Ep 103: Steve Hersh

[00:00:00] It seems as though we’re having some audio issues. It sounds like it’s playing back at like three times the speed. Yeah, I’m sorry, that’s hilarious, but that is not like that’s not going to work. I cannot make out anything. You are saying: hello everyone, welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I’m Ron and I’m Tom, so today we’re sitting down and talking to steve hirsch. Hey, steve, how excited.

[00:00:48] Are we super excited? I’m very excited. I love this part of the show, the every other week with the, with the guests hearing different stories and different ways they accomplish their activities and the hobby and have fun with model airplanes like we do. So yeah, it’s.

[00:01:05] Awesome to talk to new people because you learn a lot by doing that so steve how you doing say hi.

[00:01:12] Hi everybody, I’m doing great. I’ve been really looking forward to this. This is this is going to be a lot of fun. I kind of knew that going in from listening to the podcast. You guys are really enjoyable to listen to. You guys have a great chemistry between you guys. Well, thank you yeah.

[00:01:28] I appreciate that we’ve been friends for several years so quite a few that’s a long time yeah so.

[00:01:34] Steve, tell us, if you don’t mind, just to give us a quick little kind of rundown about yourselves, and so the listeners have something to reference when, when we get into it. I got back into.

[00:01:46] The rc plane stuff. Oh, a little over a year ago, after having probably not touched it since, oh, I’m gonna guess the early 1990s, oh, wow, okay, maybe mid-1990s. Just due to family and all that good stuff, a lot of it was kind of coveted driven. I had been doing competitive drag racing for about a decade. That sounds fun and just due to some health things that I have to watch out for, I kind of had to stop doing that and I just said I need something else to do. That keeps me.

[00:02:21] Interested in something technical and I just decided, oh, I’ll just get back into rc plane. So I got on Horizon Hobby, bought a turbo timber- I had picked up some radio gear and charger gear stuff from the local craigslist- went out to the local business bar, probably got 10 or 12 flights in, crashed it pretty good and said I don’t really like this plane and stripped out the parts on it that I thought were decent and said, okay, I gotta figure, if I’m gonna do this, I need to do this right. And I did some research and found out that there was a club fairly close by and went down and

[00:02:57] Checked them out a couple times but well, these guys are pretty low-key. I don’t. I don’t sense there’s going to be any intolerable drama from the club situation. So I joined the club last summer and talked to the guy that they paired me up with who was going to be my instructor, and I got on SIG’s website and I ordered up one of the SIG Cadet LT-40 arts and I already had some parts that I collected for a kit that another guy in norcal had given me and I put all that stuff together in the lt 40.

[00:03:34] And I went out with the buddy box set up and I had to relearn how to fly after 35 plus years. I really sucked at it. So it’s not like riding a bike. It was not like riding a bike like I thought it would be, and having the instructor and the buddy box and all that. I did pick it back up pretty quick and started soloing, I think after, after, I think the fourth or fifth time. The one, the one guy that

[00:04:06] I was working with. He went on vacation and so they turned me over to another guy. We buddy boxed one time and he’s like: ah, you’re ready, go for it and show me that you can take off and land. And I did. He goes: okay, you’re good, you’re on your own now. I think my third flight. After that, one of the other much older people in the club than I, apparently very hard of hearing, didn’t hear that I called out landing, walked out on the runway as I’m landing and I smacked right into the guy’s legs. Oh, fortunately,

[00:04:37] He was not injured. I had already. The throttle was already off, so there was no spinning propeller. That’s good. But that was required the cadet to come back home and go under some surgery to repair the weighing and, yeah, the fuselage and other stuff, but nothing that major that I couldn’t fix and whatnot. But that was my first experience of realizing that I needed to be more situationally aware when I’m out of the flying field. But just calling out landing is not good.

[00:05:07] Enough yeah that’s hard because at the same time you don’t want to take your eyes off the airplane.

[00:05:12] To see what’s going on. Yeah, so yeah. But I was really tunnel visioned at that point because I mean, I’m just starting to figure back out again and you guys have been doing this while it’s. It’s something that I had coordination really good 40 years ago is not as good now. Oh yeah.

[00:05:33] Oh I absolutely understand what you’re what you’re talking about and I would say the difference between.

[00:05:39] Where I’m flying now and when I did it when I was younger is we used to go out to a college campus and we had a huge big grass field so there really wasn’t any defined runway, or we I was in southern california, or we got to the mojave desert on a dry lake bed. You really couldn’t miss the runway in those situations. Yeah, our little field has a fence around it, a fence on both ends, and it’s that geomat runway. Okay, you really got to be on your game to hit the runway.

[00:06:11] And it’s usually a crosswind. Yeah, yeah, that’s unfortunate, but at least they have a geomat. That’s one thing that I’ve ever or never actually flown off of or landed on. It is really nice. Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:23] Especially with the lighter airplanes and smaller ones yeah that’s yeah but it’s a great.

[00:06:27] It’s a really great group of people that are in the club. Really low-key, it’s just if you’re not flying and you just you’re hanging out and talking or looking at each other’s planes and helping each other out, yeah, it’s, it’s. It’s exactly the type of club that I’m comfortable with. Nobody’s saying, oh, you got to do this or that, or yeah, whatnot. They’re just

[00:06:49] Everybody’s just out there to fly just for reference what part of the country do you fly.

[00:06:54] In, I am in, I live in placerville. I mean, you don’t have to give it, that’s okay. I live in placerville, california. So I am flying in northern california just east of sacramento, okay, so you don’t have 12.

