Ep 107: Tony Lewis

[00:00:03] Hello everyone and welcome to the RC Plane Lab podcast. I’m Ron and I’m Tom. Today we are sitting down and talking to tony lewis. Tony, how you doing? Oh, I’m doing, all right, tell us a little.

[00:00:20] Bit about yourself I am I live up in wisconsin okay I’m about an hour away from oshkosh just.

[00:00:27] North of milwaukee oh nice so how many times have you been to the oshkosh show my whole.

[00:00:33] Life excellent. So I. I grew up just about 20 minutes south and across from the fondue lac airport, so we had a front row seat every night. That’s so awesome. That would be awesome, that’s.

[00:00:47] Been a life, a lifetime, of aviation there. So what took you from growing up watching full-size airplanes at oshkosh to I want to fly rc airplanes. Well, the rc actually came first.

[00:01:04] I kind of grew up in the hobby. My I have a brother that’s quite a few years older than me, and my dad got into the rc hobby with him when I was about two years old, so I was just always around it as they came up through and grew into the hobby. And then, once I became old enough, I had an opportunity to start flying as well. So I soloed. At nine I built my first airplane.

[00:01:38] That winter and never looked back oh that’s awesome you’ve been at quite a while then because.

[00:01:44] I started a lot later than that. I didn’t have anybody around me when I was a kid doing it, which is unfortunate, but that’s awesome that you were. You were surrounded by it ever since you.

[00:01:55] Can remember, that’s so cool, yeah. So just so I have a sense of like what, what the market kind of looked like when you, when you, soloed at nine. What year was that? If you don’t mind me asking, 92, 92, okay, yeah.

[00:02:08] Okay, so you? Okay, you were born in 83, then he was in the. He was in the gold label era. Yeah, a couple years younger than me, so you remember the gold stickers right? Yes, I still have one that works. I do too.

[00:02:21] Yeah, and what we’re talking about- for anybody that’s listening that might be new to it- like back in 91, yeah, the fcc mandated that we had to go narrow band on our frequencies. So every transmitter had to have a little gold sticker on the back of it that said it was compliant with that new fcc regulation. So, yeah, I remember those days got it. So does tony. Yep, yeah, my, like I said my dad

[00:02:44] My brother started flying around 84, 85, so they would have been wideband. Then, yep, and yeah they. They had to send the radios back in and get them updated, and stickers and all that. Yeah, yeah, I still have a couple of the original radios from my from my dad, and I still even have a matching receiver and that’s I have one functioning set yet. That’s awesome. So do you have an airplane? You ever fly those?

[00:03:14] In just for old time’s sake not yet is that something you’ve thought about doing then if you say not.

[00:03:21] Yet, yes, yes, I have. I have a couple plans that way, actually, because so we grew up flying airtronics. That was just what the club that we were part of had. So I was able to find a airtronics sr that looked, looks, nearly brand new, still in the box about a year ago, so I picked that up and I was able to find a 2.4 Module that you can wire into it and convert it to 2.4. Oh, that’s awesome, so I’m gonna

[00:03:58] Have one that is going to be 2.4, And then I still have the original one that’s on 72 megahertz and I’d like to do something with each of them. That’s period, correct? I just haven’t decided what that.

[00:04:14] Is yet. Yeah, well, luckily there’s, there’s lots of options. I mean there were a lot of airplanes around back then. So, and good airplanes, good airplanes. I mean still nothing wrong with them, right? So yeah, that’s awesome. I wish I could say I still have my old, my original radio, but I’m sure somewhere along the line it got traded or sold or well, see, it’s so difficult because it.

[00:04:38] Goes from okay, this is what I want to use to okay, now, this is old and not worth anything to me for the longest time, and then after a while, it becomes okay, this is cool because it’s so, because it’s so you have to keep it in. That little band of this is garbage to me and not actually throw it away before you get to the. This is old and cool. Yeah, true, I, I can’t do that. Yeah, I, I move on too fast from things I don’t like, yeah, or don’t need. I still have an airplane from that era as well.

[00:05:08] A glider that my brother built actually. But as much as I’d like to restore that and fly it and do plan to do so, I don’t want to fly the old equipment in it because I don’t want to trust something that’s got that much sentimental value to right 30 year old equipment. That’s too much risk, yeah.

[00:05:29] You don’t. You don’t ever want to fly something you don’t want to lose, because that’s the one that’s going to have a problem and you’re going to right. Yeah, you can’t fall in love with an airplane if you’re ever going to fly it. No, that’s absolutely true. Yeah, so you said you built your first airplane then, after you were nine or ten years old. What was that? Yep, it was a top flight sierra trainer. Oh okay, yeah, that’s before my time. I’m not familiar with what that is. It’s essentially

[00:05:57] Top flight’s version of the great planes pt trainers oh okay yeah good flying airplane I remember those.

[00:06:03] Yeah so did you get a lot of flights on that or what happened to that airplane.

[00:06:06] Oh yeah, flew it for three, four years quite heavily before I moved down to other planes, and then it sat on the shelf for a number of years until I dug it out and refurbished it and flew it a little bit more. So eventually it did go somewhere in the ground. I don’t know, I don’t remember.

[00:06:29] That’s the ending to most of these airplanes unfortunately yeah.

[00:06:34] When you’re 12, 13, 14 years old and you have the ability to fly and lack the maturity, a lot of planes can disappear and you don’t remember how.

[00:06:48] Yeah they do and they can so do tony there do you belong to a club.

[00:06:56] Yes, I do. And how long have you been a member of that club? Well, I moved to this area at the end of 2018, so I’ve been a member of that club for the last three years now. Okay, awesome, what’s? What’s the name of it? The sheboygan area rc. Sheboygan area radio control society. For the sharks- ah, sharks, okay.

