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Anyone into RC?


RHill

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I've been into radio control models since I was 6 or 7. Father got me a started with cars, transitioned to planes at 9 and flew them till I left for college.

Couple years ago a buddy asked me to help him get a trainer ready to learn how to fly. After venturing out to the field for the maiden flight, I was hooked again. Went through all my old planes and made sure they were airworthy, flying all but my dad's old plane that is older than I am.

After going through the collection, I built a SIG Somethin Extra. For my second kit build by myself, I was extremely happy with the way it went together and flew.

I didn't want to keep nitro planes in an apartment, so I picked up the Extreme Flight MXS pictured below. I've only had it out a handful of times, but hopefully that will change this summer. It is a blast to fly, hammering through tumbles into spins is pretty amazing.

IMG_20130217_201219.jpg

Elevator counterbalance was broken in the apartment move, so I stripped off some covering to find and repair the damage. Thing is built extremely lightweight, but still very solid.

IMG_20130217_201151.jpg

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I have quite a few my self some scale and some park flyers. I like electric myself over nitro, I hate rebuilding engines after so many hours of flight. I am also in to boats, crawlers and short corse trucks. I gave a Traxxas E-Maxx with a castle creations mamba monster 2200kv motor. I'll post you some pictures when I get home.

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I've had a few scale planes over the years, but always enjoyed aerobatics more than anything else. I took my quarter scale PT-19 to my home field's last fun fly, I was doing low inverted passes and more aerobatics than the guys with the 50CC edges and extras. Surprisingly, the PT-19 is actually more fun to fly than my 80" extra 300(because the extra is about 2lbs too heavy).

Been thinking about picking up a little fun fly park flyer. I could easily fly the 48" MXS low altitude over a soccer field, but I'm just not sure how it would turn out. I live on the approach to Cleveland Hopkins, so I could see that causing some drama.

Been to the gas CRCC field once, and I've heard there is a field or two in Avon, but I've never been to those.

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That is the added perk if flying electric, you can literally stop on the side of the road and fly..well as long as it doesn't disrupt any traffic. Nitro has to be flown at an AMA field, I used to fly at Torqs here in Columbus but the dues just got too damn expensive.

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Man, electrics have come leaps and bounds from when I was into it. Mid to late 80's, I had a 1/10th Kyosho Ultima that I 2wd truggied. We used to race Ohio RC Raceways in HuberHeights back then. 85k drag motor, 7cell 2.4kmah, and a huge pinion still only took it to just under 40mph. Dad was into planes and built a couple trainers, a Navy F4U Corsair, and a P40, all 4srk nitros. His pride n joy was a full on custom powerboat, 44" with a 32cc I/O. He looked over some plans but eventually designed his own. Unreal, hard to skate unless the water was glass, but it was stupid fast.

He built me a 32" airboat and modded the fan tower for a .61" 4strk. Good times. Sadly, we lost most all of it to a basement flood.

Edited by Hellmutt
Spell chequer bustimicated
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Sorry to hear about losing all the models. I could not imagine losing all the planes my father and I worked on and flew together. It is the huge sentimental value in these things when you invest so much of your time in, especially if it is with a parent or child.

The advancements in electronics are pretty damn amazing; LiPo's, brushless and 2.4ghz radios pretty much redefined electric models. I used to race cars with matched NiCd packs that were good for 1 race and you didn't dare cycle them in a single night.....so we had a small toolbox at least 20 packs that we took hours the night before to charge. Now, a single $30 pack can get you through two 5 minutes heats easily and be topped off with a $40 charger for the mains. Brushless motors all but eliminate motor maintenance. 2.4ghz radios eliminate the worry of frequency conflicts.

Add in Chinese electronics reducing costs....I cant even imagine how much my dad spent on our RC racing stuff back in the early 90's....today, you can have better equipment for 1/2 or 1/3 the cost. Even name brand stuff is having to compete.

