A FUN hobby I thought I'd share with you guys
 

Hey folks, it's been a long time since I've posted here, but I'm BAACCKKK!! Ha Ha! Look, I know this is a hunting and fishing website, but I'm sure you guys have other interests and hobbies. I posted something very similar to this a few years ago and well, I'm sort of doing it again! Lol! I guess you could say this is the new, updated version. What I'm talking about is the awesome hobby of RC flying. When I was younger I'd seen people enjoying this hobby but I always thought it was WAY too expensive. And years ago, it WAS very expensive. A big investment of both time and money building a radio controlled plane, made of balsa wood and fuel burning engines could turn into a very expensive pile of debris on the ground on the very first try at flying it. And certainly that still happens today, but now we have much more light, forgiving, electric powered aircraft made mostly of foam that can survive some hard knocks with either no damage at all, or simple repairs with a little tape and glue that can be done on the spot and then it's back up in the air. It still pays to have an instructor, or at least someone who's experienced in RC flying to help when first starting the hobby, but there's also people who learn completely on their own and now there's RTF (ready to fly) planes with everything in one box to get started. And I do mean EVERYTHING. The plane (already completely assembled), the transmitter (radio), at least one flight battery and charger. Many of them even come with AA batteries for the transmitter. You literally could leave the hobby shop (you won't find these at Walmart), open the box, charge the battery, go to a suitable area with enough space and fly it. Weather permitting, of course. Now, everyone crashes at some point, but the good news is repairs are usually simple and easy and if it's a bit more serious and can't be repaired, the hobby shop carries replacement parts. See, that's the difference between a hobby grade RC plane, and a Wallyworld throw-away toy. Some people would say why pay $80, $90, on up for it at the hobby shop, when Walmart or Harbor Freight sells them for around $40 or so? Well, when something breaks or just quits working on those, there's no fixing it. With a "hobby grade" plane, or helicopter for that matter, there's parts available and usually the staff at the hobby shop is more than willing to help fix it if you bring it in, often at no extra charge. Much like buying a gun, bow, or a nice rod and reel from a quality sporting goods store, you get what you pay for and service afterward. So anyhoo...I've taken my HobbyZone Champ, upgraded to a longer range radio, done a few minor modifications to the plane, and added a tiny video camera. It's called a "keychain" camera. You can get them on Ebay, they're inexpensive, and have surprisingly good video. Let me know what you guys think about it. Who knows, some of you may get bit by the RC bug yourself and get started in the hobby.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXYZ...dreZnWnzC7lKAQ


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUe...C7lKAQ&index=5


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1yW...C7lKAQ&index=4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZDD...C7lKAQ&index=3


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYp...C7lKAQ&index=2

Cool post. I really like the pics from the plane. This is an excellent idea and a neat way to scout out your hunting area. Many times I wonder what an area looks like from the air. I think it would help to identify funnels and potential stand sites. I think I'm going to look into it not that I need any more hobbies.

Thanks! Yes, an aerial view would indeed be a good tool for scouting deer stand locations. And it doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive setup to accomplish that either. There's a very good video (actually two videos, the build and maiden flight) on YouTube of this guy building an RC plane for about $10.

Part 1- the building of the plane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv3D30RGT-g

Part 2- First flight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufmRpaObx0w

Now, the $10 is just the "plane" itself, (actually I believe he says it went a little over $11, adding landing gear) not including the electronics, servos, LiPo (lithium polymer) batteries, electric motor, prop, and transmitter. For a do-it-yourself building project like this if you already have a few basic tools like a sander, maybe a small band saw or jigsaw, a drill, soldering iron, then the all up cost for the "guts" for the plane and a basic, non-"computerized" RC transmitter, can probably be done for around $100. My plane, the HobbyZone Champ, came with everything in the box (to get STARTED, that is) for $89. I added a full range, 5 channel line-of-sight radio, the Spektrum DX5E, for about $60. Some of the larger ready-to-fly aircraft come with that particular radio, but mine came with a fully functional but short range one (I flew my plane out of range a couple of times, maybe about 250 - 300 feet away), so I upgraded the radio. Now I'll lose sight of it before it goes out of range. The $10 to build plane in those two videos is MUCH bigger than mine, and can probably handle a LOT more wind. I'm limited to very calm days, or early mornings and evenings. However, the trade off is that with a small plane like mine I can fly it in a small area. It's slow and "forgiving", and a total beginner's plane to learn on. I often fly under the street lights at night, right in front of my driveway. I couldn't do that with a larger plane. As for the camera, they range in price (and quality), from about $10 up to around $90 or $100. Mine was $40, and as you can see the pictures and video are pretty good for the price. I don't take pictures with it, just video. I get the "pictures" by running the video on my computer and pausing the playback to get "snapshots". Anyway, thanks for the reply. Later!

