Thanks so much for letting me write this one boys! Was a really fun if occasionally painful trip down memory lane. If I found a Wankel for sale at a swap meet I’d buy it in a heartbeat…
I have a 1960s built plane where the wing, tail and landing gear are all rubber band attached. Its set up for tail control only, with no engine control. You fly it till you ran out of fuel and dead sticked every landing. You just pushed the parts back in place if you landed hard.
Right on, it's wing bolts that tear wings and fuselages apart and if you have to open up at the wing seat to get at the RC gear, - it's the easiest and least obtrusive " hatch " , it's easier to flip off a few bands than unscrew two or more bolts !
Remember when fuel alcohol and codliver oil made the rubber bands get gummy and disolve and fall off the first time . And you learned to wipe off the model and put new dry rubberbands and check them before flying ?
yeah and it's just as effective at explaining how the hell those damn things work. Might as well say "and then a miracle happens" when describing Wankels as far as I'm concerned. I briefly thought hmm maybe this'll be the video/picture/explanation that finally helps me understand them, but after 40 years of inattentive sporadic effort I think i'm going to just have to let that mystery of mechanics go.
A few I remember- Swapping crystals to get an open frequency at the field. Setting up all your planes the same (neutral) because you could only afford one receiver. Fuel bulbs power panels Ni-cad battery powered electric planes Pull-start nitro engines for helis Heli trainer stand Mousse Can Mufflers some vendors I miss- Hobby Lobby (the RC store, not the craft store) Byron Originals Yellow Aircraft Heli-Proz A LOCAL hobbyshop
I can't remember for sure if it was the late 1980's or early 1990's the FCC started changing what frequencies were available and you had to have a "gold" radio or something like that. I can remember spending around $150 for a new 4 channel radio only to have to turn around and buy another a couple of years later. Ahhh, good times, good times...........
Aaa yes.. remember pulling the crystal flag for my crystal from the stand, setting up my aircraft for flying, testing the rudders a bit. Then looking up, seing my friend flying.... wait a sec.. didn´t he have the same frequency that i do? yea,, he forgot to pull the flag.. Wopsi. Better turn my transmitter of.
And the Byron's catalogue ? They were not that mainstream in Europe but when I got one I spend hours dreaming about these warbids in XXL format at the time.
I agree. I hate FB and the news feed style layout was just no where as organized or nice as a forum setup. There is only 1 RC forum I still know active and it isn't for planes. It is slowly dying though. Rccrawler forums.
I refuse to use FB as well. Forums, if up, are still a great resource for shared knowledge. They weren't without their toxic user problems though! I can recall moving on from some communities because everyone just acted like jerks to one another.
Getting into RC was very expensive way back when. Going in to helicopters was especially costly. Today, modern pre set up foamies, Lipo batteries, out runner electric motors and replaceable parts have greatly improved the hobby. I am an old guy, 82, and I love what's happing in RC today...lol.
I 2nd the helicopter costs. Just touching down a bit too hard could crack or break rotor blades and tail rotors, bent swash control rods, strip main gears, and damage landing gear, etc. Putting things back in shape took parts, money, and lots of time disassembling and reassembling and getting all settings regarding pitch, etc. Fascinating tech but a real pain to correct damage.
Ahh, helicopters. One Landing, One Trip to the parts store. Basically doubled the price of the chopper learning. Only rotor blade, and tail boom if you were lucky.
I know they are not RC, but a lot of us got our start with Cox and Testors U-control models, made of plastic, that went around the circle hanging on the prop They always ended up broken, so we would then build balsa models to put the engines on.
Yep. They were so heavy that I sometimes had to whip they around the circle to keep them airborne. I wonder if it was airspeed or centrifical force keeping them in the air.
Still got two of them, both in the box, both never flown but the Stuka did have it's engine run, never had anywhere to fly them, not so little pieces of model fjying history now. 😊
@@CrusaderSports250 i had the stuka . Cox stuka with the 3rd string for dive bomb release . It rattled the gear off . The p19 yelliw and blue disintegrate too . Thats hiw you know if they were used or not .
@@CrusaderSports250 Oh . If you fly one , have a friend pick up the.plane and with the string tight run a step and throw launch it with the control lines tight . It can save a lot of props from trying to taxi- take off . And after running out of fuel you can ," tow" it by swinging it on the strings . Into the wind give it some down elevstor and with the wind guve it some up elevator and you an fly perfectly level
3:28 Diesel engines were immensely popular around the world. They just never caught on on the U.S. I bought two from an English school-friend, an A.M. (Allan Mercury?) and a Davies Charlton (I think) and they quickly became my favourites. They became the topic of conversation at the field, in part because they were quiet and we were losing our flying privileges due to noise complaints in Vancouver, B.C. in the 1970s. I still have those two engines today.
