just teasing my granddaughter selected the colors on that one as well so we have neon pink neon green neon orange and black i it's the it's it's kind of goofy looking but it is absolutely the best colors i mean fly it on a gray day fly it on a blue day it doesn't matter you can see it no matter what so it's actually kind of fun that way yeah yeah anything that helps with

[01:15:45] Orientation yeah who cares what it looks like on the ground true i'd rather i'd rather see it yeah than lose it and sometimes you never you never truly know if a if a color palette is going to work together until you actually see them together and you're like i never would have imagined that pink went well with green but man this looks really good sometimes you never know until you actually put it into existence well like your stick with the the yellow covering with

[01:16:12] The transparent orange underneath sounds hideous but it actually looks pretty good i think it looks

[01:16:17] Pretty cool yeah but i like transparent covering too so well and i had a lot of that working i'm making my way so jeff what are you working on like right now i know you said you hearty group of flyers you fly pretty much all the time but well do you have a building season and if so what do you

[01:16:35] What are you working on right now so as i had shared earlier i've been working quite a bit on that on that quarter scale aranka champ so that is my frame is complete at this point i just borrowed a a wire bending setup from from one of our one of my friends club members so i've yet to it's kind of the best part of the hobby is that you as you do different builds you end up learning another technique on there so i have to fabricate the

[01:17:07] Landing gear on this guy so it's out of 316s piano wire i haven't bent anything like that so that's kind of the the next project that i've got going there as i spent the last couple of weekends just cleaning up and getting ready for the for flying season so i'm in pretty good shape there and now i'll probably get back into the champ so with the nice weather like this a lot of times i'll i don't have to light a wood stove or get things warm so i'll typically build quite a bit during the summer as well go out after dinner

[01:17:38] And get an hour or two in the shop out there so i'm kind of hoping to get that guy done this year and then next up behind that will be that sig liberty sport that i talked about

[01:17:48] Earlier yeah what do you what sort of covering you're going to go with on the aranka on this

[01:17:53] One here i've got a i i went kind of crazy and i bought a ton of the solotex covering there was i actually double purchased it but i i do enjoy that on the larger airplanes on there it's it takes latex paint very well so that's what i'll use on that but i've got so i don't know i've got a nice stockpile of that so but it is a bit heavier than than ultra coat or monocoat so you may want to use it on something with a little bigger

[01:18:24] Bigger airframe yeah well but but like on on a champ it's really not supposed to look like a plastic film true that's my feeling exactly so exactly so i think that's a i think that's a great choice i

[01:18:36] I think that'll be kind of kind of eyeballing some some warbird colors for that with the invasion stripe so we'll see yeah we'll see what happens with that but that's kind of where i'm leaning at the moment so the nice thing with building is that you get so done much time to think about it that you get plenty of time to sit with the ipad and look and see what somebody else has done or what the full-scale versions look like so yeah lots of time it's not like a an rf where you put the thing together in three nights and you're up to the races right yeah

[01:19:05] Yeah very true and then with an rf you don't have a choice on what it looks like so exactly the nice

[01:19:10] Thing about a kit you make it your own yeah exactly yeah and i think that's why most guys who choose to build kits that's usually the reason they give you it's because i want to make it my own yeah so yeah

[01:19:22] So any big plans coming up yeah so as as of tonight like three weeks from as we're recording this i'll be making the my second trip trip to the joan all event down at the triple tree aerodrome that's down in woodruff south carolina so we talked a little bit about it offline but if you haven't been just make plans to go yeah as an aside my wife will probably listen to this afterwards and i'm going to tell her to pass forward a minute

[01:19:53] Or two we've had the good fortune of visiting a lot of great places throughout the world on on vacations that's kind of our that's our other hobby is traveling a little bit but i gotta tell you joan all week it's the best vacation i've ever had in my whole life it's just you're just there with you you're there with your buddies all right it's you do what you want kind of a thing so i've only been the once back in 2019 we were outside literally 15 18 hours a day our our campsite was right near the 3d line so you

[01:20:29] Know they allow the the big entrance to start up at seven o'clock in the morning so you're woken up at seven with a a 200 cc screamer often running yeah fly down there they do demos until 10 or 11 o'clock at night so we'd hit the pillow we'd be gone 10 seconds yeah and as a group that that whole that whole setup down there right it just you couldn't feel more welcome while you're

[01:20:59] There everybody has they give you a little name tag to put on your hat nobody walks by without introducing themselves so it's it's really a special event yeah we've got to go yeah i mean

[01:21:11] It's just because of the the shows the the actual model and hobby expos have sort of dried up and that and that now leaves us with things like joe noll and and florida jets is another one i'd like to go to someday but all these big events and and we just you never know when their final show is going to be yeah so we just we just need to do it

[01:21:35] Need to bite the bullet and make it happen yeah i agree oh please do so yeah because we

[01:21:40] We went for the first time in 19 and that was supposed to be a once in a lifetime bucket trip a bucket list trip yeah so we we checked in we got settled arriving my good friend joe and i we took off in the golf cart and i know we weren't 200 yards from our campsite and we're watching this i mean it's some of the best 3d pilots in the world flying there so their main road is perpendicular to the the 3d runway so we're driving this golf cart

[01:22:11] And here comes this guy big giant airplane he's rifle rolling at a foot off the ground 100 miles an hour and we both looked at each other and said yeah we're just coming back here every year yeah unfortunately copic changed those plans the last couple of years but we're we're reverend to go and can't wait to get