[00:07:22] -Huh, they had to get that in there. Yeah, cool, because there’s usually- there’s usually always- a cool acronym. Yeah, unlike ours, ours are just svf. It’s not really a cool acronym.

[00:07:34] Like shark sharks svrcf no what it’s the same valley rc flyers yeah it’s boring we should rename it.

[00:07:42] We should we should totally do that my former club is the faa because they were the fondue.

[00:07:50] Like girl modelers really, oh, that’s funny, that’s actually really good. That’s better than- yeah, it’s better than ours also, so that’s wonderful. So the club that you’re a member of, do they have a pretty good, a pretty good membership like do they have an active membership? Or like numbers, they do they.

[00:08:10] Do we’ve? I think we’re in the mid 30s for membership and I would say 70 to 80 percent active. Oh wow, that’s very high, yeah, that’s yeah. We don’t, we don’t have. I think right before I came to the club they ended up having some membership that aged out, so the membership is actually fairly young compared to.

[00:08:42] A lot of the other clubs that I’ve been a part of. Yeah, yeah, that’s good to see and that certainly helps. Yeah, yeah, our club is. We also have a rock crawling track and an off-road track and a dirt oval at our facility, so we’ve got- yeah, that’s all new as of two years ago, but that’s brought in some.

[00:09:07] Some other guys as well. Yeah, I can imagine that would bring in some new faces and stuff. So how many like of the members actually are there just to fly? Then just fly. Yeah, I would say.

[00:09:22] Probably about 20 to 25 we only have I would say we’ve got five or six that do both.

[00:09:31] We’ve only got maybe four that are car only. Okay, does. Does your club own the field or do they lease it, or is there some other arrangement for the field? I believe we own it. Oh okay, that’s good because it gives you a certain as a club. It gives you a certain amount of freedom to build rc tracks or

[00:09:52] Helicopter pads or whatever. That’s cool if we- I don’t know the details entirely, but if we do not own it, we have some sort of very long-term agreement because we have paved runways that are in and we.

[00:10:07] Have permanent buildings up oh wow see that’s not that far away Ron we’re gonna go up there.

[00:10:13] And visit actually I don’t know what are you from springfield are you like four hours or so then.

[00:10:19] Well if he’s north of milwaukee that sounds about right yeah so that’s yeah four and a half.

[00:10:23] And we always said we could be through chicago but in three hours remember that when we travel.

[00:10:31] Oh we’re three hours from chicago here so huh okay yeah when I used to when I used to way back in the.

[00:10:38] Day when I used to raise up at trackside in milwaukee it was. It was right at four hours and 20 minutes or so. That’s to trackside, yeah, so then that’s in, that’s in milwaukee. So yeah, we’re both 45 minutes north, north, okay, okay, so five hours, that’s a day drive. Yeah, that’s a day drive, day trip.

[00:10:55] So you said you, since you belong to a field and stuff and used to fly with your, your family, do you have a group of guys you fly with now, or how does that work? No, we have a group, that kind of.

[00:11:08] Gathers and flies at the club, but they do so during the day when I have to work. Yeah, I don’t know that they’re retired and unfortunately I’m quite a ways away from that. Yeah, me too, so I haven’t really fallen into a group here yet. When I started flying, we had a very, very active club and there was

[00:11:41] Was bad we would still congregate at the field talk shop and go grab a burger yeah that’s nice it’s nice.

[00:11:49] To have a group of guys like that. Yeah, hopefully you’ll, hopefully you’ll find a, a group, or even if it’s not a big group like our, I would say our group is what? Five maybe. Yeah, I would say five, five to six of us. Well, because usually if dave comes he brings daniel. Oh yeah, so five or six, sure, but it took us a long time really to sort of develop that group and it just so happens we’re all kind of about the same age, roughly well, Reggie’s a lot older than me. But what I’m saying is none of us can afford to take a day off from work because we’re all

[00:12:23] Still working. So it time wise, it just works out to the. We all have kind of similar schedules. But, yeah, our club, same thing, we- we have a group of guys that they go out during the mornings when it’s nice, all the retired guys, yeah, and they’re all yeah, and they’re all older retired guys and so, yeah, I think you could probably find that sort of thing at most clubs. Yeah, but hopefully you can, because it is, it is I think it is fun to share it with other people. Like I don’t, it depends what I’m doing. Well, I don’t particularly care for going out to the field.

[00:12:56] Completely by myself, unless I’m doing something that I don’t want anybody to see, like maidening an airplane or whatever. But I, I much prefer to go out there and fly with other my friends, and yeah, because there’s there’s always the tomfoolery that goes along with that, the ribbing each other and making fun of each other and whatever. Yeah, so hopefully, hopefully, you’re able to find that sort of dynamic there in your club.

[00:13:22] Yeah, I hope so. In time. Maybe we’ll get some other people starting to fly up there and all that too. You just you never know. I mean that’s. I think with the way things have been the last couple years, like the amount of people that actually fly and do stuff like it fields has gone down. I think there’s probably a lot more hobby work that goes on inside of houses and stuff, but actually going out and flying with a group of people, I just think, oh for sure, yeah, kind of like we’ve noticed.

[00:13:53] Put the, put the kibosh on a lot of that stuff, doing stuff with other people, and so, yeah, our membership I don’t think went down any, but the, the participation certainly did. Yeah, I mean there’s.