@@robertsmith2956 If you know where to look... probably. There is an oldtimer in Sweden with plenty of NOS. Weber, Webra, OS and some Tigers. He was the official agent for Webra in Sweden once upon a time. I may or may not be related to him... :)
I will add a few: 1) 12V lead acid batteries for our electric starters. 2) power panels 3) AM/FM systems 4) frequency pins 5) ez connectors and snaper keepers 6) CDI ignitions for gas engines 7) modified chainsaw engines
I'll be honest, I still haven't upgraded to a 900/2.4/5.2 system yet and keep using my old 72mhz equipment for flying. At some point I'll kick over but I just need to spend the time to do the research to make sure I get what I need.
Can’t believe those Cox .49 and .51 engines didn’t make the cut. I guess they were a niche even then, but for a broke kid, they were huge fun for a small price. I splurged and bought the Tee Dee version it was a monster. 😊
I think a lot of folks still fly these and have them. There is actually 3 different retailers that sell new engines and kits. Namely vintage performance model airplanes, cox international and ex engines. Might of been worth mentioning though, it's not like these are still in the sears catalog, or on hobby shop shelves. Essentially replaced by electric foam board stuff imo. Definitely got my start with 1/2a
Another vote for cox control line planes. These are how I started, and I had a lot of them. The other thing I believe you missed an opportunity on was glow powered ducted fans. Actual turbine rc jet engines were prohibitively expensive until the last couple of decades or so. In fact, just getting started in rc airplanes was pretty expensive back in the day. I bought my first setup in 1994 and I believe it cost me between four and five hundred dollars (and that's in 1994 dollars!) For a 4 channel FM Futaba radio/receiver/servos, a .40 sized arf trainer, and an OS .40 2 cycle. Plus whatever glue, epoxy, extra fasteners, etc and a gallon of 10% nitro. I'm pretty sure there was a really basic fuel pump, glo starter, and a chicken stick in the purchase too. But damn, I had been waiting for that day for many years and it was sweet! I miss the smell of the old school hobby shops.
Ah yes the days of having a .90 2 stroke ducted fan screaming away at 30,000rpm and still struggling to power a decent plane...and sounding very very un-scale at the same time.
Aye. I still have my ancient PT-19. Rubber bands held it all together and even augering in only broke the prop. Plastic, flimsy, .049 engine, yeah, good times. Remember bleeding finger tips from cranking the prop after the spring wore out and fixing needle valves with a toothpick. Amazing what we made due with on a budget of zero.
That Kraft single stick radio took me back. In 1962 a guy came to one of our club meetings to demonstrate one of the first proportional systems and he had that same radio. I always thought the twisting single stick for rudder was a pretty good idea but of course no one was flying 3D back then. By the way, the cost of his radio, plane and engine combined was about $900! That was in 1962 when a VW Beetle cost $1760 new. I was just a kid at the time so was limited to control line and free flight. Any RC gear, yet alone proportional, was just a distant dream back then, even for the adults in our club.
9:34 absolutely not. It takes maybe 15 seconds to install the rubber bands. It also allows any impact shock loading to be dissipated that you don't damage. I've seen so many high wing trainers cartwheel on landing with hardly any damage because the wing could move slightly.
Exactly. Just don't use the whole bag of elastics all at once. 8-12 elastics depending on a bunch of factors, and you've got something that can land on it's wingtip and be back up in the air after a quick check-up.
Rudder Only single channel control with rubber band escapements, Galloping Ghost Pulse Proportion control and Silk with Dope are a few more I remember flying back in the day.
Silk was great when you took the effort to put it on soaking wet as instructed. I have still a Multiplex Alpha lying around with silk covering. Compared to paper it was enormously robust.
Do you remember the Mattel single channel pulse radios? That was my start in RC. The 'ability' to turn left AND right was life changing. I can't imagine what it would be like to return to one of those things these days.
I recall or have used every single thing in this wonderfull video. My first radio was the Bionic Gold back in 1984, then the Challenger series, then I hit the big time with Field Force 7. The things I really really miss are the friends I have made over the 30 odd years of flying. Many have passed away, and some moved to another part of the country, and many just fell out of the hobby.. The memories I have of bar b qs down the patch, week aways modelling holidays at Primrose Valley, the laughs and ribbing at the field. These are all mine.
Kinda triggered /disagree about the rubber band thing. Most of my scratch-builts use rubber bands and I don't see that changing any time soon. Simple and effective.
Your right, if they are electric the bands will last, if it had fuel change them every trip to the field, i remember putting like 8 on that bad boy, never lost a wing
Yep rubber bands for slope soarers like the Chris Foss models can't be beaten, especially for learning aerobatics when you might crash. They don't even look bad if they are put on neatly without crossing them to form an X.
Really enjoyed this video - much nostalgia. When I was learning to fly, '1991-ready' radio sets were in the magazines a lot, I felt smug to have a PCM transmitter, and the Tower Hobbies catalog felt like a bible.
