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


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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!