My latest creation ..

Jay Vaughan jayv at synth.net
Wed Aug 7 08:42:57 CEST 2013


> Super fab.  I used to build balsa planes when very young but have never had a motorised plane..


My Dad and I had a serious passion for the RC universe in the 80's, and while my Dad went off in one direction with his massive turbo- ducted-fanjet Phantom F4 creations and so on, I went in the other direction with slope-soaring gliders, and wind power.  We had a lot of fun with it, and now that my boys are getting old enough to know how a hot glue gun works, its been a lot of fun to return to this hobby and realize how far its come - really some of the most amazing hacking experiences I've had in the last few years have come from building flying things.  The RCGroups.com guys are a superlative community, and I can't state enough how wonderful it is to have all these plane designs shared and available in an open manner.  It has been a huge amount of fun.

So if you're interested in this subject and want to get into it, I can show you the path I took to becoming a competent builder and pilot - its a lot cheaper and easier than one may think at first.. building foam-based planes (cost of materials: about 5 bucks) and then flying them has been amazing - of course the investment in electronics is the most expensive aspect, but I've found ways to get started with it that are very, very affordable: take a ParkZone pre-built, ready-to-fly kit (includes transmitter), fly the hell out of it until it crashes, then re-use the electronics bits in newly built airframes.

The plane I made on the weekend is using the Spektrum transmitter from a ParkZone Vapor plane, paired up with a speed controller (10eu) and a new receiver (8eu) and motor (20eu) and battery (5eu), and about 2eu worth of foam and other materials.  So, its quite affordable - of course you have to have a glue gun and a few good blades in your kit already, but generally speaking this is probably the cheapest fun hobby I've had in quite a while .. 

Also, an associate of mine showed me his direction: taking those old balsa plane kits and adding new-era electronics to them.. they look amazing and fly really, really well .. you can get a ParkZone Vapor for about 50eu, a scaled balsa plane for about 12eu, rip the electronics off the Vapor and stuff it into the balsa plane and have a really unique flying experience .. 


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Jay Vaughan






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