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I know that 25 yrs ago we had over $1200 invested in my elec car. Carbon fiber chassis, graphite shock towers, platinum coil overs, a 3 foot stack of wheel/tire combos for offroad/oval/carpet/asphalt. My old 74mhz Airtronics XL2P was state of the art back then too :lol:

As for the planes/boats, he spent well over $10k back then....not to mention half dozen 4 and 5 channel radios, fuel, tons of nitro 2strk/4strk engines. He loved his Wankel and opposing cyl engines, I was more a single cyl 4cycle fan. It was disheartening to see all of that hard work, time, and money underwater. We were on vacation and found it days later, lost a lot in that flood. Reloading equip and some of his woodworking equip too. It definitely killed our hobby, its too hard to just start over and by that age he didnt have it in him to go at it again. I salvaged some of the engines, but all of our electronics and balsa models were trashed.

Edited by Hellmutt
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Wait until my kids pass out and I can pull the super scale F-22, SU-47 and A-10 out for pictures all three planes have over a 80 inch wing span pushed by 2 70mm brushless fan units retractable gear and smoke systems.

I've always wanted an A-10, had an F4 Phantom...but it only lasted 1/2 of a flight with my father at the sticks. He was a really good pilot(both in life size aircraft and RC), but it is pretty damn easy to lose orientation on a fast moving all black F4 on a cloudy day. I can still picture it burying itself vertically into the freshly plowed cornfield about 100 ft in front of the runway.

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I know that 25 yrs ago we had over $1200 invested in my elec car. Carbon fiber chassis, graphite shock towers, platinum coil overs, a 3 foot stack of wheel/tire combos for offroad/oval/carpet/asphalt. My old 74mhz Airtronics XL2P was state of the art back then too :lol:

Here is a couple pictures of the Jr2's I raced back in the day. Also had a couple Jr-T's, Nitro Hawk, and some other on road kyosho stuff. The both had all kinds of stuff done like the transmissions switched out with XX(I think). Edit: Obviously not vintage electronics, I took a track when I got back into racing.

2011-01-22%252015.44.38.jpg

2010-12-24%252013.02.31.jpg

This is some of the stuff I was racing on carpet offroad last year. Also had another T4 and SC10. I regret selling it all, but I learned the hard way...if you plan to get rid of it, do it quick before the next model is released.

2011-03-09%252022.48.57.jpg

Edited by RHill
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Yeah, ARF's weren't quite out yet when we started. My buggy took me 2 weeks to build, everyday after school I'd run home and work on it until bedtime. Every single screw, nut, gear, and linkage was assembled by me and a pocket screwdriver set. Proudest moment was when it was all put together, I took it outside and switched on the radio, swithed on the car, put it down and pulled the trigger on that pistolgrip to see the car takeoff in reverse! Damn, polarity was backwards ( oem junk mechanical speed control ). My neighbor thought it was hilarious as he ran his new Raider past me, but once I swapped the batt leads I proceeded to whoop all over his car :D

I liked the planes, but it was scary seeing it get out of control now and then or forgetting which way your aelerons actuate while inverted hahaha. A friend's dad had a huge P51D with a monster 5cyl array, one high speed low alt flyby tore a wing clean from the fuselage, MAJOR money lost right then. I never flew again after that day, but sometimes I miss having one. The way these new elecs are performing, I could surely get back in cheap. We have a small airfield outside of Piqua behind Edison State CC, RC Hawks club but probably cost a bit to use their site

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Here's what I built back in '86 - aluminum tub chassis and fat 6cel 1200mah - state of the art LOL!

ultima_promo1.jpg

After some major upgrades, looked more like this...

435409d1238474954-vintage-kyosho-ultima-pro-xl-rare-new-093a.jpg

Eventually I put the wide front end kit, wheels/tires, truck body to make a prolite truggy like this...

KyoshoUltimaSC-2.jpg

Now, you can buy a complete RTR truck, radio, charger, batt packs, and a field bag for what we spent on the carkit alone:nono:

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Here is a couple pictures of the Jr2's I raced back in the day. Also had a couple Jr-T's, Nitro Hawk, and some other on road kyosho stuff. The both had all kinds of stuff done like the transmissions switched out with XX(I think). Edit: Obviously not vintage electronics, I took a track when I got back into racing.