High starts actually worked pretty well. In the 70's I even launched 144" span gliders. Most of the launches you showed were obviously first attempts by guys who didn't know how to use them correctly. The biggest problem WAS that the tension was highest at the start which caused some people problems. You'll notice that was what caused the issues in your video. Electric winches were used but they were expensive, heavy and a lot of work to set up and you still had to judiciously tap the foot peddle at the start or the starting tension was just as bad as a high start, I found them to be more trouble than they were worth. As for electric, if you wanted to tear apart an old hand held weed clipper for the motor and load up a bunch of NiCads that was your only option and the glider just didn't perform. We had to make our own folding props too.
Completely agree with high starts working GREAT. If your glider was set up right, they were pretty much foolproof. (as inadvertently shown by the fact that 2 or 3 times I managed to launch without turning on the radio receiver in the glider, so it just went up free flight. Assuming it was trimmed right and the sticks were at neutral when you had turned it off, you got a perfect launch every time ... then you just had to pray that it wasn't too windy and you would get the glider back as it turned big circles drifting slowly downwind) Disagree about winches though, I preferred them when available. If you were comfortable with a high start, learning to add the tap dance for a winch wasn't much harder. (and balanced against having to learn to "tap dance" the pedal ... it's a lot easier and more convenient to put the ring on the tow hook and get set to launch without the rubber pulling the whole time ... also, it's a little easier to pull the chute back to the launch position since it's not pulling against you the whole way ... and you can keep optimum tension the whole way up during your launch as opposed to the decreasing tension of the rubber as you get near the top. (not a big deal, but probably a few percent higher launch for same total line distance)) Also, there were "light duty" winches (made with motorcycle starter motors vice the "standard" Ford long shaft starters that most winches used) that were "just strong enough" to pull a 72 inch to 100 inch glider up while you stood on the pedal without having to tap. Also, there were proportional winches too. One guy had one where there was some kind of spring loaded pedal that pulled an idler pully that the line went around, which was connected to the contactor that controlled the power. So more foot pressure meant more line tension, worked great, just like an accelerator on a car. (The arc at the contactor made a kind of cool "growling" noise as it made and broke contact too) I eventually learned about PICs and MosFets and designed (but never got around to building ... had kids and got out of flying) an electronic proportional speed control for the winch . Basically just a REALLY beefy speed control as used in e-flight motor controllers. Part of the design was to allow the use of a proportional foot pedal as normal ... OR ... flip a switch and use a "trainer cord" (remember them?) from the winch to the transmitter and proportionally control the winch via the throttle stick on the transmitter. One advantage of the winch was that if you had a captured (releasable by the radio) towhook (instead of the normal "slip off" kind) , you could tow the glider to altitude as normal. Then, at the top, instead of releasing the line, you keep the line attached, turn around and fly back over your head (pulling the line back off the drum), turn back into alignment and start winching again from above and behind yourself. You'd get about twice as high as normal at release. You had to be a fairly accomplished pilot to do that successfully though. (and you also needed a bigger-ish glider ... a 72 incher probably couldn't have pulled the line back off the drum too easily, but a 100 inch Aquila did no problem) Another advantage of the winch only came into play if you were flying in relatively high winds: If the wind was close to (or especially if it was above) your stall speed, you could tow up fairly slowly (basically flying like a kite, so not taking in as much line, and thus end up higher. If it was enough above stall speed, you could either go up pretty much vertically (or even go backwards while flying forwards, letting out line slowly under tension. Where you'd only be limited by how much excess line was on the drum ... which made for some interesting contortions as you tried to keep your eyes on the glider (now either directly above, or even behind you) and your foot on the winch pedal) all of which somewhat made up for the generally poor soaring conditions in high wind days. And the last advantage of the normal standard winch is that it's more flexible with regard to layout. If you're flying at a short field (or the wind is directly across the runway) which is too short for a high start, you can still use the winch. (albeit at a cost in launch height). On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to be flying somewhere with LOTS of room, you can lay out a much longer line (limited only by the amount of line on your drum, but all the winches I've ever seen used had plenty of excess line compared to a high start) But the ultimate cat's meow was an electric winch with a retriever: A second line attached to the chute going to a second drum. After launch, the next person waiting to launch just stepped on a second pedal to bring the chute back to the launch point. No more walking out to get the chute. Although laziness is certainly a factor, the big deal was that it was MUCH faster to launch the next glider if there were a bunch of you. (if the person operating the retriever was competent, they could start the retriever as soon as the prior person came off the tow, while the parachute was still in the air. The chute would be back to the launch point before an "un-retrieverised" chute would even have drifted to the ground yet, much less been walked back to the launch point) A High start is great. A Standard winch can be even better in a couple of ways. But a winch with retriever is the ULTIMATE glider launching system. (well, now there's efficient motor/battery systems, but for old style "pure" gliders it is anyway) Sigh ... Lots of good memories. (Wow, that got long, just kept adding on stuff)
Lots of people use bungees to launch modern FPV planes :D my fpv setup is too heavy to hand launch and its hard to find smooth takeoff areas so a bungee works well.