[00:14:05] A lot of times where we go out there and it’s just us- and it used to be- there’d always be maybe three or four other people out there, depending on the time we go, but it doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. Yeah, which is okay, in my opinion. For that one, actually, yeah, but we’ve had an interesting

[00:14:21] Dynamic in this area too. And again, this goes back to my hometown and my one of my former clubs, the fond lat club. When they relocated back in right at either at the end of the 90s or early 2000s, they built just this amazing facility and there’s a lot of guys, especially guys, definitely giant scale.

[00:14:49] That decided I’d rather drive the extra half hour 40 minutes and go there than to go to my home field, because the field there is just beautiful. That club is well over a hundred members at this point and membership stretches throughout the whole area of the state. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s an immaculate facility and they host a big event there every year too. They, they have a giant scale warbird and the

[00:15:23] Classics event there that’s very well attended. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, so are you? Are you members of more than? Or are you a member of more than one club? Not currently, but in the past I was, yeah, yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of a kind of a neat thing, like if you have enough clubs locally that you can, you can join more than one. I mean, it gets to be. It can be kind of expensive, but it’s nice because you’re not seeing the same folks maybe every time, or maybe one club has an advantage.

[00:15:55] Over another. Like maybe the run better runway, yeah, one club or better than the other, but you like flying at your other club because it’s closer to home or whatever. Here we kind of just

[00:16:05] Have one club one runway yeah we don’t get to choose on the yeah it’s not that it’s bad or.

[00:16:12] Anything like that but sometimes it would be nice to have an option or another like I said another runway.

[00:16:16] That goes perpendicular to the wind as opposed to- yeah, well, I guess I said that wrong: parallel to the wind as opposed to perpendicular. That we deal with all the time. I know what you were trying to say, yeah.

[00:16:26] That was a mouthful, but you got it. Well, my dad worked out of town so the company he worked for had a lot of active pilots and we became- and this is where I learned to fly- we became a member of the club local to them, but then we also were members of the hometown club in fond du lac, because going out on the weekend or wanting to run out for a quick flight, we didn’t want to have to drive all the way down to. The other club was in beaver dam, only a 40 minute drive. But

[00:17:03] You can drive five minutes and fly why would you want to drive for it yeah it’s extra hour wasted.

[00:17:10] Time right, exactly, that’s understandable. So of all of your flights in your past, all you all the years you’ve flown, any good crash stories? It’s a loaded question, I know everybody’s like. I don’t want to.

[00:17:27] Admit to any of them to relive them but boy do we love to hear about them I was gonna say there’s.

[00:17:34] There’s been some good ones more than I can remember even but the one that I’m.

[00:17:42] The one that seems to come up quite a bit with people that I used to fly with is: I managed to fly into a barn. Into a barn, okay, I hit a barn, okay. So the whole story of this is it was the maiden flight of a quarter scale space walker. Oh, a big airplane. We had been fighting this is back in the FM days. We had been fighting an interference issue. Every time we’d start the engine we would have all this interference through the airplane. Couldn’t figure out why gas or nitro, nitro, okay, nitro two.

[00:18:19] Cycle, no onboard glow, no, nothings. I mean, we just we couldn’t figure it out and I honestly don’t even remember what we found was the solution. But in doing so, we were swapping servos, we were stopping, swapping receivers, we were swapping batteries and disconnecting and reconnecting everything a dozen times. Finally got it working, took off, leveled off, started trimming.

[00:18:52] And I went to pull the throttle back and the throttle stuck it wide open. Oh no, okay, like well, this is a problem. So I yelled back to my dad, who was videotaping at the time- which, yes, I do have this all on videotape, ton of vhs somewhere. I said, hey, I, I throttle stuck wide open. He’s like we’ll climb up to altitude, we’ll have to run it out of fuel. So I pulled back on the elevator, air planked up, flying straight and level, oh dear, so oh.

[00:19:33] I’m like, yeah, I don’t have elevator either. So for five minutes to this thing, every time we’d turn it would start to descend, we’d level the wings and it would come back up to altitude. Five minutes we fought this thing, trying to figure out what to do with it, and in one of the turns the engine saved. So I quick leveled off the wings, thinking it’s going to go down in a farm field and I don’t know. It couldn’t have been more than 15, 20 feet off the ground.

[00:20:09] The engine picked back up and it flew back behind the pits and our pits were kind of up on a hill. I managed to fly down the driveway between two barns and somebody yelled: look out the barns or look out for the building. So I turned and managed to turn directly into the side of the barn.

[00:20:34] So you had what? Rudder and ailerons, but no elevator or throttle, correct? Oh boy, that’s hard to fly, that’s yeah. Well, it’s definitely hard to maintain altitude, absolutely.

[00:20:46] It punched a 10 inch by 10 inch hole in the side of the. There was a more like a pole building. Wow, so it actually went through. It actually went through, oh dear. The airframe laid outside the, the barn, all just destroyed, completely destroyed, mangled. The engine, battery pack, firewall assembly went through the barn all the way across the building and rolled underneath their.

[00:21:16] Brand new confine. Oh my gosh, holy smokes, that’s some force. There was a crew of four guys working in the barn on the opposite side of the driveway. I bet that was shocking. So yeah, had I turned the other way, I would have hit the barn. They were all in. Wow, they got a good laugh out of it and we got to own a piece of sheet metal on a barn.

[00:21:47] That should be hanging up somewhere no kidding yeah the piece that you replaced with the whole yeah that’s.

[00:21:52] Got to be hanging up in somebody’s wall. I actually think I have a picture of a shop somewhere. There was a chunk of airplanes stuck in the side of the barn for a good couple weeks before the.