2011-01-22%252015.44.38.jpg

2010-12-24%252013.02.31.jpg

This is some of the stuff I was racing on carpet offroad last year. Also had another T4 and SC10. I regret selling it all, but I learned the hard way...if you plan to get rid of it, do it quick before the next model is released.

2011-03-09%252022.48.57.jpg

Awesome stuff in its day, although a little after our time. Losi was late 80's right?

My cousin bought an RC10 back when I had my Ultima, so we HAD to be enemies:D

Team Associated and Kyosho was all there was way back when you wanted race quality equip. Now it seems Traxxas rules the roost. Whatever happened to 1/4 scale, weedeater powered JackRabbits? Those things were awesome and fast as hell! Oh yeah, smaller faster better cheaper stuff is what happened :lol:

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Think AMA is $60 a year and field membership is usually $50-150 depending on the site. Not really horrible if you plan to fly a decent amount and it is close by.

Knock on wood, I've had pretty good luck with planes. I've had 2 major crashes, both of them were "disposable" planes. First was an old "sturdy birdy" which we took out on the most horrible of windy days...lost orientation, got turned with the wind and plowed straight into a tree.

Second was a "JC Fun-Bat" combat plane. Part of my normal flight routine was to dive straight down full throttle and pull out last second. I was practicing doing it inverted increasing the throttle on each dive. After a few tries I pinned it open and hit full down elevator a little early "just in case"....heard a split second of flutter before the thing flattened itself mid runway.

Best thing about the hobby, both times my dad and I walked to pick up the pieces laughing about what had happened.

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Awesome stuff in its day, although a little after our time. Losi was late 80's right?

My cousin bought an RC10 back when I had my Ultima, so we HAD to be enemies:D

Team Associated and Kyosho was all there was way back when you wanted race quality equip. Now it seems Traxxas rules the roost. Whatever happened to 1/4 scale, weedeater powered JackRabbits? Those things were awesome and fast as hell! Oh yeah, smaller faster better cheaper stuff is what happened :lol:

Late 80's the JRx2 came in with the crazy trailing link suspension, then the JR2 pro(my picture is of a jrx2 converted to pro). I think I was mistaken before, my truck was an LXT not the JR-T. Then the XX line and XXX line; after that I'm not sure, but currently they are on the 22's for the 10th scale.

Traxxas rules for bashing by far, but from what I saw at my old track, they just couldn't keep up with racing unless you literally put a whole new chassis under a Traxxas body.

The 1/4 scale stuff is still around, but it is stupid expensive. So is the 1/8th scale. I really wanted an assocated rc8e, but I would have had more money sunk into it than three 1/10 scales.

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Ya gotta laugh at a crash, if you dont you'll cry or kill someone. Its all about the fun.

Glad you and your dad got more in common with the riding, Karl. Father/Son gigs are a must imo.

My Dad was my best friend, even though he adopted me at 4yrs old. He always treated me like his own, taught me more than I'll ever remember, and was the smartest person I've ever known. He died in '99 and was lost without him until my biological father came back into my life. Now, he and I have been rekindling a lifetime of lost companionship the last few years. It's been great, we're almost too much alike :D

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Sadly my father and I never had that relationship, but we do now that I ride. We have a few trips planned this year.

Doesn't matter what the hobby is, it is a bonding thing more than anything else. My father used to be into motorcycles before I was born, then I bought one and about a year later he bought a victory. I had already wrecked my bike at this point and by the time I got it back on the road, my father was diagnosed with cancer and was no longer strong enough to ride.

I don't have an RC hobby anymore, I found something that works essentially the same way tho. I just put all my cash into a big pile and light it on fire.

RC cars are not bad, unless you are buying all new stuff. Planes can be while you are learning, but once past the curve it is fairly cheap. Heli's are the same as planes. Really depends on how much you crash and how cautious you are. Overconfidence and not knowing/understanding your equipment does not mix well with RC aircraft....at least if you care about $.

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