I learned to fly RC again on an Airtronics Oly II and a Deluxe sized high start that I bought at a Garage sale in 1992 for cheap. Best investment I ever made in RC. I now have in addition to the Oly II, a Marks Model's Wanderer and a scratchbuilt WindFreak.
I never got the motorized launcher. Just used the rubber band type. But it worked great till I left it in the car in vagas and the heat killed the rubber. With brusless motors I bet you could have a a very nice motorized line now that is light and portable. Maybe when I finish my Antares glider I'll think about it. Heck with an arduino and force gauge you could even program it to handle taking up slack, and constant pull.
I used a blk. widow .049 on a pod at the cg on my Aquila.. seems it wouldn't work but it was great!.. pulled it nice and slow to 500' then only weighed a few ounces empty.
Having been into RC flying since the early 1970’s I remember Kraft radios, the Super Kaos pattern planes, Master Airscrew props (which I still have a bunch of and still use), 3 channel trainers (Sig Kadet Jr…still in use) and slimey greasy castor coated rubber bands. To top it off I have a vintage 1975 Futaba 6 channel (75.64 MHz) that cost $249 in 1970’s money that is still fully functional.
I remember the Super Kaos. I built the Super Kaos Jr. for my 5 channel. Heath kit radio building my own radio and plane was the only way I could afford to get into Flying. I was in the 6th grade. It was definitely educational and fun!
Crash!!! Gary: aw man, what the heck just happened? Ron: I always use channel 17, you know that! Gary: But I have the flag!!! And I was flying!! And you just showed up!! Ron: Dangit. I made those rules. Me: I got this new spectrum... Everybody: Reeeee!!! Technology!!!
You missed the most obvious one...35MHz, and all its wonderful paraphenalia: huge telescoping antennas, the board with frequency clothes pegs, crystals, random servo jitter as a failsafe.
I thought Cox engines would be in the lineup for sure, especially since a picture of one was in the thumbnail. I miss the days of my hands being covered in oil and the 3-5 minutes of madness that the engines offered before the inevitable deadstick landing.
My brothers and I grew up building, flying and competing in control line model airplanes starting around 1963. My father and some of his friends founded the Model Airplane Pilots Association (MAPA) and we had about 40 kids in the club at one time. We competed in stunt, combat and rat racing and had a lot of fun. I still have a bunch of model airplane gear that I just can't bear to get rid of because of the memories. Kids nowadays are missing out on a lot from this long gone hobby. Thanks for some great memories.
RC Combat! We used to fly .25-.32 sized engines on planes with large wingspans that were highly maneuverable! We would trail 25’ strands of crepe paper, object was to clip others tails while keeping your own. You’d get points for each cut! What a blast, but you were consistently rebuilding your fleet due to crashes between planes! They were built cheap and tough! Very popular in the southwest in the early 2000’s
I wish that one would come back or be more common. Seeing the videos of 100+-airframe combats at Flite Fests is amazing, being there for one in person would be a borderline religious experience 😛
I miss GWS. I've dipped in and out of the hobby over the past 20 years, on my last return I was very disappointed to see that our friends in Taiwan were no more.
Very good look back. Although, it's hard to believe that it's not really a look very far back for me. I started building and flying in the 1960s. The hobby has come about as far as the difference between the Wright Brothers and space flight seemed during the Apollo program. It is nice to see new people able to come into the hobby and fly their first airplane for a year without returning to the build table after every field trip. My favorite RC T-shirt used to say, "I build, I fly, I crash. I build, I fly, I crash. etc...
I made a V tail sweet stick. 3 takeoffs and crashes. 3rd one I turned off all the mixing, and actually flew for as long as the Spruce goose, but I found out it was the elevons reversed control was crashing me. left roll is right turn LOL 4th flight with controls reversed from then on was great. Charcoal Black with Gold trim, couldn't even see it on the ground, but in the air it stood out great.
That is now a trend that has died, but a story how balsa came into model airplane construction (replacing pine and plywood): Johannes Graupner was a model airplane builder, and one day noticed that freight ships from South America used some fancy wood to fill up the open cargo space and secure the load. And in the destination harbour (probably Hamburg for him), that stuff was simply thrown away, soft and light as it was no one knew what to do with that. But he looked at that Balsa wood and thought "would that not be a great material for model airplanes?". An early example of perfect recycling.
To launch gliders we also used strap-on motor mounts, usually with a 0,33ccm or 0,8 ccm Cox on it. They were sold as balsa/plywood kits or later plastic ones in different versions and were meant to either be strapped on with the rubber bands of your wing or to be inserted between the wing root ribs, if you had separate wings. Which basically meant, that after the powered climb you were carrying around some sort of airbrake...
worse was when or if you crashed, you couldn't shut the motor off. I had a 100" with an electric in a "power pod", and no speed control. My first flight was a stall and crash, the prop and power pod going forward and pretty much slicing most of the nose into small pieces. the idea was to fly powered for a few minutes then look for thermals. and no folding prop which didnt help matters
I still have my Das Slupen Thing plans. I used a cox 051 on it, just because I had it handy. Even bought the throttle body for it once. Towed my gliders up with my Sr Telemaster. When I went to the 1.9 ci gas engine I couldn't use the wing launch anymore, prop wash was to much, So tow release only.