[00:07:09] Months of flying season. You have about what 10.. Well, actually you can pretty much fly year round. Oh nice, year round, I love it. Yeah, year round flying would be nice. I think I’m pretty much most of the.

[00:07:22] Time I’m able to go at least once a week. That’s awesome. Yeah, we, we have the building season here in the midwest, because october to I don’t know february or march is just april. Well, yeah, it’s going now off april, of course, late april, it’s just it’s so bad out that you can’t, you can’t, it’s.

[00:07:41] Either too cold or too windy, too rainy or rainy. Yeah, so we have a. So we have a building season and a flying season here in the midwest, so it would be kind of cool to have a flying season, that’s.

[00:07:52] Year-round. Yeah, nice, I was going to say as much as people say what they want to say about california and all that stuff. You live here for the weather. Yeah, oh, I hear you. Yeah, yeah, that’s.

[00:08:04] Definitely so before we get too or too much further on steve. I just I wanted to say thank you, by the way, because you have been very helpful to me with the pilotist pc6 that I got that was crashed. It is because of you and the pictures you sent that I was able to get that put back together, and the parts, design and stuff, because it’s it’s hard when you don’t have something to go off of, to see how it’s actually supposed to go back together when you just have pieces that are not whole pieces right. So thank you for the pictures and all that stuff I greatly appreciate.

[00:08:36] All the help you gave me on that oh you’re you’re welcome Ron I can’t wait to hear how yours flies and.

[00:08:41] What? Not how you deal with it. Yeah, I that’s, but it’s one of the things that we need to get together soon. We were going to do a video on it, but I don’t think, like I think I’ve changed my mind on that and I just want to get it put back together and fly it. Yeah, I’m with you on that. So well, there you go. We made the decision. I’m just going to put it together, just like that. So, but yeah, like I said,

[00:09:00] That was awesome and I appreciate it. Thank you very much. No, my pleasure. It’s just got to be one of the coolest looking model airplanes I’ve seen. I know it is. I absolutely love that. Yep, it’s. If only.

[00:09:12] It were nitro powered. No see I it’s perfect that electric. Well, you can buy bigger ones that are nitro, but I just really like, yeah, I like the size of this one. Yeah, it is a good size. It’s not too big but it’s very light for the size that it is, so it’s extremely light. I don’t know if you’ve heard or listened or not, but we have, or I just picked up the flight work shiny in toledo, yeah. And so that’s my second plane from that same company. Flight workers who makes that pilotist too. What a cool airplane. This is too it. I love the lights on it. It’s kind of neat, but anyway. So they are hard to find.

[00:09:48] Anything really by that company, let alone replacement parts or anything like that, or the full diagrams on how it was put together. So I’m very, like I said, thankful for you sending me the pictures of yours. That was not crashed so I get to see. Oh, how are they supposed to go together?

[00:10:07] Yeah, well, well, and vice versa, Ron, on the landing gear blocks, because I don’t think I would have been able to reproduce some usable blocks without the pictures and measurements that you sent me. Yeah.

[00:10:19] Well, that’s awesome, I’m I’m glad it helped out. So yeah, so mine was crashed and he had to send me the picture of that, and then the one he has was not crashed. It was never assembled, right. No, no, it was.

[00:10:31] Never assembled and it was missing two parts the landing gear blocks okay and those of course are the.

[00:10:37] Most difficult blocks to make, because it’s not just a simple strap, it’s. It’s a weird setup on that pilotist where it actually screws into the bottom of the airplane and then the gear. So in here from the side, yeah, okay. So yeah, I was able to take pictures of the ones that I had on mine and sent them to him with some measurements, so he was able to make that for his so good deal. Have you flown yours yet? I did I.

[00:11:00] I’ve got three flights on it. Nice, it still needs some work. I haven’t gone back out with it because one thing I found, especially on my third flight, was even a little bit of a breeze and it becomes a.

[00:11:13] Lot to handle. It’s so light. It’s so light. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure so. The- the guy that had the guy that had it before me- said that’s exactly what happened to him. It was a little bit breezy and he was taking off next to a car- I guess it was blocking the wind, and as he got to the back of the car, where the wind stopped or started blowing, it just flipped it right over. So it’s a very light airplane. Yeah, it’s so light.

[00:11:37] And I think the reason it’s so light is because the landing gear is so heavy.

[00:11:42] I mean it could very well be that’s a very over-engineered landing gear on the airplane.

[00:11:46] Yeah from what I’ve seen on yours Ron it is yeah the landing gear looks heavy.

[00:11:51] So they had to make the airframe light to compensate. Yeah, one of the changes I- and I haven’t tried it yet- was the springs are way too stiff on the struts. I thought that by looking at them and when I came in on that third, third flight landing and I and I was not landing this thing pretty at all- I mean, it’s the biggest thing I look at- is you want to get good at landing but you may not look good those first few times. Right, oh, yeah it. It bounced more than I would have.

[00:12:22] Expected it to. Mostly probably my fault, but I was dealing with a lot of crosswind and breeze stuff and I was just happy to get it on the ground in one piece at that point. So I’ve switched to some softer springs on the struts, but I’ve yet to try them out. Oh okay, yeah, that’ll be interesting to hear.

[00:12:38] How that turns out, because I noticed that too. With just like setting mine down and stuff, there’s just no give to where it almost seemed like the spring was there for show and not to actually do.

[00:12:47] Anything? Yeah, it’s, and when I had it up on the on the table at the field, every the landing gear is like a shiny penny. Everybody goes right to it and the first thing they got to do- whether I say it’s okay or not- is push on the plane to see if it actually compresses. Yeah.