[00:22:05] Wind finally blew it down. That’s awesome. I can honestly say I’ve never heard of anyone flying through a wall. That’s, that’s a first. That’s yeah. Usually they just stop and bounce off. Never underestimate the power of a SuperTigre 75. Yeah, right, well, and they’re, they’re kind of heavy anyway, SuperTigre 75. So yeah, that’s a lot of inertia. That’s awesome. Well, I don’t know if I’d say it’s awesome. I mean, well, it’s still a crash, but from a long time ago, so it’s okay, it’s a pretty.

[00:22:37] Awesome crash. It’s okay to relive the memories as long as we’ve learned from them, right? Is that how we? I guess so what we try to say? I guess so any other ones, tony- that club we celebrated.

[00:22:48] Crashes so there you go when it hit that building yeah I can imagine see if we did that Reggie would.

[00:22:56] Be king, oh my gosh. Yeah, Reggie, well, but I mean, Reggie’s crashes are crashes, but they’re really not spectacular. They’re usually because he’s done something. Say it stupid. He forgets to do something and something, and it’s usually foam right, so it’s, it’s, it’s not really.

[00:23:18] That’s true I guess if we’re going by numbers yes for sure he wins yeah so any other ones.

[00:23:25] Tony you got any other stories off the top of my head something about maybe a Telemaster I’m reading our.

[00:23:36] Notes here. Ah yes, that’s the fame. Telemaster, car pickup, Telemaster, Telemaster, car pickup. Okay, I’ve got it. I’ve got to hear this one, okay. So my friend and I had this bright idea that, just like they do at an air show, where they swing down and land on top of a car with like a cub or something, yeah, okay, we could probably do something similar, except hook the car and take it airborne.

[00:24:10] Yeah because a Telemaster could do that for sure no problem at all certainly has the capacity.

[00:24:18] So, and that was why we chose columnist, which, for the record, was my dad’s plane- it makes it all that much better. Yeah, this gets better. Yeah, he had a senior Telemaster with, I think it had a sato 91 on it at that point, and the car of choice- because it was the only one we had to choose from- was a one ace scale, four-wheel drive, nitro boogie, oh geez.

[00:24:48] Which is a big car, yeah, which is a heavy, kind of heavy, and a lot of power, yeah. So yeah, we, we fashioned about a two foot long metal hook that hung underneath the landing gear of the Telemaster and we put a big hoop of wire on the rc car that we set out to do this. Once again, this exists on a vhs somewhere in my collection, but we managed to swing down and pick up the car we, and get it airborne.

[00:25:25] And immediately fly it out of range of the. The car radio, which meant the servos started going crazy, including the throttle, kept revving and stopping -huh, and those four large wheels spinning and stopping. Spinning and stopping- oh yeah, started a pendulum effect underneath the airplane. I can picture this in my head. It’s funny. Yeah, it didn’t take long that a swinging, a scale buggy underneath the senior Telemaster started to affect the flight path.

[00:26:06] And eventually managed to swing up and hook the tail- oh, I didn’t see that- and drag the whole assembly into the soybean field tail first, oh wow, with the Telemaster at full throttle trying to fly out.

[00:26:23] Of trying to yeah get away from it oh man how bad was the damage the car was fine.

[00:26:32] Of course. Actually it wasn’t too bad. The Telemaster comes to a pretty small cross section back by the tail. Mm-hmm, it broke the fuselage at that point. It broke the tail off and I it did some damage to the covering, poked a couple holes in the wing, cracked a couple pieces, but for the most part the only major.

[00:26:55] Damage was that it knocked the tail off oh that’s not bad at all then yeah really no well it went down tail.

[00:27:01] First so that’s not so and then soybeans so it was a nice yeah something to land on airplanes don’t.

[00:27:08] Normally crash tail first so that’s that’s good yeah so let’s talk about some airplanes you have.

[00:27:16] Quite a few in your hangar yeah what let’s move on to what’s your number so what’s your number.

[00:27:23] My current number would be 31, 31.. Very nice, and he’s got pictures that he sent to us that I’ve been. I’ve been drooling over certain airframes. I love that tiger cat, by the way. I know it’s foam, but it’s still beautiful. So you want to read the? You want to read the list, Tom? Oh sure, yeah, I can read the list. You’re good at that. Let me take my glasses off so I can, so I can see this. I know it’s, it’s an old person thing, all right. So, tony, I’m going to get started here with

[00:27:53] I just want to say that tony’s list that he sent us is color coded, and I just wanted to say that I love that, because my list also I keep color coded, so kudos for that. So we’ll start with the finished ones, which are 12. We have an aerotech phoenix. I’m not familiar with what that is, tony, can you?

[00:28:18] Tell me what that is the aerotech phoenix is a it’s a rocket propelled glider what yeah I was wondering.

[00:28:29] Because the word aerotech they’re the ones that make the motors right yes okay yes so this is a plane.

[00:28:36] From. It was actually owned by one of the guys that taught me to fly, and he flew it for a number of years and when he got out of the hobby he passed it on to me, which I was very excited about until I looked at the price of those motors, yeah. So I cut the nose apart and converted it to a electric nice, so that I had it’s kind of like having a warm liner, but I did leave the rocket mount intact. So if

[00:29:16] I ever wanted to I can always do some sort of motor in there either for effect or actually try to launch.

[00:29:22] Yeah, that’d be cool. I’ve never actually seen one of those stand and everything. Yeah, I’ve never actually seen one fly, but I always thought they’d look cool. I think I know exactly what you’re talking about. Now aerotech made a few different. We had three in the club back. Okay, cool, all right. So next we have a crossfire. Who makes that? That is my own design. Oh, okay, looks like that. One’s set up electric three cell 2200 and then I have a. What’s the wingspan on that one?

