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Recommendations for a R/C newbie


gazza l

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Hi all,

My son wants a R/C plane for his fourteenth birthday, can any one recommend a good plane to start of with? It needs to be qiuck to assemble, simple to fly, robust, not to large and not much over £70!

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers, gazza l.

Edited by gazza l
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I'd highly recomend this one

Comes with everything you need to get going, all in one box/carrying case, all ready to go, & dead easy to fly. It's very light and slow flying, so very low impact if you misjudge a landing. 15 - 20 min flight time per charge (less at full throttle, more if you just tootle around) Best up to light wind strength, moderate winds you won't make headway, strong winds and you're flying backwards! You might want to get a couple more batteries and an AC or cig lighter charger for longer sessions, the battery charger supplied is ok for occasional use & backup in the field.

Hi all,

My son wants a R/C plane for his fourteenth birthday, can any one recommend a good plane to start of with? It needs to be qiuck to assemble, simple to fly, robust, not to large and not much over £70!

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers, gazza l.

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Hi there,

kinda depends on what your sons goal is re RC flying and how he plans on going about it( joining a club, goin to park with you etc..) I have been a bmfa instructor for many years and i see lots of aircraft like the one reccomended above arrive at the club field with prospective new pilots

iMHO , its too small and very good weather dependant to learn to fly on, you want something with 50 to 60 inch span an .40 size engine or elec equivelant its your choice wether electric or glo( tho i would personally say glo as they are easier to fly many times in a day cheaply)

A good rc model shop in your area will recommend you a great ready to fly trainer with all the gear necessary, iif you get a good deal you should be flying for around 250 quid with a plane that will last ages and fly in a stiffish breaze which is a bonus in this country.

Mark

Edited by markjames68
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Hi Mark

Your recommendations are fine for someone who wants to take up RC flying as a serious hobby, but my impression was Gazza's son is looking for a simple park flyer, hence my recommendation.

Your recommendation is big, expensive, complicated (for a novice), would need the assistance of a club/instructor/ buddy transmitter to teach him and would end up as matchwood in short order if attempting to go solo from the start.

The plane I recommended ticked all the boxes he asked about, and he should be able to pick up the basics with a bit of "discovery learning" without hurting himself, bystanders or the plane provided a suitable flying ground (large open field/park with nobody around) and weather (light wind) are chosen.

If he likes it and gets the hang of it he'll want something bigger/better/faster in fairly short order, at which point your idea is a good next step.

Another idea if he wants to try something bigger to start with would be to approach a local club to see if he could get some instruction on a club trainer?

Dave

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I'd highly recomend this one

Comes with everything you need to get going, all in one box/carrying case, all ready to go, & dead easy to fly. It's very light and slow flying, so very low impact if you misjudge a landing. 15 - 20 min flight time per charge (less at full throttle, more if you just tootle around) Best up to light wind strength, moderate winds you won't make headway, strong winds and you're flying backwards! You might want to get a couple more batteries and an AC or cig lighter charger for longer sessions, the battery charger supplied is ok for occasional use & backup in the field.

Quite like the look of that myself lol :)

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Thanks for your advice chaps.

Dave, that looks like just the sort of plane my son's looking for, not to big as to damage itself or any one else (should it crash), whilst he flies it on a nice still

summer's day in the local park and most importantly it's within my budget!

Mark, if he gets on well with it and continues to show an intrest, he may well go for the sort of thing that you recommend but for now I can't justify that sort of money

on a plane that he might well stack, or lose interest, or both (in that order)!

Thanks again, gazza l

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  • 6 years later...

i'm in the same boat, but i'm the one that want's one.

i want to get a balsa kit and build it myself

any recomendations?

 

this a option i've been thinking abouthttps://hobbyking.com/en_us/j-3-laser-cut-kit-1180mm-inc-glazing-cowl-kit-v2.html

 

would it be sutable?

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@gazza l

 

While many models are described as "Park Flyers", parks and public places are far from ideal places for experienced pilots to fly, never mind someone learning. There are many regulations as to where you can and can't fly, covered by Civil Aviation Authority regulations.

Insurance is something else I wouldn't fly without. Some of the larger payouts made as a result of model flying accidents have come from small free flight models and chuck gliders, the kind of models many people would think of as toys. Can you afford to loose your house and everything you own because of an accident? Model flying insurance isn't expensive, but in my opinion essential.

The British Model Flying Association ( https://bmfa.org/ ) can provide insurance and guidance and I would certainly join a club for advice and learning support. A club site is also likely to be in a safe location, away from the public and other areas where flying would be unsafe or illegal.

Don't want to sound like a party pooper, but having flown safely for over 35 years, it wasn't by accident.

WARNING - Model flying can seriously damage your bank balance!!
b17064.jpg
 

Edited by Army_Air_Force
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The B-17 is 1/6 scale, a little over 17 feet wingspan, 12 feet long and 140 pounds take off weight. Even the tailplane is 7 feet span! It first flew in 1995 and carries a piece of the original 1/1 scale B-17 in the nose, recovered from the crash site.

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I think it's a piece of inner wing skin, seen below through the cheek window and attached to the floor....

 

wreckage1.jpg

 

I found a few other pieces too. It was an aborted take off that caused the crash after the tailwheel castering lock failed. The plane veered off the runway and through two trees into a barn while the pilot and two friends were taking two Red Corss girls for a joy ride. Most of the wreckage was cleared away, but a few small pieces lay in the field boundary ditch for decades until a few days before my visit when the ditch was cleaned out and the spoil dumped on top of the field at its edge.

 

wreckage2.jpg

 

 

Quite a step up from my first trainer back in 1983!!

0001.jpg

Edited by Army_Air_Force
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Personally, I prefer glow fuelled models, especially for learning. OK, they are messy and make a noise ( part of the appeal to me ), but you can fly and fly and fly all day, so long as the radio battery has life in it, and lots of flying is what you want when learning. Something with a .35 to .40cu.in engine, around 52 inches span is what I started on. I flew and flew and flew every Friday night and Sunday afternoon as that was when the club met, had someone to check out the model, take it up, hand it over and talk me through what I was doing, and then land it for me. I'd only spend 5 to 10 minutes on the ground refuelling and warming my hands before flying again, so out of every hour at the field, I probably had a good 40 minutes of air time. I went solo in a month. The model was at a guess 3 to 4 pounds weight and could manage a decent wind and still be flown in those conditions. After going solo, I flew the aircraft another 18 months until I was the complete master of it under any attitude and weather conditions, and only then moved on to my next model. Far too many people in the club got their next plane almost straight away after going solo and never really learned how to fly properly.

For electric, you have to invest up front on chargers and multiple sets of batteries which will last 10 to 15 minutes and then need a long charge time. You can of course fast charge, but that is going to cut the life of the battery long term. So three 15 minute flights and then waiting around wasting good weather while batteries charge, or spend even more on battery packs so you can fly all day without having to charge. Electric models tend to be much lighter and so don't handle the wind as well as more traditional models, and in the UK, weather is well, somewhat variable!

 

I have got some electric models, but the glow fuelled and petrol powered aircraft got far more air time.

Best advice is find a local club, see what they do and what they recommend for their site. They may have a noise sensitive site and can only fly electric? The site may be like mine which was at 600 feet above sea level and may be constantly windy, so a heavier model may be more practical.

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