[00:13:07] That’s annoying that’s what people do I know but it’s not your plane oh look at that it’s.

[00:13:13] It’s shock absorbing here let’s see if it oh yeah no I’ve a couple of the guys asked first.

[00:13:19] But some guys just walked right up and checked it and it’s like wait a second dude yeah and you slap.

[00:13:26] Their hand. You gotta ask first, yeah, yeah. So listen, I worked in a hobby shop quite a few years ago and one of the most annoying things- and if you’re listening customers, one of the most annoying things that people used to come in and do is when we sold rc cars, especially monster trucks that had the big squishy tires. They would come in and the first thing they would do is they’d grab the tire and give it a squeeze and it would make this horrific whistling noise. That went straight to my brain and yeah. So I, I, yeah, shiny object, push on, I get it. Yeah, yeah, so it’s been a little bit, it’s a.

[00:14:02] It’s kind of an odd one, because I really like the way this plane looks and so I’m almost shy about when I’m gonna fly it. Yeah, I’m like, I’m like I think I’m gonna wait till I consider it to be perfect conditions. And listen, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. It’s exact opposite how I feel about the cadet. When I go out, I have a few planes in the van and the conditions aren’t that great. The cadet comes out and that thing flies in all conditions just fine. Yeah, that’s one you’re.

[00:14:31] Comfortable with, so you’re absolutely happy with that too. Yeah, I understand that has a lot to do, so let’s, let’s go over a couple things then we’ve we’re curious. First off, it’s it’s very common for everybody here: what, what’s your number? Ron, just getting straight, we’re going right into it.

[00:14:51] Yeah, wow, okay, right to it. Okay, okay, and I had to make a list because I knew you were going to ask six, six that are flyable, nice, that’s a good number. Four, four kits- I have not started. Okay, yeah, and I’ll consider. I consider two under construction and two under repair. Restoration- awesome, yeah, yeah, mostly I always take the cadet. I found that if, when I don’t take the cadet, I kind of like, yeah, I just want to relax and fly the cadet, is that plane because it’s just so easy to, I call it, go out.

[00:15:27] And fly around like a cessna that’s just fine by me an airplane like that is just fun to take out and.

[00:15:32] Land and take off and land and take off, and I mean it just makes you- I mean that type of flying makes you a better pilot, yeah, but that airplane lends itself well to that too. Yeah, you nailed it, Tom.

[00:15:44] That’s exactly it. And then I- the other plane that I think I really get a gas from because I can fly it across the road from my property in my neighbor’s field- is I’ve got one of those twisted hobby like 33 inch wingspan crack yaks. Oh okay, that thing is just a food to fly. It’s like you cannot.

[00:16:07] Hurt that plane twisted hobby I’m writing that down because that sounds really interesting have you.

[00:16:12] Not heard of that before -that’s the that’s the profile one right yeah it’s a profile foamy.

[00:16:18] And it’s like light as a feather and if you get into trouble you just cut the throttle and let it drop.

[00:16:23] And you probably won’t break it. I think that’s the was the epo foam or what. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s the maybe like the depron type epp. Is that? So okay, yeah, that might yeah, because, yeah, that stuff is very flexible, it’s it’s you can’t- well, I shouldn’t say you can’t, it’s, it’s difficult to.

[00:16:39] Break it, I’ll find a way it doesn’t do good in a midair. I had a midair with it with an extreme hobby’s edge that my buddy flies and we were. I was over on one side of the field doing my thing and he was over on the other and he had a senior moment and came over into me and hit the, hit my plane and I cut throttle and came down in pieces and he managed to keep his flying, which I said. If I

[00:17:10] Had to pick which plane survived. It’s much better that the thousand dollar plane survives versus the hundred dollar plane. Yeah, but I actually repaired it. It’s still flying good deal. Yeah, his.

[00:17:21] Prop did a number on that phone oh I’m sure yeah a knife will yeah you can’t really crash those.

[00:17:29] And hurt them, but you can definitely cut them. I can’t remember if I put any pictures up of that one for you guys to look at, but yeah, I had. It was. It’s like I took some really thin balsa and just glued it.

[00:17:41] Over the holes and just went back out that’s a good idea yeah sometimes ugly is easy and easy.

[00:17:47] Is the best way to do it yeah as long as the fly is good yep it’s just it’s such a fun plane to fly.

[00:17:53] I noticed you said that you’re getting back into the hobby after like 35 years off. Yeah, yeah. So what has what has changed in that time, from the time you left, to like when you look at the new stuff, you go, wow, that’s so much better or so much worse than it used to be. What. What do you think about the?

[00:18:12] Difference in how far it’s come in 35 years. Well it’s. I think the biggest difference is I don’t really recall there being a lot of choices in what I would call ARF type planes. Back then we had obby shacks in southern california and we could buy these like really cheap 15 and 20 dollar styrofoam plane kits. You could put oh four, nines on and whatnot. That was the closest you could come, but we had to build our planes. Or, if you’re in a hobby shop and they had a plane hanging,

[00:18:43] You could buy a plane that somebody else built and I don’t recall there being any electric motors at the time in airplanes. The radio control cars were just starting up with the electric motors and radios were just simpler. I mean, if you could, if you had a radio that had the switches for reversing servos and could do like dual rates, you had a badass radio. Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And I’ve got a spectrum dx8 second generation, the g2, and I’m just amazed by it. I just can’t imagine.