You get one of those 4 blade helicpoters with a go pro

Google Earth works well too.

^whoops


This poll brought to you by Big League Chew bubble gum

Yes, those quad copters are really cool too. And from what I understand, the GoPro is a very nice camera. A little pricey starting at around $200, but when you compare it to, say, a common digital camcorder these days running up around the $400 - $700 range, it doesn't seem all that expensive.

Google Earth definitely works, sure enough. However it's just not as fun as RC flying. LOL! Just saying.

Very True! actually looking into getting my first upper scale RC car very soon.

ZOOM ZOOM!! I just recently saw a guy running an RC truck just down the street from me. Really cool. It was FAST too. Sounded like a small chainsaw on wheels. I had a small RC boat once. Nothing fancy, just a $20 Walmart toy. And true to form, when it quit working, well, there was no fixing it. But we'd gotten our $20 worth of fun from it though. Mostly we'd run it in our pool but it got a little boring just going around in circles. I once brought it fishing, just to mess around with it if the fish weren't biting. They weren't, so I put the little boat in the water to cruise around on the bayou. I hadn't thought about it at the time, but we sure were lucky it didn't get CHOMPED by an alligator. Because where we were, south of Avery Island in the marsh, it's absolutely FULL of them out there. Some real BIG ones too. But it was mid afternoon, and the gators were probably either catching some rays or catching some Z's somewhere out of sight. Was probably quite a few of them hiding under the bushes and marsh grass at the edge of the water, but none of them showed themselves out in the open. I figure if it would have been around sunset or just after dark, that little boat would have been a light, crunchy little plastic snack for one of them. It was about the same size as a nutria.

Yeah, I fly planes myself. Just got back into it last year. Used to do it in high school in the late 80's. Used to be all nitro powered engines and now its mostly all electric. I'm a little obsessed about it now. Currently have 6 planes. The blue and white one is scratch built home made. Using foam board from the dollar tree. $2 worth of foam and some glue is all it takes. Then there's the electronics. That's about $50 for everything needed. Check out hobbyking.com. CHEAP prices on everything.

Cool planes! Looks like you're into some 3D flying. I've heard of hobbyking, but never shopped on their site. I have on old Firebird Phantom that no longer flies, and since it's out of production you can't really get parts for it anymore. However I couldn't make myself get rid of it. Some day I'll gut it, rebuild it with a standard tail, (it's a V tail now), and get it up and flying again. Maybe I'll even "go crazy" and upgrade it to brushless. Zoom Zoom!!

Check out their website. It's dirt cheap. I've placed over 20 orders in the last year. You could get a brushless motor for under 10 bucks.

Just had a look at hobbyking.com and yeah, you're right they're cheap. Thanks! I'll definitely be shopping there in the future.

I have a few planes also. I recently bought a couple of Traxxas Rustlers for my 6 year old and myself. I bought the brushless version for myself but went with the brushed model for him. I thought he needed a slower car because of his age but, he handles them just as well as I can

but google earth gets very blurry below 2500 feet and some images are blurry as far away as 4000 feet.

sharp clear images like these mean you can create your own hunting and fishing maps that aren't blurry or covered by clouds and google earth images are often 4-5 years old so as fast as marsh changes that's often not going to give you accurate images or recognizable land formations. sure its close enough to "figure it out" by why not have real time images?

this idea IMO is a much better alterative to relying on old data from website

In order to map out hunting or fishing areas with a camera equipped RC plane, a few things have to be considered. First, you'd need a plane that can get WAY up there to a high altitude, and stay up there for a while. A powered glider like the Parkzone Radian would probably be a good choice.

http://secure.hobbyzone.com/PKZ4775.html

It has over 6 feet of wingspan, can reach altitudes over 1,000 feet, and in the summer it can ride thermals for a long time. Flights can last up to an hour long or more on a hot day, when there's plenty of "lift" in the air. Think of when you see buzzards or hawks making wide, lazy circles high up in the air. You rarely ever see them have to flap their wings and "fly" to stay up there, because they're just gliding around on rising currents of warm air, or thermals. Second, the camera would probably have to be pointing straight down at the ground to get an accurate layout of the area, and you'd have to fly directly over the area to be mapped. Third, you'd probably need some large, recognizable landmark that can be seen from the air in the picture, oriented at a known direction. Otherwise when playing back the video it can be hard to tell which way is north, south, east or west on the ground. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

There are GPS devices that can be used on rc planes. Can track your travel.etc.