[01:22:30] Back down there so yeah yeah that's yeah i mean we just have to do it i mean that's all that's all you got because like i said i mean the the toledo was a lot of fun but that was a swap meet it

[01:22:43] Wasn't the toledo expo that everybody i feel like honestly the the joe knoll like experience like like for what you're going to be going to do jeff would be like an episode of its own oh absolutely i mean i just think that would be maybe we could have you back and we could talk about oh yeah maybe we could have you back and talk about your experience for this year at joe knoll and that would be enough to to get us just raring to go for next year yeah because there's

[01:23:12] There's something for everybody there there's a there's a helicopter line it's it's kind of funny that you get to that main flight line i mean there's some guys with just some big iron there you get jaded you're literally stepping over here's this guy with a 30 000 havoc jet and you step over another one and then for guys that like classic airplanes i mean there was works of art that were there and they're flying these airplanes i mean i don't know i i talked to one guy he had like 3 000 air hours into a into a model i mean you'll never see anything like that and then

[01:23:46] You've got an electric flight line you've got an electric 3d line you've got a pond you've got the main 3d line i mean the pond we absolutely we enjoyed that i mean look our first visit down there we went one night they have like a nice steak fry and they pay 25 bucks and you get to burn your own steak and we got our planes we went to the went to the pond and geez we look up there's like 15 airplanes circling the pond my friend was all set to fly and then he handed me the radio he goes no i don't i don't want to do

[01:24:20] This yeah so literally it was like nascar it's like okay pick your place and you find a little bit of air space yeah they have a boat of shame so that if you do crash or put one in the water they got a little john bolt with an electric motor on it so there's

[01:24:35] Really something there for everybody that's awesome yeah well let's let's set let's set that up we'll we'll have to like i said seriously have you back on after you you go and do that and we'll we'll have a follow-up with you on that one i think that'd be yeah and it gets you

[01:24:50] Know it gets busy later in the week and we were befriended by some local guys down there so blue ridge radio control club down in piedmont south carolina they invited us down for a day of flying at that club put on a nice barbecue for us they're planning on doing that again one day so i mean it just just couldn't be nice for people down there the whole time you've you gotta pry a smile off of your face for sure

[01:25:15] So yeah yeah and then like i said earlier that's that's what i love about the hobby it's just seems like everybody no matter where you go they're just always very polite and friendly and accommodating a bunch of nice guys yeah i mean people like-minded people exactly

[01:25:31] Playing with toys yeah that are awesome that are awesome so well is there anything anything

[01:25:36] Else you want to talk about jeff yeah i guess the the only last thing would just be a little public service for especially for the guys that belong to the clubs is this isn't a young man's hobby i mean most of the guys i fly with are 40 to 70 plus years old is be an ambassador to your club and to the hobby i get pretty excited when family pulls into into our parking lot always make a an effort to to wave walk over introduce

[01:26:09] Themselves get the kids out of the car let them come take a come take a peek at what we're doing we do have a couple of club trainers but they're not always charged up and ready to go if you can get a kid on a buddy box or get a kid and his dad on the buddy box that's a really great way to introduce them into the hobby even if you if that's not available if you've got something that's not crazy difficult to fly i i will invite them up to just kind of watch me just take the mystery out of what we're doing up there it's a good time to get into the hobby yeah it's it's it's

[01:26:46] Pretty affordable right you can get that little aeroscout with a radio and everything for 300 bucks and if if that isn't if that's too high we have a number of members that are big fans of flight tests and they you can build an airplane for 100 bucks quite often we've had young people have gone into the hobby and we've put out a message on our own facebook page hey somebody got an old radio that we can give this kid so that he can get him into it so yeah just i just ask everybody to reinvest when you can into the hobby not

[01:27:20] Necessarily money but just with your time and your attitude towards new people i haven't personally experienced it but i've heard horror stories of people that were were turned off by basically by the by the members kind of a thing so no just be a good citizen yeah yeah i could not have said it better yeah that's

[01:27:42] Well stated so i agree completely there's there are some times where you hear about some people that feel like they like they own the place like i'm i'm flying an expensive plane get your cheap little one out of here there's there's just some entitlement to some people not that i have dealt with a lot but yeah let's not do that i think let's let's be as as good ambassadors as you said as we can just to bring everybody in because it's fun it's cool

[01:28:16] There's more people the better i think and here's the bottom line i mean they're toys right i mean they really are awesome toys they are awesome i'm not going to take that away but yeah yeah well thanks jeff

[01:28:28] Those were words well spoken yeah it was a thank you a lot of fun thanks for coming on yeah this was fun our pleasure like i said we will we will definitely schedule a time here for a joe null follow-up and then you can kind of make us salivate on what we missed and what we yeah what how we want to make sure we make it to next year or the year after so yeah well maybe i'll see if a few of

[01:28:49] My my friends would be willing to to join us as well i don't know if you can have multiples on

[01:28:54] Us on a given evening yeah that would be we'll have to look into that i think that'll be fun yeah if we can make that work i think that would be that would be fantastic i will i will do my best

[01:29:04] To make that happen how's that excellent all right well once again thank you very much until next

[01:29:09] Time i'm ron i'm tom and you and i'm jeff arsenal god bless thank you all all right thanks jeff good

[01:29:16] Night 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