[00:19:21] Ever needing any more radio than that. Right, I know a lot of people are going for the ones that have the, the, the like the android operating system and stuff on, and I’m just like I would never use it. I just, I just like what I can do with that. That dxa it’s got all kinds of different programming stuff you can do just right within it that seem to be more than it up to me. But again, I’m probably not the, not the guy to measure it against, because I just want

[00:19:54] To go out and fly my laps and stuff and I’m trying to learn to do some of the harder stuff with the plane. But man, my eye hand coordination is just not coming around that quick it’s.

[00:20:07] Funny. You talk about the dx8 and gen 2 and stuff. So I went from- and actually Tom did the same thing- a dx8 generation one, and then we both now use the ix12 with the android system and all that kind of stuff. I can see where the simplicity of a dx8 would be awesome, but the one thing that I really did not like- well, I guess, found to be limiting with the dx8 gen one. I don’t know how gen 2 is, but the 30 model memory being the limit, without having to move things back and forth off of the, off of the.

[00:20:41] Card yeah no limit on the gen 2 it’s 256 model memory oh there you go I don’t think I’ll ever hit.

[00:20:48] 256.. Don’t say never, I don’t think I will ever hit. Yeah, I, I, I, I don’t know. Rod, you have that shop building out back of you. You could do it. I. Maybe that’s good, he totally could. Well, I could, but I don’t know if I want. I don’t know you want to. Don’t say I don’t know if I want to, you want to. Maybe we’ll see if you can fill that thing with. I guess I don’t, I guess I can’t say that because I don’t know what 10 years is going to bring from now. Who knows? Steve, you brought up a good point, like

[00:21:18] Since, since, since we’re not spring chickens anymore, you and I, or me, you said that your skills aren’t where they used to be- in the hand-eye coordination, and that’s something I’ve discovered over time. When I say over time, I mean like the last few years, is that it’s for me it’s? It’s not so much about learning new things anymore, it’s about trying to maintain the things that I can do, do what I mean. Oh yeah, I totally know what you mean, Tom. So

[00:21:46] And I think the other aspect and I know you guys will bring up is there’s the building and maintaining of the models. That’s that’s changed from when I did it originally back in my early 20s and whatnot, because we built our planes- the first plane I had, admittedly with the glider hanging in the hobby shop that the owner of the hobby shop sold me one, sold my buddy, another one to get us going, but we both built our first trainers and basically

[00:22:18] Aircraft after that were just planes that we built there was. There’s so many pre-fab airplanes- I see it so many from horizon- fms, arrows and stuff that the guys bring out. Everybody’s having fun, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, right? My? My take is: as long as you’re having fun, you’re doing good. Yeah, but I think my skills as a builder and maintainer are leaps and bounds.

[00:22:50] Beyond what they were when I first started out years ago, because of just my experience in the time in between. Yeah, it’s, I love sitting down at the bench and building stuff- right, if I, if I really crashed something bad, making the parts and rebuilding the parts that broke and scraps and putting it back together without having the plans and all that. Now I have those skills now.

[00:23:15] But I didn’t have that right. And the patience. I think as we get older we get more patient too. God, I know. I hope so, because I need more patience. Well, I mean, I’ve noticed, just with myself, the build quality over the years, like when I was younger and I built my first airplane. From what I recall, it wasn’t a very pretty airplane when it was done. But like now, even with rfs, I take that extra time to make it the best that I can, whereas when I was younger maybe the focus was on getting

[00:23:47] It done to go fly. Well, now I want it to look more, I want it to look good, more maybe than I want it to fly, yeah, sooner. Does that make sense what I’m trying to say? Yeah, I think I understand. Oh, 100, because I’m just more patient now. I just I just have the time and patience. So something else that.

[00:24:06] Comes with age, Ron patience. Now that I’m into this, getting into the second year of this, I’ve come to an understanding of the, to understand that at the price point for a lot of the foam type aircraft and whatnot, and how they do all the control services and connections, it’s not the same as what I would do if I built something. So you just have to accept that’s the value you get at that price point because, right, you can’t put it, you can’t put a dollar.

[00:24:39] Value probably a lot of time you’ll spend building something that is true you really can’t yeah that’s.

[00:24:45] Absolutely true and sometimes you just want to go fly and get a new airplane and enjoy it which there’s.

[00:24:51] Nothing wrong with that nope yeah I think my list represents that yeah you did send us your list so.

[00:24:56] I’m going to go ahead and read through these really quick and we can talk about some different ones as we go through. So it looks like we have the flightworks pilotist pc6 that we already talked about, the SIG cadet lt40r for the 70 inch version, the hk wargo signature edge 540t 15e balsa epp foam 3d.

[00:25:17] Airplane. What is that one? So that is a. That is a hobby king’s version of the future hobbies edge 540 and that’s a just it’s like one step up from the twisted hobby plane and it’s just, it’s a really is. It is a gas to fly, it’s it flies. It’s got traditional aeropholes but it’s an interesting combination of the epp foam with some balsa here and there. Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, so it’s kind

[00:25:52] Of like: yeah, a hybrid, yeah and yeah, if you put it in. If you put it in the hands of one of my club mates who actually knows how to fly one of these, it flies amazing. Right now I’m just practicing.

[00:26:05] Making sure I can land it one piece yeah pretty small it looks like from the size of the servos and the.