[00:29:54] 30 32 Cool is that like a high wing nope I don’t see it is a it’s a low wing sport kind of pattern.

[00:30:09] Is that the blue or pink and white one blue orange and white yes okay there it is bottom left yeah that’s.

[00:30:16] Good. So in the last year, year and a half, I’ve kind of started to play around with some of the flight test ideas, the flight test planes and the dollar tree foam board. Okay, as I’ve gotten a little more curious about what you can do with foam and I realized that there’s a whole side of this hobby that I wasn’t really familiar with. There’s a company over on that’s called the hanger rc. That did a design contest and this was my entry for that. Cool, okay, so it’s. It’s built a dollar tree.

[00:30:54] Foam board and it’s. I did printed skins on it, which turned out relatively okay. How’d you do in the in the competition, don’t know, yet still ongoing, oh, okay, okay, I didn’t know that. So voting is still going on right now. But yeah, it’s inspired heavily by some of the classic pattern airplanes. I was just getting ready to say that it looks very patterned to me. King cobra, a lot of king cobra in it. Yep,

[00:31:26] Chaos played into that the blue angel mk blue angel and that’s in fact the color scheme was kind.

[00:31:36] Of stolen from that. Yeah, okay, it does look familiar, cool, and you designed. That’s awesome. All right, moving on, a diana 54. Okay, what’s that? That is a 54 inch version of.

[00:31:54] A free flight glider from the 50s. So the diana was a tow line free flight tow line glider made by frog, which was the england english manufacturer. Okay, and I scaled it up to 54 inches and made an rc two channel rc version, electric- well, three channels.

[00:32:21] Yes, is that the purple and white one? Yep, okay, yeah, good looking airplane also. Yes, it is. You do nice work, tony. Thank you all right. Next, we have an e-flight blade- mcpx. We have an e-flight commander mpd.

[00:32:37] Is that the one that just came out? I think so, yes and no. Okay. So the one that just came out is a re-release for a new version. Oh, I didn’t realize originally. Yeah, it originally came out a couple, I’d say, in 2016, 2017, and I’ve got the older version, oh, okay. Yeah, I was gonna say I didn’t think the new one had.

[00:33:04] Actually been released yet. So I was confused when I saw the pictures and I saw that I was like: wait a minute, original one’s red, the new one’s blue. Yeah, I noticed that too, so that’s probably the only thing they changed and just re-releasing it that way you have to buy all new things for it, if something.

[00:33:19] Happens to the old one that was my, and that one was one of the first airplanes I splurged on. As far as for a foam airplane, I’ve I’ve never been a fan of buying some of these more expensive home ready to fly planes. Yeah, me too, but I was in a place where I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of building time for a little while and I wanted something quick and easy I could throw in my car to go fly. I thought this fit the bill and it’s a good looking airplane. Yeah, yeah, I really, I really.

[00:33:56] Dig the way it looks and I like the blue version too, the new one, all right. Next we have, excuse me, an fms tiger cat, which that thing is really sexy, even though it’s a foam airplane. I love that thing. Great plane shoestring. We have a live wire 80, which is a. That’s a. The live wire. That’s like an old robin hood ish type plane. I think that’s the one that looks like it’s in.

[00:34:21] In the bones here in your picture with the yellow wing nope the live wire no because you’re reading.

[00:34:28] Off the finished list. Oh okay, true. Well, I mean that could have been clear covering. Oh, there you go. I guess he’s got one in here with clear covering on it. So okay, you just hush over there, all right.

[00:34:40] Which one is that. The live wire is a holdable design from the 50s as well. In my pictures it’s the one that’s blue and cream with a black lightning bolt, and that’s another one where I took the original design. I scaled it up to 80 inches and that’s a good looking airplane design, some of it to be built a little lighter, and so forth. It looks like it flies nice. It’s actually my go-to airplane. As basic as it seems, it is very mildly aerobatic, but it seems to be.

[00:35:21] One of the planes have the most fun flying. I think I think everybody has that one airplane right. I know mine is a is a stick. We always. That’s one of our questions, so usually, but cool the SIG, and I’m gonna pronounce this the way I pronounce it. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong.

[00:35:40] But demazelle, that’s the way I pronounce it. Good, so what do you think of that one? Like I, I would like to have one of those someday. How do they fly? Very slow, that’s what I like. I mean that, just that looks like it would be a very relaxing airplane to just go out of an evening and fly.

[00:35:59] Yeah, it made a very good indoor flyer. Okay, really, even at that size. Yeah well, we had a fairly good size gym to fly in okay and it took all of it. But yeah it, it flew very well. Indoors it’s very light and it’s got that under cambered air foil it won’t handle wind very well.

[00:36:29] I like the color combination. What’d you cover that with? I don’t know, I didn’t. It almost looks like. I mean, I know, I know it’s not, but it almost looks like tissue.

[00:36:41] It feels like tissue it to me it feels like I don’t know if you guys ever use cover light.

[00:36:49] No I can’t say that I have huh cover right for a short time was selling a synthetic.

[00:36:56] Heat shrinkable tissue. That was called cover light. Ah, okay, and that’s what that feels like. Yeah, but reading the manual for the airplane, it came with some kind of covering, so I think it might have actually come with the kit, but it does look like tissue. I like that. I like, I like that color combo. All right it’s. It’s not one you can fly a lot, and that’s why it actually is currently hanging.

[00:37:25] In my office at work. That’s cool that you can. That you can hang airplanes at your office is awesome. I have an airplane- well, half of an airplane- at my work. It’s an old tail off the edge of the viewers that I crashed a long time ago. Yeah, I remember that one. All right. Next we have a tiny twister and then a

[00:37:45] A willy-nilly speedster, right? Is that what that is? Yep, that one, as they hosted a design contest where you had to use one of their wing kits and the speedster was my design for that contest. Awesome.