I had one of those on my first glider ('88). That plane is long gone but I'm pretty sure I still have the Cox .049 engine. The one I used had a tiny fuel tank as part of the engine casting itself and that tank was what mounted to the high-start. Odd looking but it got my plane in the air pretty quickly. I remember thinking of ways I could "eject" it and parachute it down to increase my flight times.
A lot of this stuff is still out there floating around for cheap, or even "free" prices, for those of us with little to no budget. I had many hours of fun on planes with these trends still in full force, many many years down the line from when they stopped being popular.
forums need to make a comeback. They were invaluable sources of information for just about every hobby or interest group. I cant tell you how many times i have been able to fix something on my REAL car by googling up a forum post from 10 years ago.
Been into RC planes and since the 1960s. Grew up in Santa Ana only a few miles from COX near Redhill and Warner. My brother who is 5 years older than me had a friend whose father worked there. I've never gotten rid of any of my controllers in the last time I updated them were in the 90s when I had to get a gold sticker. Or buy new radios. Still have eight control line as well. The Corsair has a .061 with tiny tuned pipe. Used to race Q500 and Warbirds at Speedworld in Az. Lately its been drones flying over private areas. Its fun to take them out of the sky with a interceptor drone.
I lived through almost all of these, good and bad. One you missed was nitro fuel with castor. messy at the end of a flight and hard as a rock when burnt on an engine or dried up from long term storage.
I have a helicopter transmitter with an invert switch. I purchased it in the early '80s. It was insanely expensive. I also have an electric starter built into one of my four stroke powered airplanes. It sure surprised people at the airfield to hear my dead stick four stroke roar back to life.
The supercharged OS was basically there to fill a specific need. That was when F3A still had a displacement limit, of 10ccm for 2 stroke and 20ccm for 4 stroke. As this was lifted, the was gone. The present Yamada 4 strokes are still supercharged by a crankcase pump.
So many memories to include how I got all the scars on my fingers before age 10. That spring start could kick backwards and eat meat even with a plastic prop
Chokes! You used to have to put chokes on your servo extensions to keep from getting “bumped” or interference … and you used to have the antennas that made your plane look odd and you would have a transmitter for basically every single plane and you had NICD for batteries that had “memory” and it took for ever to charge … let’s see the servos were 3 times as big and heavy like the futaba 134’s I could go on and on gas engines were magneto ignition and weighed a ton. Sachs and brison came out with mechanical ignition advance but were ahead of their time props were zinger paint sticks 😂
Yes, that RX antenna you gonna pretend was like a real scale antenna going from the aft central wing panel to the vertical fin only to be attached by a gross rubber band elastic and that control horn plate to secure it together.
Good grief. Just about everything on this list is from when I got into RC in the 90s, just about as prevalent as the Tower Hobbies catalog. From the Kraft Radio my dad and I bought from a guy with an old J-3 to my Great Planes F-15 is hanging in the garage. I have some real mixed feelings about how much things have changed.
6:53 nice reference! I haven’t even thought about “At A Medium Pace” since I was in middle school, but in an instant I remembered all of the lyrics haha
My first RC was the Hobbico Nextstar. My dad and I had no clue what we were doing but used what “logic” we had. The few times I had a prop strike with the ground, we evened up the ends and rebalanced it. (My dad was super cheap, he wouldn’t buy spare props) Also, we learned what happens to glow engines without after-run oil and you store the plane in the garage all winter. The saddest part of this video, all the engine fads you mentioned, 12-14 year old me would have killed to have those!
I also learned with a nextstar, it brought the lifts on the wings and the crappy simulator, I remember using that simulator for weeks before i decided to maiden it, and it helped, flew the hell out of it for 6 months until i bought a great planes ugly stick, slapped thae nextstar 46 on it , love that plane
@@MrMantequilla1 I forgot about the simulator. That did help a ton. I had my Nextstar for a couple years. The last flight was a signal loss into a fence post at full throttle…I lived in the country and I had a ceremonial “burn” in the burn barrel. I kept the engine, the exhaust pipe sheared off and I never found it.
I learned on a Midwest trainer kit that my retired teacher friend taught me how to build, cover, and then fly. I used a fox .45 engine and a 4 channel Airtronics radio. I in turn taught my mom’s boyfriend how to fly with the same setup. This was the early 80s and I have been flying ever since.