[00:26:12] Battery. Yeah, it’s a small. It’s a small plane, another one that once I get a little bit better at, I should be able to fly in the field, across the street from the house. It actually flies really well. It’s just when you fly these- that type of a 3d plane, I call them- they’re really twitchy. They you touch the stick and it moves. Yeah, yeah. The control surfaces are huge on those. I call them crazy planes. They’re huge. The thing that I like about

[00:26:47] It is that I feel like it’s an excellent workout for my brain and my hand coordination, so it’s something. I look at it as therapy in that sense. So I may not be making it look the prettiest flying it, but if I can take it off, mess around with it and land it in one piece, I get a.

[00:27:06] Good workout. Yeah, look at that okay. So next you have the umx turbo timber and then you have a free wing fa18 high performance edf jet the royal maces. Yeah, the turbo timber, that’s a good fun little.

[00:27:21] Airplane yeah that plane’s awesome I definitely exceeded my expectations tenfold it’s amazing.

[00:27:29] We hear that so often with the umx airplanes. They really like they just fly really well for what they are, which surprises me, and they’re a lot of fun for not a lot of money. Yeah, yeah, they’re very.

[00:27:42] Very well done, a lot of fun. Yeah, and, and I picked, I picked it up when they had it. It’s like the lowest price I’d seen it at in a couple years. It’s like 111 bucks. How could I go wrong? Oh no, kidding.

[00:27:54] That’s like nothing for those. Yeah, that, what’s the? How’s the free we or free wing fa18 fly. Do you like that one? Too scared to fly? Okay, I was actually wondering about that. I let I let one. I okay, so.

[00:28:09] There’s always a story, right? So I was out at the field one day and we had what I would almost call it impromptu swap meet. Several guys had brought out several planes and they just were walked around going, hey, does anybody want to buy any of my planes? And I walked over to this one guy’s table. We had that f18 sitting there. How much you want for that one? He goes 40.

[00:28:33] Bucks I’m like sold oh my goodness yeah that’s like an automatic buy that’s a no-brainer yeah basically.

[00:28:40] Separate me from some of the money. I had my wallet, which I happened to have with me that day, yeah, and I took it home, got it, got it all dialed in, took it back out, had one of the jet guys make a few flights with it. They we got it pretty well dialed in and whatnot, and I have not flown it myself yet. Does that one have retractable gear? No, it’s here, it’s fast and I’m just not sure I’m I. I think I could take it off and fly it around, but I’m pretty sure I’d crash it.

[00:29:10] Well that’s a future plane then at least you have something for a next step that’s always good to.

[00:29:14] Have a goal so well. The other way I looked at it too is it’s got an ar631 in it. I mean it’s that’s worth more than the whole plane right there. I always figure if I’m buying something.

[00:29:25] At a, at a swap meet or something like that. If I can pick one component that’s more expensive than I’m paying for the entire plane, I can’t go wrong. Right, you can’t go wrong. Yeah, so under construction. I see you have a carl or a carl goldberg, gentle lady. Balsa kit, the 78 inch version. How’s that going?

[00:29:44] I haven’t glued one stick on it yet. I’m waiting for the weather to warm up and up so that I can glue my quarter inch cork on top of my two inch purple foam insulation. That

[00:29:54] Get the building that’s. That’s one that I would like to put on my list in the future build category, because I’ve heard a lot of good thing about the or good things about the gentle lady, but I have never flown one or built one or done anything with one. So they were. They were in production from goldberg for

[00:30:11] Many years and they don’t they don’t stand that test of time if they’re not good flyers yeah you.

[00:30:18] Know what I mean so and the plan the plans are out there you can go on like.

[00:30:24] Powder zone and there’s guys that have digitized all the rib stuff. So guys like Ron with a laser cutter could cut the parts. Nice, that’d be a really easy plane to build. The guy who has the- what is it? The balsa workbench- he has parts. You can buy them from him too, rob. So yeah, rob, it was my first plane. Oh, that was your first gentlelady was your first plane. That was the first plane I learned to fly on. Back in, what is it probably like in 1980?

[00:30:56] That’s awesome. And the way we learned- yeah, the way we learned to fly was my buddy and I went into a hobby shop. We looked at the badass looking plane, said we each want one of those and the lady goes: no, no, no, no, boys, you don’t want those. She pointed up to the two glider thing from the scene and says you boys each buy one of those and here’s the radios you need and you go over to the college with those and you get on your knees and you throw them and you land them. When you can do that really good, you come back and talk to me. So we bought them, set them up, went out to the college, through a whole

[00:31:33] Bunch until we could land them, went back and then we got a new assignment. This went on until she did work as all the way up the side of this slope, so we go to the top of the slope and throw it and land it, come back and talk to me. And then she gave us 049 motor pots. Yes, okay, she basically just kept giving us the incremental steps instructions and in the meantime we each bought our trainer kits. I think I bought a goldberg eaglet 50 and my buddy had a similar size. I think it was a.

[00:32:04] A SIG, senorita, that we worked on while we were practicing with the gliders. Yeah, did you say you had a goldberg eagle? I had an eaglet 50, the 50 inch version of the eagle. So you basically learned to fly with a, with a hand launch glider. Yeah, she was great. Yeah, we just kept going back when we got good, whatever, she told us we would go back and we would get our new assignment. And then when we, when we went out and we flew the trainers for the first time, that was just I don’t know why I like there.

[00:32:37] Were probably clubs around, we just weren’t smart enough to go find them. But yeah, I almost crashed the eaglet into a little league game that was going on. Oh, I pulled up just in the nick of time, yikes and getting that plane on the ground, packing it all up and going home that day I.

[00:32:55] Didn’t want to fly again yeah once bitten twice shy I don’t blame you so would you say you got the.