[00:38:06] Cool, is that? The green and white one? Yep, with the gullwing. Yeah, that is really a sharp airplane. I think that would be awesome, scaled up to about 65 inches or so, with like a.

[00:38:19] Old kmb 60 on it that’d be that’d be a sweet combo well there is an old design called the pacific ace.

[00:38:27] Sweepster or pacific ace sportster that has the gullwing like that and it spans about 70 72. Perfect and.

[00:38:38] I saw one in toledo years ago and this has stayed with me. I’ve I’ve wanted to do one for a while now, so I pulled a lot of inspiration from that when I designed this. It looks really sharp. I really like that one. Okay, unfortunately, it looks a whole lot better than it flies. Oh, I hate to hear that because it looks it’s a little squirrely and I don’t know if it’s a servo issue because I’m

[00:39:08] Using the equipment out of a e-flight umx. So it’s got those little linear servos, yep, and those can be a little bit finicky, yeah, but it just seems to have kind of some quirky tendencies. Well, that’s.

[00:39:32] Unfortunate control. All right. And then, last one on the finish list, you have a hanger 9 cessna 182.. That’s a good flying airplane, that one’s gas. It’s got a 20 cc rcgf on it. Okay, that one I.

[00:39:46] Refinished after it is painted in the colors of the cesna that my father and my sister got their pilot’s license. Oh really, oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, is that a brown or is that black? It is orange and brown.

[00:40:01] Orange and brown yeah that’s really sharp actually that was that was a swap meet fine that.

[00:40:06] I, the guy, had kind of cracked up the belly of it and it needed a little work and I had been wanting to build a model of that airplane for a while and yeah, I think it picked it up for a hundred bucks with the servos and everything in it. That’s good, that picture. If you didn’t know that was a

[00:40:23] Model. You would that picture. You would think that it was. Yeah, that’s a real airplane or a full-size airplane. Yeah, that’s a really. That’s my wife and her photography skills, okay. Yeah, well, she’s really.

[00:40:34] Really good at it, you can let her know. I said that’s that was, that’s her expertise, that’s what she went to college for. Oh okay, I have a lot of really good airplane pictures, thanks to her.

[00:40:46] That’s awesome. So you have you brought up a couple words that have hit me. You said toledo, and then you also said swap meets. Do you do swap meets often or how does that like where what’s around you?

[00:40:59] Swap meet wise. There is a big one down in the walkie area every january and that one’s probably one of the best ones in our area. Unfortunately it always falls right around new year’s- it’s like that first saturday of the year, so I’m not always available to go down to it. That might be one worth a drive from here. I’ve been to that one. Yeah, I mean they would get vendors and things like radical rc usually showed.

[00:41:34] Up and remember the other one, but or batteries america, I think, was usually there, okay, so that one was pretty good. We had a. I lived further north for about 10 years and there were a couple up in that area, not quite as big, if they’re. If I can make it, I try to make them. They’re kind of they’re fun to go to and walk around. I don’t really like going to them if I’m going with the purpose of selling things.

[00:42:11] Oh that’s because you don’t sell things.

[00:42:14] I hate sitting at a table and bartering back and forth with someone. That’s when you’re- especially when you’re trying to sell something that you built in.

[00:42:28] Yeah, and they’re often they’re offering you pennies on the dollar. Yeah, that’s yeah, yeah, so back to the list. Back to the list. Sorry, didn’t mean to take us off topic. Looks like you have four.

[00:42:40] Under construction you have a cadet junior that you’re turning into a night flyer I presume.

[00:42:46] Yeah, it’s, that’s a foam build. Somebody on the ft forums threw up some patterns for a foam board cadet junior, and I just happen to have a roll of leds around from a previous project and I thought this would be fun.

[00:43:03] Yeah, there you go, all right. So next we have a proctor antic parasol. I was admiring the wheels on that one, because I have a pair of those wheels, and so does Ron, and he’s going to put his on an elder right. No,

[00:43:18] That’s gonna go on the top yeah top and I didn’t know you had a pair of those I have a pair for my.

[00:43:23] Elder biplane when I build it someday. Now that you say that I knew you had a pair of those a SIG, mr mulligan, that’s a really fun airplane, and then okay, so I you’re gonna have to help me.

[00:43:35] With this one a spawns wonder. Yeah. So dan spawns hole or spawn holes. He does all the cad work and design work for flight test and he’s got a couple designs that he’s put out himself and he’s local to me. He is doing a with bruce tharp’s permission. He is doing a foam board version.

[00:44:13] Prototype or a test build from these designs. Oh well, that’s kind of cool. All right, so that’s four under construction. Then you have which the. This is the bigger part of his list and usually the big part of most of ours that have been in the hobby for a long time. The not started list: yes, so I’ll quickly go through this one. A quarter scale: aronca a balsa usa spad bridey trainer domiko livewire.

[00:44:44] Kitten, domiko, sonic cruiser, a fisler storage, I make a good one. Yeah, I do fly line. Mega coop hanger 9, toledo special joy products. Oh, another aronca. Okay, park scale models, mini drake, a royal mock mini. Oh, that’s a good flying airplane. I used to have one of those scientific commodore, if it’s what I think it was. Anyway, SIG customer toc acromaster and a top flight and terry’s cool.

[00:45:12] So, going back to the oh, the, the mock mini is that? Is that the one that was used to be a half a powered? Yes, okay, yeah, that is a great flying, even with a, with a cox td. I think I had an o51 on mine with a throttle, if you remember, way back when, but yeah, what an awesome flying airplane that was.