I can’t believe people still argue about the treadmill airplane. A plane on a treadmill is different from a car on a treadmill because the propellor pulls the plane forward, it’s not the wheels turning pushing it forward like a car. So the treadmill is irrelevant. And ground speed isn’t the same thing as air speed. So if the plane is on a treadmill, but the propellor pulls it forward to achieve takeoff airspeed, which it will, it only means the wheels are spinning faster than they would have on solid ground. The wheels coast free. Running a treadmill doesn’t cause the wind surrounding the plane to move backwards with it, so the plane needs forward airspeed to lift off. Which it will get from the propellor turning. The only way the treadmill will stop the plane from moving forward and lifting off is if the plane has its brakes on, or bad wheel bearings or excess friction in the wheel turning on the axle for some reason like an rc plane wit the collet tightened against the wheel hub too tight. Now, put a car on a treadmill, which uses its wheels turning to drive the car forward, and you can cancel out the drive estates if the car completely by matching its potential ground speed with the treadmill and it won’t go anywhere.
Adam made a vídeo about this on his channel, the problem is that the question confuses people and I personally belive the most people are not familiar with airplane flight dynamics, but you are correct, the airplane will always take off
Love the trip down memory lane! I still have a GWS Beaver with a HiMaxx gearbox inrunner. It doesn’t like wind but is a lot of fun especially with floats. I miss seeing all this stuff at the hobby show we used to go to. The technology is so much better but I miss the small mom and pop companies like Davis diesel who made conversions and RB Innovations that made a supercharger for the original Traxxas TMAXX (I know it’s not flying related) which I of course still have. Great job Cody and the Tail Heavy boys. 👍🏻👍🏻
I remember going to the flying field when I was in middle school and seeing guys with the Kraft single joystick radios. Plastic planes with spruce strips for reinforcement in the fuselage were starting to come on the scene back then too. But if you crashed, you could never get the plastic back into its original shape. . Some of the best kits back the were Carl Goldberg kits. the plans were intuitive and they had the best build instructions.
Having been in the retail hobby industry starting back in the early 90's you guys pretty much nailed it. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. 👍😎👍 #RIPHobbyShack
I worked at the Encino Hobby Shack off and on from 1979 until 1985 (mostly during the earlier part of that time, when I was in high school). Fun times that I remember well.
Those HS foamies were cheap, cool, and fun! C150, C177, and your Spirit of '76.. Break 'em up in a bad crash and just buy a whole new one for parts!👍👍 @@tauncfester3022
I remember always calling in my orders to Tower Hobbies before the internet was a really a thing. You would spend 30 minutes on the phone reciting all the part numbers and quantities to a sales person.
Without a proper punctuation after the word 'no' means you think that there are no such things as an efficient electric Master Airscrew prop. ex. "No hammer can cut like a knife' has the opposite meaning of "no, hammer can cut like a knife' or "No. Hammer can cut like knife."
When was preteen in early seventies, starting to gradually get into flying model planes (starting out with control line, of course), the books at the library that I got my earliest info from were fascinating when coming to the sections that covered the diesel engine. Growing up on a farm and very familiar with diesel engine tractors and such, the notion of a diesel engine on any manner of airplane just seemed so bizarre. And the early radio control rigs were single channel - just a rudder to control, but was more affordable to get started with. My first RC rig was an eight channel Heath Kit that my much older adult brother built (he was a EE and nuclear engineer major). It was basically a kit clone of the Kraft radios, which were built like a tank compared to modern gear.
A pal of mine had a T-shirt which had his frequency printed on the back. Saved him having to turn round and lose sight of his aircraft when other pilots would go up to him and ask him for his frequency. Ingenious!
Battery trays for AA batteries Inrunner brushless motors Exposed Rx antennas RC-esque PC controllers for flight sims Wheel pants Receiver balloons Tx trim switches Angle/Deflection indicators in instructions Instructions Control surface hinges HobbyKing
Inrunner brushless motors are not going anywhere soon. RC cars and boats mainly use inrunners (RC cars are 90% of the RC hobby) and the top performance RC electric planes like gliders and EDFs use inrunners.
When I was 8, even before I got my first Firebird Outlaw and Slow Stick starters, all I wanted was one of those gas engine “jets.” Low key still do. Just for the inconvenience.
You missed the unique US AirCore and their corrugated plastic planes with the power cartridge for the engine and electronics. They also make the crash video a staple of hobby shops around the world.
I still find Medium CA to work great with Balsa, honestly: you can dry fit the parts in place and then just use your CA like a welding gun to let it wick into the balsa and make a snug grip
Update, that loctite hard to bond plastic kit works well, its some primer and original superglue that works really well. I tossed the primer and use the glue
I started out RC with one channel button control rudder only rubber band escapement. and then got an electric escapement for the rudder and I used the rubber band escapement for throttle. push the button once for right, twice for left and three times for engine. I still have one that I used in a boat. My first 4 channel was the Kraft single stick.
Someone mentioned it in the comments:mechanical mixers in lack of electronics available.v-tail / delta. But the craziest you could find in old helicopters,to realise pitch,roll and nick you swap the hole 3 servos on a bench with a forth.Schlüter Champion e.g.with high prezision.