[00:33:00] Gentlelady more for nostalgia or because you truly just wanted to have another one because it flies so.

[00:33:04] Good, but both actually nostalgia, because I thought it would be really fun to build the kit of the first one, and if you keep your eyes open locally, you’ll be amazed at some of the deals that show up on my craigslist and facebook sometimes. Yes, that was one of those deals. Okay, it was, I just couldn’t pass it up. It was so cheap. And it turns out it was one of the last production runs of those kits from when venere had bought goldberg, and so at that point venere was laser cutting everything.

[00:33:37] Yeah, that was before great planes picked them up. Yeah, the quality of the parts is way higher than the die cut. Yeah, ones that I was accustomed to. So, yeah, so it just. And we’ve got a really, really accomplished lighter guy in our club, sailplane guy in the club, and so he hooked me up with the power system and whatnot for it. As I’m going along, he’s going to give me the tips I need just to do a really solid electric power and sailplane build with it. Yeah, we’re trying to start.

[00:34:08] Getting into to sail planes a little bit, so more to come on that. Yeah, you should ask me about the tower vista grande. That’s that was. That was the next thing I was going to bring up and I was waiting to do that because that’s the next thing on your list is a tower vista grande epr of 100 inch. So I looked that one up and I’m actually really impressed, first off with the price on it. It’s not all that expensive- I think it’s 199- but it comes with the, the motor installed and the esc, which is an

[00:34:40] ARF that has that installed I’ve never seen it before yeah rob that comes under the.

[00:34:45] Category of basically you pay for the motor and esc and they gave you a plane with it that’s kind of.

[00:34:52] What I’m thinking actually I mean that’s that’s one that I’m trying not to buy because I don’t need to.

[00:34:59] Buy another one, but I mean I don’t buy it till they do one of those tower sales, because that’s how I got sucked in. It was on sale for 139 dollars, oh, like three days. Yeah, that’s I. I hate missing.

[00:35:12] Those, but I’ll definitely have to look into that and put that on a. I don’t know if there’s something I can do to where to let me know if it’s on sale again, but I- yeah, I definitely at that price would order it without even thinking about it. That’s actually a pretty good deal, even at the non-sale price. That’s what I was thinking like. That’s a good looking airplane and a good looking motor, good motor that comes with it and speaking quality components. Yeah, gotta be overkill. Well, yeah, I mean 70 amp. That is actually kind of high for that size.

[00:35:45] That thing’s 100 inches I mean that’s that’s a big airplane well it is but that’s I mean I.

[00:35:49] Understand it’s gonna be light but I bet it would I bet a really small motor esc combo would get it up to.

[00:35:55] Altitude no problem I would think so well but you can looks like you can run it up to six cells.

[00:36:05] They recommend. They recommend four cell 2200 to like 3200 and I’ll know more once I get it together and I’m looking. How’s it balancing? Some people said even with the four cell batteries they’ve had to add weight to the front of them and I’m like, really, we’ll see. We’ll see once I get to the point where I’m. I’m setting that part up. Yeah, so I’ve got the, the steven.

[00:36:33] Zero, he me2 that we picked up in toledo and that actually- and that’s what do you think? That is about a 90, 90 ish. Yeah, that’s probably about a 90 inch wingspan, give or take a little bit, and that flies on a two cell- 2200, yeah, and to me that felt like it had plenty of power, so I can’t imagine that. I mean, that thing is probably gonna be a rocket. That might be kind of fun, though. Yeah, all right. So, moving on your list, you’ve got repair and restorations down. You’ve got a yak 54 ep 3dr for the 41 inch version.

[00:37:04] What’s the matter with that one? It just, it just needs love. It was. It’s one of the great planes- arfs, balsa, arfs. It’s got like really neat, like clear, translucent covering scheme on it and it just was set up really poorly. Servos weren’t centered, a bunch of stuff like that, and

[00:37:23] Just need some bench time and then it should be good to go. Yeah, nice. And then right up my alley, you have a great plane, super sportster ep, the 48 inch version, which I also have. Yeah, yeah, those fly.

[00:37:38] Great, by the way, except for in my hands. So yeah, I, I’ve crashed that plane twice now, oh, and both times had to do with landing. So yeah, they do fly great when they’re in the air, but apparently in my hands. I have a bad habit of coming in too slow. I think they flow pretty well, but you do.

[00:38:05] Have to have a little speed with them. I know I ended up crashing mine, that I got my first one because I was coming in a little too fast- the opposite of you- and I couldn’t quite get it down to the ground in time and it ended up. Where I was flying was at home, and this is back before. We bought the acreage next to us so I didn’t have the runway where I wanted it, so I had about 80 ish feet to land in where I had to land and be stopped, and this is this is a good size airplane, so I

[00:38:35] Ended up landing and then it took a little bit of a bounce because I was going too far or too fast and that hit the driveway which comes up a little bit, which made it go airborne again and launched it right into the pine trees on the other side of the driveway. So unfortunately the wings came off and folded in half and actually I think the fuselage folded in half too. But this is back when I could still buy the ARF. So I bought a new ARF and took all the electronics out of that one that I crashed and put it in the new one. I still have that one. So yeah, it’s a great airplane. I love that one.