[00:45:37] And fast. At least mine was. Oh, that’s my hope. Yeah, I have a line rc outrunner out of one of the t-rex helicopters. That’s a really high kv that I’m I’m hoping to put in there, and a lot of. I’ve seen some videos in that. The guys are using this and some of the hotliners and they’re.

[00:46:03] They’re well over 100 miles an hour yeah oh yeah and I noticed that it says it’s a balza workbench.

[00:46:10] Shortcut rob does great work, by the way. Yeah, actually there we in my previous club. There was a group of us that we decided to go out and build a bunch of these half a models, so we bought a bunch from him and this was one of the designs that he actually didn’t have at the time, so I did the cat.

[00:46:31] Work and sent over to him. Cool, yeah, I was. I was fortunate enough to get to build his prototype Cloud Dancer 10 kit for him, which was which was really enjoyable. I like working with rob went together pretty quick for you. Yeah, it really did. Actually you were fast. Yeah, he does. He does great work and honest as a day is long. That guy he’ll tell you just the way it is, which I

[00:47:00] Appreciate. Yeah, that’s awesome. All right, so that’s the list. Yeah, so you said you grew up with, obviously, balsa airplanes, because that was what was around back then. What do you prefer at this point? Like I’m looking at your list and there’s a mix of both balsa and foam and like dollar tree foam board stuff. What, what’s your, what’s your preference at this point to build with? I’m still far more.

[00:47:25] Comfortable building with balsa than anything else. Yeah, if I, if I had to decide to build a certain airplane and do it quick in an expedite build or whatever, that would be my go to. Yeah, I think I understand. I’ve done a lot of research on foam and I think there’s a lot of merit to what you can do with foam and right now with balsa, the balsa prices and supply being what it is. Yeah, there’s some

[00:48:02] Advantages to being able to build with foam, but at the same time, I really don’t like all these all foam airplanes. Yeah, they look great out of the box, but they get dinged up and dented, so

[00:48:17] Easy and then they just look right yeah I’m shaking my head in total agreement yeah I feel.

[00:48:27] The same. I think there’s a lot of merit to foam and- and this is nothing new- I mean back in the 60s and 70s, 90 of the pattern planes had foam core wings and foam core tails and things like that, and even a lot of hero vests do. Yeah, I think there’s a lot of merit in building with both materials. Yeah, you can save a lot of weight and you can save a lot of time by building with some of the components with foam. But I think the outside finish needs to be something sturdier to make it less likely to

[00:49:04] Have hanger ash yeah have some longevity to the finished airplane yeah I agree with that.

[00:49:14] Completely like, like you said, the old built-up foam, like cores and stuff for wings. They hold up really well. I mean they’re strong, they’re light. Yeah, it’s. It’s a good building technique because you get the best of both worlds. So yeah, I absolutely agree with one of the big tipping points.

[00:49:34] For me. I started following some builds online and I guess I was first made aware of this because years ago I built the curtis helldiver from jerry bates plants- probably one of my favorite airplanes ever- both model and full scale okay- and so I’m always kind of keeping helldiver stuff on the radar because it’s not a very common airplane, so I’d like to see what other guys are doing when they build them. And on the rc skill builder forum, somebody popped in and

[00:50:09] Said: I’m building this helldiver from the cherry-based plants same size as mine and he was worried about the weight of his finished airplane. And I looked through his build and I saw that he was building it all out of foam instead of doing it on a falsa and he’s fretting over it. He was worried it might hit 30.

[00:50:42] Mean. I flew. I had 80 flights on it when I sold it. It was a great airplane, yeah. So I messaged him and I said: hey, look, you don’t need to worry. He said you can get 30 pounds, this plane’s still gonna fly just fine. Yeah, but I followed the rest of this build and I was intrigued at how he was able to build this big airplane on a phone. He still did a fiberglass skin on the outside, like you, same as you would do with a wood. Build right, look beautiful, weighed 26 pounds or anything to fly. Oh man, I’m like I mean.

[00:51:18] He’s almost 20 pounds lighter than mine. Same exact plans, yeah, and fully functional on both models. Bombay diverx a whole bit, yeah. So then I started following some of his other builds and what he was able to do with foam was incredible. He did a lot of giant warbirds, 80 to 100 inch warbirds, and they were all mid-20s. I think there were even some that didn’t even hit 20 pounds.

[00:51:50] Were they, were they electric or yeah, okay, yeah, I, and that’s the caveat to that, you can’t. I don’t think the foam, especially built that light right.

[00:52:06] Well not to mention electric not to mention the fact that foam and gasoline don’t get along.

[00:52:11] Looked as good as a balsa build and that was the biggest thing they didn’t look like a foam right yeah.

[00:52:18] Well, if you fiberglass them and paint them, I mean they look as good or better than a wood built airplane for sure. So which, which actually the discussion brings me to, my next question for you is: I mean, I see a lot of electric airplanes on your list, do you? Do you prefer electric?

[00:52:37] At this point. Yes, yeah, I don’t blame you, of course I. I washed- literally washed my hands of nitro. Yeah, about 10 years ago I went electric on anything that would have been nitro sized. Yeah to me, once you got up to about a 20 cc size airplane, then it was worth it to go gas right. With that said, I’m starting to go electric even now. At that size I still wouldn’t go much bigger.

[00:53:11] And try to go electric like I. I have no interest in doing a 12 cell, to playing with two battery packs or even lower. Yeah, and that whole gamut. But I do like the. The toc acromaster, that’s on my list, that’s a 70 some inch wingspan pattern. It’s a 1978 design pattern plane and that would be. It was designed around a weber 90 and I’m planning to put electric in that. But six cell, single battery packs. So still a not a high voltage setup. Yeah, I am fighting.

