38 replies to this topic

[Cide]

Soooo i've kinda become interested in getting into RC flight recently. i used to live RC cars when i was a kid but haven't done anything else since then. what i want to do is actually build my own multicopter, but i figure i should probably buy a heli and learn to fly first before i start building my own schtuff.

anyone else interested in RC flight? what would you recommend for a beginner, also what sort of radio should i be looking at getting?

for my first copter i was thinking something cheap like this little fella

http://www.bladeheli...?ProdID=BLH3250

[sneh]

Definately get something that is 2.4ghz if you are going to be flying with/near others. Then you generally dont have to worry about interference, and have a lot better range than a crystal type.

The spektrum radios have always been good for beginners. They also have basic failsafe abilities.

Also, helis are pretty hard to fly. The venom helis are good to learn with as there are plenty of spare parts available (which you WILL need)

Edited by sneh, 20 February 2012 - 07:43 PM.

[Lunchbox.inc]

i used to fly RC planes myself, it was a cool hobby, but one that gets expensive pretty quickly... same can be said about copters too, even more so, but it's definitely fun, and when using a brushless chopper it because ALOT more user friendly, as you can just sit in your back years and have a fly...

i will say this much tho, choppers are FAR harder to fly than planes, they were always out of my leagues and i flew competition stunt plane stuff (tho not overly well)... lol as a beginner the fixed pitch choppers are a great way to go, and the one ou linked to seems like a great "learners" chopper....

keen to see how you go with this!!

[Mr. Drifter]

My dad bought a kite with a motor (recommended for people starting out in plane flying) and now has a helicopter..
I don't think I ever got a go of the kite, but the helicopter is a bitch to fly... Which was apparent from dad having broken a blade (which I fixed before I used it) flew it around the room a bit. Had to run and catch it when it went near the windows ><
Hard little bastards to fly, but fun.

Really want to get into either 4x4 rc cars, or drifting rc cars. the 4x4 ones would be awesome, saw a guy at the local bmx track jumping jumps with it, it was awesome

[Captn_Awesome]

I have a nitro RC car and I barely ever use it cause its a SOB to get started and maintain running. I think if I was going to get another RC toy I would be going for electric. Charg up the batteries and away you go no f***ing around with glow plugs, greasy nitro fuel, heat etc.

[BIGW]

They take a little while to get used to. I have a Nine Eagles Solo Pro 3d. Great fun though!

Kirk, as a kid I used to have a few Nitro RC cars, and that's all I remember, smashing my knuckles trying to start the bastards.

However, I bought a HPI Baja recently, 910mm long, 2 stroke. Just like starting a whipper snipper, two pulls and you're off!

Got some paddle tyres for it, wheels stands coming out of corners on the sand, talk about noisy!

[shizzle]

I just bought a nice short course truck (Associated SC10). It runs on lipo batteries, and I must say, battery tech has come a LONG way from when I had a car years ago. I get around 10-15+ minutes run time off my 5800maH battery, and thats at pretyy much full tilt!

Great fun, and I would suggest if I were to get a RC copter or plane, to go battery (lipo) too.

[Mr. Drifter]

I just bought a nice short course truck (Associated SC10). It runs on lipo batteries, and I must say, battery tech has come a LONG way from when I had a car years ago. I get around 10-15+ minutes run time off my 5800maH battery, and thats at pretyy much full tilt!

Great fun, and I would suggest if I were to get a RC copter or plane, to go battery (lipo) too.

Ooh, that's pretty much what i'm after
How do you charge them? hook battery up to powerpoint? or to car battery?
My dads old tamiya kit buggy needs car battery for charge... and runs really well

[Captn_Awesome]

Smashing my knuckles and burning them. and smashing steering components!

[Mr. Drifter]

Rolling a cheap rc car you bought for $2 so slowly that if it was a real car, you'd be able to push it over and keep driving, and having the bastard not work again. Asses.

Edited by Ben-Drifter, 23 February 2012 - 05:54 PM.