[00:39:09] Yeah, and I, I destroyed the wing on the first crash. I was coming in and we always have a crosswind, which is it’s good and it’s bad. If you, if you learn how to deal with the crosswind, you’re a good pilot. If you don’t, it’s bad and you crash. And yeah, I came in. I was coming in a little bit. In this case I- I don’t think it was. Yeah, I think I got a little bit slow and it started drifting over towards the pits and I was trying to give it some gas, but it kept going towards the pits. So now,

[00:39:40] I’m going too fast and I put it down because I didn’t want to go into the pits because there are people in the pits. And it got on the ground. It was going too fast and I thought I would hit our net fence and I managed to hit one of the metal poles that holds the net fence up. So ouch, yeah, so pretty much split the wing in half and I went through a big process of rebuilding it brand new, basically rebuilt, half the wing, covered. It had it looking just great, went out for three flights and was coming in and I- I- I think it was a combination of my pilot error- too slow, and I went to try and

[00:40:17] Recover it. And I think at the same time one of the aileron servos failed and so it rolled over upside down, went this time over the pits into the parking lot and crashed into another fence and didn’t do as much damage as the first crash. But I lost interest in it at that point and said: this is going to have to wait for another day for me to want to spend any more time fixing it, but I’m not giving up on it. I just set it aside for right now. Yep, yeah, and sometimes that’s the

[00:40:45] Smartest thing to do is just set it aside, and someday you’ll probably feel like it’s it’s worthwhile. Yeah, it’s been sitting long enough. I can go ahead and go through the process.

[00:40:55] To fix this one again. Back in my early days I built the super sportster 40 from a kit and I think I had an os four stroke kit and I can’t remember which one- and I did fine with that one, yeah, but yeah, age, in this case the old eye hand coordination bit me. Pretty good there, I agree it’s, it’s one of the best looking airplanes out there as far as I’m concerned with the old

[00:41:19] School ones. So, yeah, it’s just a very classic looking RC airplane like when you think like, yeah, of old school RC airplane, like from the, from the 80s, I mean that’s, that’s one of the images. Yeah, the super sportster and the super chaos is and oh, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, they’re just

[00:41:38] They’re, they’re, so it’s just such a good looking airplane. So yeah, but one of these days I’ll get it back out of storage and get it back up in the air there’s. There’s nothing that’ll stop me from doing that other than I just thought for right now let me move on to some other things, and maybe I’m just trying to progress too fast. Probably you’re right not to give up on it, so it’ll be good.

[00:42:01] To get that back in the air. So all right, I agree. And then I see you have three kits that you plan on doing. You have a six, something extra. The 51 and a half inch version- yeah, you have an old school model work sunday fighter. The bristol spadport biplane- 46 and a half inch biplane. That’s right up Tom’s valley, oh yeah. And then the top flight. And then the top flight: cessna sky lane 182.. So I just

[00:42:26] Want to make a comment about this last one. You have undecided as far as power goes, but leaning electric, and that brings me to like, like my overall like view of your list. There’s no nitro or gas.

[00:42:41] Power to anything on your list steve I know which is pretty sad for a guy who’s a gearhead.

[00:42:49] Yeah well I wasn’t going to say that but a drag racer ought to have at least one nitro motor in.

[00:42:56] His collection or gasoline tell that to the guy with the tesla who came out and kicked all our asses.

[00:43:02] I don’t know how to take that because I have one but that’s that’s I like tesla so no there’s a.

[00:43:07] There’s a guy who figured it out for racing, but we won’t talk about that. I think if I was going to go with fuel, Tom, I would go gas, I wouldn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever touch nitro again because I don’t miss the mess, and I think that’s why you see so much electric. Is that? Yeah, I really like that. There’s nothing to clean up when I get that, other than the pieces of a crash.

[00:43:31] You had to add the pieces of the crash at the end. No, I, I hear you and I, I say it over and over: yes, it totally makes sense, the electric and gas- there’s less mass, they’re easier to operate. But I, in my brain, I still, I still always have a soft spot for, for nitro and

[00:43:51] I always suspect I always will. Well, and I’ve said it before, too a lot I like nitro. I don’t want to own nitro, so I love the fact that you have it and I don’t have to deal with it. Right, the smell, the sound, yeah, everything is cool about nitro, but I just can’t justify the expense. So steve are you?

[00:44:08] Going to go gas then you think maybe on the on the cessna I don’t know Tom because you bring up a good.

[00:44:14] Point. That is a large enough aircraft and the way it was designed and engineered it would. It’s not going to be that easy to convert to electric. Not that I’m confident I could do it, oh sure yeah. But it’s going to require a pretty good size electric system. Right for that one, because it’s not a light plane at all, no one. It’s a scale airplane too, so it needs to make it is, I think. Well, can I just put one of

[00:44:42] Those electric sound systems yeah you can but have you ever heard one of those up close they’re pretty.

[00:44:47] Lame. No, no, I can only imagine. I mean, if I’m honest, they’re pretty lame. No, you’re right, you should. You should skip to plane number four, because that’s that’s going to come up real soon, because that is.

[00:44:58] One really cool kit the chin model aircraft cessna 33702 skymaster 52 inch that came off ebay from.

[00:45:07] Thailand and I had my eye on that for months and months and there’s a guy who down in southern california who did a really nice build thread on rc groups on it and flying it, and the more I looked at his thread and saw the plane. It’s just, it’s a plane that I really like the look of. I decided to go ahead and spend the money and get the kit here and I’m not disappointed. The quality of this kit is top notch. Yeah, it’s, it’s very complete. It has everything but the electrics in it. It has all the

[00:45:41] Landing gear, all the push rods, everything you need. You just need to add your servos and a power system and it’s designed for the twin electric setup and the quality of the laser and cnc cutting.

