In this article I am going to tell you about how I started the hobby of RC planes to them building my own. It first started with Charlie telling me about the hobby and how it was so good, and that I should start it as well. So I thought I will give it a go. I went round to Charlie's, Dan was there aswell, and I went out to watch them fly. We got back inside and I had a go on their flight simulator (Phoenix RC 5.5). It was amazing. I thought and knew that it would be a lot better in real life than on a simulator, so I decided to give it a shot. I bought the identical transmitter to them (Spektrum DX6i DSMX) and flew Charlie's FT Mini Arrow using the Trainer option. I absolutely loved it.
The next step was to get the plane. About two weeks later it was my birthday, so I had saved up enough money to buy what I wanted and needed. I bought Phoenix RC 5.5 for practising and improving my skills. Now for the parts. I then had to buy a MultiStar Elite 2204-2300KV Multi-Rotor (Motor), a Turnigy Plush 18amp Speed Controller (ESC), a Turnigy 500mAh 3S 20C Lipo Pack (Battery), 4 Turnigy TGY-TG9e Eco Micro Servos (Servos), 2 packs of Aerostar Composite Propellors 6x4 Grey (Props). Also I bought a Mobius ActionCam V3, even though it can't fit on my FT Scout it will fit on other planes and will be great for other filming.
So I now have all of my equipment and I am ready to build. Charlie marked out the plane the night before I went over, so we were ready to go the next morning. Once I got to Charlie and Dan's we started the build straight away. (There is a timelapse in the video above of the build). Nothing went wrong during the build and it took us about 1-2 hours to finish it. The plane was completely free of errors and was ready to fly. It was too dark once we had finished so I had to wait until the next weekend when it was nice weather again. The next weekend I met Dan and Charlie at our local flying field with all my kit and they had their planes with them too. They sky was bright and there was no rain within sight. All good to go.
Because my reciever (AR610) was connected as the master to my Spektrum transmitter Charlie used my remote and I used his. This is how the trainer feature works. We took off and had a great few flights, with me doing most of the flying and Charlie there as a backup. We got a bit of ATA (Air to Air) footage but it wasn't very good because I was a bit all over the place. Anyway that was a good day of flying.
A few weekends after that I decided I wanted to try a solo. Charlie and Dan had just bought and made new racing quads, so we would be able to capture some really good ATA footage. I got there and we all had all our batteries charged, so we were ready to go. We got to the field and we decided that me and Charlie would buddy with my Scout while Dan freestyles his quad. The buddy went succesfully well, with no crashes and a good landing. Afterwards, I did my very first solo!
I stalled it on the takeoff. Ha Ha! My second takeoff was very good though. I had loads of flying time trying to control it myself because I had no back up plan exept to cut the throttle and try to bring it in safely. It went well. I was doing circuit flying, low passes and accidentely did a loop. It was okay though because it landed without damage. The next flight was a different matter entirely. Everything was fine, the take off and keeping it up wasn't a problem until it hit a gust of wind. I didn't notice at first because I had gone too far away. But my plane had flipped upside down. I still thought it was the right way up and I turned and pulled up, but whatever I did it did the opposite. It was plummeting down quickly and I could'nt solve it, so I cut the throttle and just let it come down. It hit the ground hard. I ran over (as you might of seen in the video) to retrieve my crashed plane. Dan followed me with his quad and orbited me a few times. I picked up the plane and unplugged the battery and then assesed the damage It wasn't to bad.
There was a lot of mud in the motor and the depron powerpod had broken. I was just glad nothing serious happened like a wing break or the whole airframe falling apart. I took it back to Dan and after he had landed the quad, we headed back to their's. We got most of the mud out of the motor using a barbeque skewer and hot glued the frame and it was good to go. We went out for one more flight and that went successfully. So that sums up my story of how I got into the aviation hobby. Remember to check out our youtube channel at: Plane Stupid RC
Some other pictures captured from Dan's new mini quad,
Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed the video
Rob from PS/RC
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