Kit radio systems, nicad batts, giant field boxes, Top Flite white nylon props, chicken sticks, buddy box cables, 72 MHz, long telescopic TX antennas, nitro ducted fan airplanes, surface only stick radios, 4 strokes with a rotating cylinder for intake and exhaust timing.
Long forum threads with good FAQ info were indeed a good thing. I created some threads on RC Groups and these are still active and providing help to others.
I started my aviation career at 10 years old in 1984 with a 2 channel Carl Goldberg "Gentle Lady" I had built by myself, a surgical tubing hi-start, and a very basic radio that "the instructor" from the local RC club lent me. For the first launch attempt my dad had stretched the plane back and was holding it, "the instructor" was standing next to me and having me do a quick check that the controls were working, and suddenly there was a noise and my dad took off running and the plane just kind of dropped to the ground. The hi-start kit had come with basically a tent stake to hold it down, and it had pulled out of the ground and my dad saw just enough of what was happening to realize a giant nail was quickly heading toward him. No real harm done, but it was enough excitement that we called it a day and on the way home my dad detoured by the local hobby shop and bought me a power pod kit and a Cox .049 and we never tried the hi-start again. I still have a scar on my fingertip from where a bit of flashing on the propeller tip gave me a nice deep cut while trying to use the spring start feature one day when my fingers were covered with exhaust oil and slipped as I was winding it back.
No more park flyer sized hollow depron planes like from Alfa Model from the early days of electric. They were made super fragile due to trying to make them as light as possible to achieve basic flight due to heavy and inefficient brushed motors, gear boxes and NiCad batteries.
I loved my Alfa Model aircraft! Had the P-47 for the longest. Seriously the best flying warbird foamies I ever owned, really because of what you said...they actually took into account that lighter does fly better in some cases. Mine had brushless and a 3s LiPo. Fun bird. RIP Alfa. 😥 -Zach
I think you got most of the worst offenders. I'll add one. I found that "super stable" trainers were some of the most annoying planes to try to fly - even the ones with ailerons. They had so much wing and incidence they'd climb/dive with throttle changes, they would float forever landing, etc. I started recommending the Bridi Kaos as a trainer. That fat symmetrical 18% wing made even terrible pilots look good! I have a Tiporare resin and foam kit I still need to get in the air. That one is even faster then Mach Jesus! (Probably faster than my thumbs now.) Thanks for the chuckles.
That's really what I was going for with #19 but probably should have worded it differently since yeah, rudder-only definitely has its place especially if you don't have an instructor. It was easier to teach someone to fly if the plane did what you told it and not trying to level out all the time, and odds are if the student couldn't save it, letting go out of the controls wasn't going to help either. And like you said, you had to plan your landings miles in advance because they just wouldn't come down. When I was learning and then teaching a lot of people to fly something like the Avistar (high wing, a little dihedral, semi-symmetrical airfoil) was easier to fly than the Superstar or Alpha for those reasons.
As someone who solo'd on an RC aerobatic plane I totally agree. When I tried a standard trainer I was shocked at how imprecise it flew and tendency to climb at higher throttle. Many fellow club members who transitioned from trainer to a low-wing sports or the ugly/ultra stick remarked at how much easier and enjoyable it is to fly an aerobatic plane. With the availability of simulators, one can easily learn and be familar with control orientation and just go with a neutral / agile flying plane.
@@quantomica Yes! I should have mentioned above that the students I recommended a Kaos to as a first plane were actively using Real Flight Simulator and were able to solo the first or second day. Simulators have made a huge difference.
Agree that the trainers tended to float forever on landings. I was an instructor in our club, and one of the things I did that really helped was this: When the student was good at flying around in control at altitude and it was time to teach landings, I would rubber band one of the rolls that paper towel came on behind the main landing gear. It added just enough drag that it killed the float forever at idle thing, but not enough to really affect performance noticeably with power on. After the student was good at landing the "drag-added" trainer (usually a session or two or three) cut the roll in half. After they transitioned to that, just remove it entirely. Worked really well. The other trick was the "sneaky landing" Students learning to land WANT to get it on the ground and land ... want it so bad ... So they would never flare properly, but just try to fly it on to the ground at pretty much flying speed. No matter how much you tried to teach them otherwise. So I developed "the trick" ... I'd let them make one "fly it on to the ground too fast" landing, and then tell them this: "The secret to making a perfect landing is a good approach. If we try to land every approach, we'll end up having to take lots of extra time restarting the engine etc from landings that didn't quite end up perfect, so for a session or two we are going to do lots of approaches and go-arounds to perfect that part of it first, you'll progress faster overall if we do it that way." Then came "the trick": We'd start with approaches to 10 ft followed by immediate throttle up and go-around. Then I'd have them get a bit lower and hold off on the throttle for a few seconds, floating a foot above the field at idle for 10 or 20 feet. followed by the go-around, gradually extending the amount of time they'd float down the runway before adding in throttle each time. Once they were good at that, I'd pick a particularly good one and start saying "good, good, hold off on the throttle, not yet, just keep it right there" continuously. Of course they'd eventually run out of airspeed and up-elevator and settle in for a PERFECT properly flared landing ... much to their surprise! They'd invariably turn to me and say ... "I was trying to hold it off like you were saying, but it just wanted to land" At which point I'd answer "yep, that's the secret, just do it like that from now on" ... and they would.