[00:53:55] Buying anything bigger than a four cell, like anything over four cell, I just want to jump up and go with the gas engine, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve got a couple of them that I think I’m going to be getting rid of soon because I don’t want to spend or I don’t want new batteries, like I don’t want to have to go buy six cell batteries just for a couple airplanes. So just do it, just do it.

[00:54:16] So that’s. I was kind of at the same point ever I had. I had not had an electric that was bigger than maybe 30- 40 inch wingspan park flyer size when I decided to do my first nitro conversion. That nitro conversion was on a gray plains trainer 60, the joe pretty design with the full symmetrical air foil, and at that time I went to a five cell setup and that plane on that setup flew so well that I was hooked on electric for that size.

[00:54:59] I just I don’t know like I get it. I fully understand like well, that’s a road once you go down. I mean, then it’s, if I buy the batteries I don’t have to get rid of the airplanes, right? So I guess I have to make a decision on exactly: is it worth giving up a couple airplanes so I don’t have to buy batteries for them, or should I just bite the bullet and not trade them in and get a new airplane?

[00:55:23] Yeah, I don’t know. We’ll have to see, so, once you have your first set of six cell packs, the amount of planes that it opens up to fly at that size. Yeah, I mean, I understand, I get it like I.

[00:55:41] You are making complete sense to me I’m just you’re fighting going up to six cells the way I’m fighting.

[00:55:48] Going electric period. Well, and I understand that. Yeah, like it’s perfect for you with nitro, you don’t mind nitro? No, that’s what I’m trying to skip the smaller planes to bigger planes, just like tony did by getting rid of nitro. Completely. Right, we’ll see. Yeah, I mean, I guess my mind’s not completely made up yet. Well, yeah, we’ll have to talk about that. Well, I mean, even the planes that I

[00:56:12] Fly nitro are these days easily and fairly economically converted to electric. But I’m I mean, oh yeah, 40 sizes, I would have to start completely from nothing. I mean, I, I have those two batteries for that jet and that’s really. Everything else is the 2200, the park flyer type stuff. So three cells, yeah. So I’m, I’m fighting it the way you’re fighting. I’m just fighting going electric period and you’re just fighting going from one step to the next. There’s

[00:56:45] No reason for you to fight electric because you’re not trying to get away from something else. Like you already have plenty of nitro engines, you don’t mind the, the tuning and all that kind of stuff, right? So there’s nothing that says, hey, I need to get away from this, whereas with me I don’t want to deal with all the nitro and the cost and all that kind of stuff, so it’s easier for me.

[00:57:07] Just to stick with electric does that make sense no it does okay but I think I think and that was the.

[00:57:11] Big thing that pushed me to go electric too. I liked nitro. I never had a problem with the engines. Yes, they’re finicky, but especially if you run four cycles, they were a lot less trouble and they sounded nice. That smell still takes me back to all those memories growing up, mm-hmm. But I can buy two batteries for the price of three gallons of gas, and at the time between the

[00:57:47] Way work and everything else was for me. I wasn’t able to fly enough to burn up of maybe more than a gallon and a half a year. So you’re throwing out a half gallon every winter and that’s 15 bucks down the drain if you don’t use that up, because at 30- at the time it was maybe 30 a gallon- it just electric. The convenience of electric was so much better than

[00:58:18] Nitro, yeah, no, I totally get it, I really do, but for me, I mean maybe one other reason. I’m- I don’t want to say I’m fighting it, I’m not really fighting it, but it’s, it’s another. Okay, so I have all this nitro and I have a couple of these gas. Airplanes will now throw some electrics and batteries into the mix. Now I’m maintaining batteries on top of maintaining the nitro engines.

[00:58:44] On top of what I mean. It’s just more for you it makes sense to stick with nitro. So anyway, it’s not that I’m fighting it, I just you don’t need to even consider it right, I mean the way you’re, exactly. So that makes complete sense. But like I said for tony and I know nitro, I’m cool with that.

[00:59:00] Because I still get the and I don’t think I don’t think any less of you well and you shouldn’t actually.

[00:59:05] I mean. But, like I said, I still get the smells, I still get the- yeah, I get to watch you be frustrated with them and all that kind of stuff. So it’s like I’m still living it, even without owning them. So that’s.

[00:59:15] That’s one thing and full disclosure. As much as I had gotten away from nitro, I once again own one. Yeah, I acquired a half dozen airplanes at the end of last year and one of them was that quarter scale aronca that’s got a gemini 160 on the nose and the full scale has that exposed twin cylinder engine on it. The, the os, is a perfect scale copy. The model has functional scale exhaust and

[00:59:46] It those engines just sound so nice yeah I can’t fathom pulling that off and putting anything else.

[00:59:54] In there yeah well and that’s that’s why we’re doing the nitro on the tri motor just because of.

[01:00:01] The sound, yeah, like pretty much, and on that airplane too, there’s a lot of sentimental value to that. It came from the estate of a good friend after he had passed away. Yeah, I feel very honored to be able to get that in you, that legacy, and keep that airplane airborne in its memory. It’s not an airplane I’m going to run.

[01:00:18] Out and fly every weekend right no I totally get that I have one of those too yep that completely.

[01:00:24] Makes sense. So well, tony, this has been fun. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we get off here? Not that I can think of. Okay, all right, cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on as a guest. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, until next time. I am Ron, I’m Tom and you and I am tony. Goodbye, all right, we hope you.

[01:00:45] 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.