Get one with some pontoons to land in the water and i can scout around to find the boats that are catching fish, then i could become the ultimate potlicker

Man, I used to race 1/10 and 1/8 scale nitro cars and, offroad buggies. I always wanted to get in the air but, as much as it cost me every week to tear up buggies, I just stayed away from anything that flew. That looks like a lot of fun!

I don't think they can do that without flaps and stuff, just too much going on to control it from flipping to do it remotely.

they do have Styrofoam planes and flying wings and flying disks so at least its retrievable if it goes down on you.

If you're referring to RC planes using floats, taking off from and landing on water, they can. And that's without flaps. Just rudder, throttle, and elevator. The yellow plane is a HobbyZone Champ like mine, with a set of homemade floats. The white and blue plane is a HobbyZone Super Cub (much larger plane) and is shown with a set of optional factory made floats. You'd be surprised at what these simple, foam, trainer type RC airplanes can do.

that's amazing, I would have thought the water drag would flip them over as soon as they landed

I guess that's why people shouldn't assume things lol

Just out of curiosity, did any of you check out the video clips? I was just wondering because nobody has mentioned them so far. By the way, if any of you were wondering what that square device is on the bottom right corner of the transmitter in this picture it's a digital timer. I get it going on take off and it starts beeping when it's time to land. When I have the camera attached to the plane I set it at 4 minutes 30 seconds. Without the camera I can stretch it out a good bit longer, but with the camera I'm probably using at least half the battery running at full throttle to climb up to altitude with the extra weight, and about half throttle or even power off at times to just glide around once it's up there at a good height. But 4 minutes 30 seconds usually leaves enough battery to get back to my "runway" (usually the street right in front of my house) and if there's a vehicle coming or something happens where I can't line up for a good landing, I have enough juice to power up, come around, and make another approach. If the battery does get too low (it happens occasionally), it's designed to cut off power to the motor but still leave current to the controls for steering / elevation. The motor can still be restarted in the air, but it's really just for enough power to get back and land right away. It's better to cut the flight short and save some battery, because if the batteries are run down too often below, I think it's 3.7 volts, it can kill them. In other words, they won't recharge. It's sort of the opposite of a deep cycle battery. It's high output, but they're only designed to be "topped off" when charging. Anyway, I thought I'd post another picture from a video I got a few weeks ago, it's the Iberia Bank building in New Iberia. That was some fun flying that day.

yes i looked a little bit of the videos it is cool, i thought i recognized some stuff, now i see you ARE in new iberia so i will watch some more videos and see what kind of stuff i recognize hahaha, that is awesome looks like a lot of fun

Actually, your assumption is correct. There is lots of drag and rc planes do flip over on the water. I've never used floats and I'm not sure about takeoffs, but from what I've read it's easy to flip them over on landings. It requires a different technique than landing with wheels on the ground or a paved runway. I'm pretty sure it has to be close to spot on perfect to prevent going nose-over, or skipping and bouncing it around on the water. I once saw a cool YouTube video where these guys were taking turns flying a Champ, same plane as mine, taking off and landing on a large pond. One of them flew the plane a little too long and ran the battery down, too far out and not enough power to make a proper landing. So it ended up nose down, motor submerged, just floating out there dead in the water. Luckily, they had an rc boat for just that scenario. It had a block of styrofoam tied on a string trailing some three or four feet behind the boat. They ran it out to the plane, circled around and "snagged" it with the string and float, and towed it back to the shore. Kinda slow, but it worked. The water didn't even damage the electronics. They just shook the water out, put in a fresh battery, and kept flying.

Looking on eBay, I see there are a few different types. Which one did you get. Videos are really good!

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First off, thanks! Second, the camera I got is called an 808 keychain camera, version #16 with lens B. There are three choices of the #16, and besides the lens B I think the other two are the original lens A, or the wide angle lens D if I remember correctly. It's a slightly larger field of view than the original, but it's not the wide angle lens either. The wide angle lens produces a "fish eye" effect. Some people like that but I prefer a more normal image. Also, these cameras take one of those little micro SD memory cards, up to 16 gb of storage. There's other cameras beside the #16. There's the #3 which is the cheapest but has the least quality. There's the #11 which is a step up in quality from the #3, and as of now I think the highest quality one of these cameras is the #26. That one is about $100, where my #16 is about $40. Hope that helps. And again, thanks.