[00:45:56] On. It is just top notch. Yeah, I’m a fan of the 337 and we have a, a nickname that we call them like in the well, in the in the circles, we call them suck and blows, because they have an engine up front that sucks and one in the back that blows, right, so they call them second blows. Yeah, yeah, my uncle had.

[00:46:15] One. Yeah, when I was growing up, my uncle was a pilot. He owned one and that was part of the other thing. It’s just kind of remembering that my uncle used to own one of those, back in the day, that’s.

[00:46:26] Awesome yeah that is really cool so at 52 inches it’s not a terribly big airplane so it would probably.

[00:46:31] Lend itself pretty well to electric power. I’d say yeah, yeah, and I’ve already got, as you can see from the list, I’ve already got the power system for it. That’d be a good flying airplane. You can put retractable gear on it. Nope, no, too small for that, I think. Okay, as far as I think it would add too much weight. Yeah, you’re probably thinking about adding flaps, based on the recommendation of the guy who has the build thread on. He said if he was going to do anything different, he would add flaps to it.

[00:46:56] Cool, that’ll be a neat project. Yeah, definitely send us, if you don’t mind, send us pictures once you get started on that. I know, sure, sure, no, definitely. I think it’s a neat airplane too, I think.

[00:47:06] I’ll get some posted up. But the skyline- again, another kit that I saw on facebook marketplace locally- is more of a project for when I’m ready for a really big challenge. Well, if that’s the if.

[00:47:19] That’s the top flight gold series kit or gold edition or whatever they’re called. It’s a pretty easy build. To be honest. I’ve built several of their gold edition or gold series kits. Yeah, they’re. They actually go together really, really nicely. And if you’ve got one of the later kits, I think

[00:47:34] Some of those were laser cut and those go together really nice I. Everything looks really high quality on that, other than the empennage had been started by the, the person who had the kit. Apparently, the guy who had the kit had passed away and his son was trying to get rid of all his rc stuff. Yeah, and I ended up having rob at the balsa workbench cut me all the parts for the empennage.

[00:48:05] That this guy did because he did such a bad job putting it together. So rob does good work. Rob charged me 25 bucks with shipping, with shipping, yeah, and actually no, he didn’t know it was less than that, I think you. He wanted 15 bucks and I sent him 25 bucks, yeah. So rob from balsa workbench is the.

[00:48:26] Is the guy I got the mini Cloud Dancer kit from and put together. And what a yeah, what a joy that was to put together. I mean, everything fit beautifully. So, yep, huge, shout out to rob if he’s listening huge.

[00:48:38] Shout out I mean if you need something laser cut and whatnot he will walk you through the process of.

[00:48:44] What he needs to do it, and super nice guy, yeah, and that guy has probably forgotten more about rc than I will ever know, and I feel like I know a fair amount of rc stuff. So, yeah, you seem to.

[00:48:59] He’s a great resource. You guys have both been an excellent resource for me getting back into the hobby and stuff. I mean a lot of the, a lot of the tips and tricks and things that I hadn’t thought of I’ve picked up from listening to you guys and, of course, listening to some others as well. But yeah, I, I like the building stuff a lot, just hearing how other people do it, especially some of the guys you’ve had on the show. I mean just picking up stuff from listening to other people. You just can’t beat that. The sharing of the knowledge- well, we appreciate that.

[00:49:29] We really do yeah and Ron says that he echoes that sentiment every time we talk to somebody new.

[00:49:33] It’s like we learn something every time it’s good to challenge yourself exactly yeah get.

[00:49:41] Outside your comfort zone all right well steve this has been fun is there anything else that.

[00:49:46] You want to talk about before we got off here. No, I can’t really think. Think of any. I really get. I apologize for the technical difficulties- all in a day’s work. I guess that’s okay. Ron will edit all that out of there. Nobody will know, I figured. I figured he had those skills. He’ll probably does, probably cussing steve’s name when he learns how much time he has to spend editing all this stuff. So but that’s a. That’s just kind of the way it goes some days. I guess it’s. It’s a. It’s a great hobby and it’s there’s. There’s so much to it to. You can learn from it and hanging.

[00:50:19] Out with the, with a bunch of bunch of guys that are fun to hang out with, and when, when you do have a mishap, having somebody there to laugh at you about it, you can’t beat it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:31] Yeah, I couldn’t agree more awesome. Well, steve, once again, thank you for joining us. We will. We’ll have to do this again sometime. That was a blast. Yeah, that was fun, so, yeah, well, I’ll definitely keep.

[00:50:43] In touch with you guys online on the on the technical assistance because you guys have been great on.

[00:50:47] That appreciate that a ton, no problem, yeah, and if you, if when you start that cessna 337 project, definitely send us some pictures, because that sounds really, really interesting. Yeah, I can’t wait to see that one. Like if I was going to do an electric build, that would probably be it.

[00:51:03] I could see that would be it. Yeah, I think so. Well, Tom, maybe you can send me. Send me the motor for the 182 and change my mind. He’s got a ton of them. Well, I have a lot of.

[00:51:15] Nitro motors but you said you’re never going to touch a nitro again so I don’t know if I can help.

[00:51:19] You or not don’t miss it I mean they’re they’re they’re great and they’re fun it’s the mess.

[00:51:25] I understand yeah and they are messy there’s just there’s no way around my sentiments exactly.

[00:51:30] Yeah, so I get it all right, steve. Well, thanks for joining us. All right guys, until next time. I’m Ron and I’m Tom, and you and I’m steve. All right guys, bye, bye. Good night. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

[00:51:44] 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.