@@missyandmartinbakalorz1725 awesome teaching tricks! I noticed the same thing with approaches and students wanting it on the ground RIGHT NOW. The paper towel roll is genius though! Another thing I did was make them run a 11x4 prop instead of the ubiquitous 10x6. Trainers never needed the speed of the 10x6 and the 11x4 gave more thrust for takeoff and slowed down nicer for landing.
I agree trainers without ailerons take forever to turn…. But i found if you build a ridiculous amount of dihedral or polyhedral into it, it actually can. I modded one that turns very tight with an extreme bank. It will do a half roll nearly instantly with full rudder input. Then it half-loops out of the inverted half of course. But yeah, I’ve never seen a plane on the market with that aggressive of a dihedral.
I have built a few aileronless airplanes, the trick to turn faster I use is load the wing a bit, and then turn with rudder. I have one airplane that turns almost on itself, its very effective and quite fun. But you are correct, a good amount of dihedral is needed. The particular airplane I cited also has 15 degrees of dihedral and loves flying in wind 😁
They also teach very bad habits. They create 'single stick' fliers that purposely REMOVE 'USELESS" RUDDERS in the name of 'weight reduction' while the real reason is they lack kills and are unable to fly coordinately.
I had one, something similar to a BalsaUSA stick 40 built in a Rudd/Elev/Thr configuration. I originally bought it secondhand for the engine it came with, but decided to try flying it before I stripped it down. Was quite surprised to learn that if you had enough speed, jamming the rudder full over meant it would quite easily do full rolls. I found it no more troublesome to maneuver than a normal 4ch trainer.
My aileron-less trainer was a multiplex minimag. It had slots for ailerons, which I added, but the plane barely responded to any roll inputs. I don't miss it
Great video! Mode 1 is still really popular in Australia. You missed helicopters only having a rate gyro, and early versions of gyros being an actual spinning weight that you had to carefully mount so vibration didn't mess it up!
mode 1 is not something old or forgotten. some people fly better with the left hand and other s with the right hand.. i still see mode 1 radios sold here in europe.
@@keptinkaos6384I can see the benefits of Mode 2 for new flyers who are coming to the hobby from games or simulators. I started using 2 channel gear from Tamiya cars which had forwards/backwards on the left and steering on the right stick. That became elevator on the left and steering (initially rudder) on the right. Once that muscle memory is built, as more channels were added the pattern stayed the same. Elevator on the left and primary direction control (aileron) on right with rudder and throttle added in the spare locations became the normal layout. I found that as I flew more complex models, including nitro helicopters, the separation of the elevator and aileron made it easier to fly precisely, and with rudder and elevator on the same stick knife-edge and rolling circles etc. were cleaner than Mode 2 pilots because the aileron and throttle can be held steady.
#19! I learned to fly on a Dynam Hawk Sky years ago, 4ch and felt that I learned plane orientation and recovery a bit quicker than 3ch because I wasn't trying to knife edge my way though every turn!
So many great memories watching this video. I was always super excited to get the Tower Hobbies catalog. Ordering stuff C.O.D. Months of building and crashing my planes. Auto recover would have made learning to fly so much cheaper. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Those are well picked, and I would know, I've been doing this since the sixties. And I can't think of much you missed., unless the power pod glider trend of the late seventies counts. Thanks for giving each weekend a lift!
You should see how long the learning curve is to hand start and tune compression + fuel for a diesel model engine. Many cuts on your hands in the process but once you have it you never forget how to do it.
You forgot about cheap combat planes 3 channel plane were 3 channel to save money on expensive servos at the time. Geared brushless still makes lot of sense in f5j and in another couple nfo categories You forgot 4.8v only servos. Charging nicd or NiMH batteries with a loooooong wire from the car battery FM/pcm radios Glow engine on gliders Btw another great video Btw 2 i fly in mode 1 and in Italy is the most common mode
Idk about 19. I learned on the FT Tiny Trainer and being a veteran video game pilot I thought I could go straight to 4 channel and I had a bad time. It also didn't help that I was flying 8 feet off the ground on a narrow golf course with trees on either side, but still. I eventually put together the polyhedral wing that the kit came with and had much better luck with that. Most of my planes since then have had ailerons and now that I have a gyro and 2nd transmitter for buddy boxing I've had much more success teaching new pilots. However I still think that for a cheap DIY plane with no gyro, dihedral with 3 channel is just the way to go when first learning.
I still own the original super cub lp. It’s got a gear reduction motor, no ailerons, and its wings are rubber banded on. It’s still fly 10+ years later. Surprisingly