Thanks! I have a buddy that has a plane, but I can think of all kinds of uses for this.

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Next time I go bowhunting I'm going to attach the camera to my bow. That way if I get to shoot I'll be able to get it on video.

Sounds like a great idea. I'm thinking this would be a cheap alternative to a go pro or at least allow someone to see just how much they would use it before dropping the cash on a go pro.

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It occurred to me that some of you may read this, get all fired up, take the plunge and get into RC flying. If you do, be warned, it's addictive! Seriously though, if you do decide to do this and you've never flown an RC plane before, take my advice and to NOT go out and buy a big bad azz WW2 fighter plane like a P-51 Mustang or an F4U Corsair. Sure, they look so cool hanging from the ceiling at the hobby shop, or doing those high speed low passes, loops, dives, and snap rolls on YouTube. But it won't look cool at all as a very expensive pile of debris on the ground. Start off with a high wing trainer, preferably with some dihedral. Dihedral is a slight, upward angle in the wings. This will help stabilize the plane and make it MUCH more "forgiving". Have PATIENCE and WAIT for a day when the wind is either FLAT DEAD CALM or just a MILD breeze at the most to fly the first few times. TRUST ME on this. If it's too windy, YOUR PLANE WILL CRASH. Hopefully where you can at least find it. OFTEN the wind will just take it to where you'll never find it again. So wait until it's calm. Pick a wide open area, preferably with grass about knee high if possible. Don't be afraid to get it up there at least 100 feet or so, or about twice as high as the trees. This gives you time to recover from your mistakes. You will make them, and you will crash. Everyone in this hobby does. If you can't find someone to teach you to fly, try a simulator. There's even some free ones you can download, and some let you use the controller you actually fly with. There's way too much advice to post it all here, but I suggest going to rcgroups.com and read "Six keys to success for new pilots". It's worth a read. And above all, have fun. Later guys!

I want to expand on my last post, specifically about the wind. I'd said to wait until it's dead calm with no wind, or just a MILD breeze at the most when learning to fly. It's not that these planes can't fly in the wind, it's just that when you're learning there's no way to see if it's properly balanced, flying straight and true, if the wind is bouncing it around up there. The best times are around sunrise and sunset, and we all know those days in the summer here in Louisiana when there's just no wind, not even the slightest breeze. Just plain HOT. Put up with the heat a while and fly then. If there's A LITTLE, MILD breeze, take off and land into it. A LIGHT breeze, once you KNOW how to fly, can actually be a good thing. Keep the plane in front of you and upwind. Letting it get behind you can mean trouble.

This is a good starter plane which you can grow into. It is a four channel but you can unplug and secure the ailerons until you are comfortable flying it as a three channel. It is a decent size so wind won't bother it as much and you can mount a go pro on it if you wished. A lot of people use this platform to fly in first person view( FPV).
http://www.readymaderc.com/store/ind...roducts_id=505

Looks like a really cool plane. And with the prop being a "pusher" behind the wing, you don't get the annoying stripes effect on the video from the prop, with the camera mounted forward.

One thing that's sort of amusing when flying these small rc planes is that birds sometimes try to "attack" them in the air. And for some reason, the small birds seem to be the most aggressive. One morning last summer I took my plane out to fly over a large open area, with grass about six inches to a foot high in some places. It was still early, no wind at all, very quiet. Perfect conditions. Flying about 50 or 60 feet off the ground, this small bird flew up to my plane chirping and tweeting like crazy. Next thing I knew there was two, three, and in no time it was something like ten to fifteen of them all trying to peck at my plane. The only way I got rid of them was putting it in a quick little dive, then a loop. That made them scatter, at least temporarily. They came back, but seemed to lose interest after I got it away from the field. I guess they figured it was some weird looking yellow bird intruding on their turf, and they were probably satisfied they'd showed it how "fierce" they were and ran it off.

Another thing worth mentioning about flying a small rc plane like this in the wind, is it's just not that much fun constantly trying to keep it from crashing. As I said before it will fly in a MODERATE wind, but it's like flying a very bouncy little kite with no string. On the other hand when it's calm and the plane is properly trimmed and balanced, it flies BEAUTIFULLY. It looks very much like a full size aircraft in the air.

Well, looks like there won't be much rc flying this weekend. Looks like rain, and maybe even severe weather. Oh well, some other time.

Well I was able to get in a little flying time this morning. I did get some video but I find that getting video of morning flights on bright, clear days like this tends to produce a lot of unwanted prop image on the video. Much better either before sunrise or after sunset. Or, for that matter, on a somewhat overcast day. So I reviewed the video I got this morning, but it was nothing special. I thought I'd post this picture from a flight I'd filmed last week, I thought it was sort of amusing. It's my dog staring at me through the gate across my driveway as I'm flying my plane. To give it a bit of perspective, he's a Boxer and he's a little over 100 pounds. His name is Mac and he's spoiled rotten. Lol!

RC boat Black Jack
 

Funny video of a friends, friend running a RC boat on avery island
http://youtu.be/0c0logg16bQ

Awesome boat and a funny video. I'm sure the gators in the pond were thinking "what da hell is dat?!?!". I like the rake paddle. Lol. The guy filming sounds like Poo Poo Broussard.

Another cool thing that can be done with rc planes is night flying. There's various ways to attach small led lights, even set up like full size aircraft with red on the left wing tip and green on the right, exactly the same as navigation lights on a boat. Other options are flashing strobes on the tail and solid white under the nose. I've talked to guys who fly their planes at night with these lights installed and they say it looks EXACTLY the same as a full size aircraft from the ground.

This is not my plane, but one just like it with some nice looking modifications (wing struts and antenna above the cockpit) and navigation lights installed. I can't say for certain, but the "antenna" is probably not functional. Most likely just for realistic looks. The plane's actual antenna that picks up the signal from the transmitter is a small copper wire maybe a little over an inch long, attached to the receiver on the circuit board inside the plane. Now, obviously these lights on an rc plane are not for "navigation" in the same sense as they would be on a full size piloted plane. I mean, they're not meant to indicate right-of-way to other aircraft. Unless someone's flying these things WAY too close to an airport, shouldn't be any full size "real" aircraft anywhere nearby. But their purpose is for visual orientation from the ground. Red is left, green is right. Even in broad daylight and keeping a constant eye on these planes as it fly, you'd be surprised how easy it is to lose track of which direction they're going. On my old plane (HobbyZone Firebird Phantom, pictured earlier on this thread) I painted green stripes on the right wing and tail surfaces and red stripes on the left for that purpose. I only flew my old plane during the day. The green and red stripes helped but if it's really far out or high up there, it just appears as a silhouette against the sky, or sometimes just a white spot (even with the stripes the plane was mostly white) that sort of blended in with the clouds. However these lights are should be visible at night, even small as they are, from quite a long way.

Pictures of my neighborhood from the air at night. It was still early, not fully dark just yet. I still had a little bit of light to see my plane against the sky. The hazy effect was because it had been foggy all day and there was still a good bit of moisture in the air that evening. With no lights on my plane I can't do much real "night" flying, other than slow and close near the street lights or in a large lighted area like an empty parking lot at night. And there too, it's under or not much higher than the lights. If you live in town somewhere, it's hard to realize just how many lights there are around the area at night until you have a view of them from the air.

cool pics

Looks like you are really enjoying that plane. Do you have any plans to upgrade or try something different?

Video
 

Here's the night flight video the pictures were taken from. Excuse the sudden ending, and no, I didn't stop recording mid flight lol! Either my camera's battery ran out, or it reached full capacity and had no more room on the memory card. Either way, it stops recording video. So anyway, tell me what you think of it. Later y'all!!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhlX...ature=youtu.be

Yes I am enjoying it, thoroughly. And some time soon, my old plane I mentioned earlier on this thread is going to be "reborn". I'm going to rebuild it with a standard tail, add new electronics, a souped up brushless motor, lots of zoom zoom. The plane I'm flying now is slow, mellow, and gentle. A total beginner's plane. My other plane I'm going to rebuild is also a beginner's plane, but bigger and faster. It's no longer in production so I can't get it's original parts, but I can start from scratch and go all "mad scientist" with it. I actually have two complete air frames for it, so I may just go "crazy" and build two! Lol.

Thanks! Been trying to get some up close video of some sort of large bird in the air. That would make for some cool video and pictures. I almost got a big buzzard on video, but couldn't get in the right position. Some day I might get lucky with that, if the birds cooperate.

Here's a few more recent pictures. I finally got a bird flying by on camera, a crow. In case you're wondering what those transparent, horizontal bands are across the upper part of the pictures, it's the propeller arc. The reason it looks like that has to do with the frame rate of the camera and certain light conditions. It comes and goes, and in certain conditions (like flying at dusk) it doesn't show at all. I like how smooth the water is in the other four pictures, you can actually see the reflection of the clouds. Can anyone recognize the location?