[shizzle]

Heya,

You charge them with a battery charger that is specifically made for lipo's (they also normally charge other things like nicad etc) but generally a nicad charger will not do lipo.
As far as charging goes, either from a car battery, or main, or both (I have a swallow EQ charger that does off both). They only take around 1 hr to charge, so its not too bad

[sneh]

If you go lipo, be careful with them, they are very unstable. Make sure you buy a quality charger that can balance the cells, and a low voltage alarm or cutout for the vehicle. Lipos go bang in a big way if discharged too much or overcharged.

I've seen first hand what can happen if you dont show them due respect. A friend nearly burnt his shed down with his brand new WRX in it by overcharging one a few years back when they first came out. Luckily he was not far away from the shed and heard the bang. Within the few seconds it took to get in there, the flaming goop had splattered over a radius of about 2.5m. Luckily he had a fire extinguiser in the shed. A work mate also accidentally drove over his GPS, which had a lipo in it, then picked it up and lobbed it in the bin, about 30 seconds later the lipo exploded and set the bin on fire.

Youtube has some good vids of them exploding.

They have developed a new, more stable battery technology to use instead, LiFePo i think they are called.

[cockroach]

do it man, helicopters are heaps of fun to mess around with. i was into r/c cars and boats for years, but i always wanted to fly helicopters. one of my mates that had planes said i should get a plane, cause i would never learn how to fly a chopper by myself. but i went and got the blade 400 3D and went from there. the first time i had a shot at flying it, i crashed pretty hard from about 20m up. but it only had minor damage, so after i fixed it, i had another shot and had no problems. after 2 weeks of playing around with it, i could hover it in the lounge room without any fear of crashing into stuff. do you have heaps of space inside to fly? cause if you try and fly one of those small ones outside, it will get blown around pretty bad by very little wind. maybe look at the Blade 120SR, if you ever want to fly outside http://www.modelflig..._1-6210-60.html
and a good forum to look at is www.helifreak.com

a few of my choppers

[Mr. Drifter]

is it just me, or does carpet make them go spaz? I tried taking off in ours from the carpet, and it just got a tilt and spun madly towards the window.. I think it gained a mind and was trying to escape... Bad move helicopter, that's 1inch thick glass... you won't get through that any time soon

[Cide]

Yeah the 120 SR is actually the chopper i have settled on getting. i was also looking at an Esky Honey Bee as i was told this was a good starter but haven't been able to find anywhere that has it in stock. E-Flite is a well known brand with a lot of spare parts available to me which is another factor in my choice

[ubernoob]

I got given some 4channel 2.4Ghz chopper piece of crap earlier this week, I hate cheap rubbish if you buy one buy a decent one that will work for a few years not a few hours.

[Luke352]

I do RC planes myself. I was into RC planes for many years through my pre teens and teens, stopped for about 10 years and have just recently gotten back into it.

Current project is a 1/4 Scale Pitts S12 60" wingspan using a custom wound Motrolfly motor on 10s, should spin a 20" prop at close to 7000rpm pulling close to 3000watts on peaks and around maybe 10kg of thrust not bad for a model that should come out around 5kg. I did consider using a Gas (petrol) engine but at this size the cost efficiency I feel still slightly favors electric. Any bigger and Gas is probably the cheaper option. I don't think i'd bother with Methanol burners (Nitro as there mistakingly called) these days between electric and Gas the Methanol burners don't make mch sense other than you like them which is just fine I still have a soft spot for them, but just prefer the simplicity of Electric.

Check out this video, mighty impressive!

[sneh]

that dude is a freak!

[Luke352]

that dude is a freak!

Which one, lol.

But yeah he has some serious skills, that is years of practice along with thousands of hours on a simulator. Having attempted to have flown a heli on the simulator I understand how hard it is to just fly around let alone do anything remotely close to what he does in that video. I find learning the basic fixed wing 3d moves hard enough.

[cockroach]

holy hat, dunno how people do that. i can do tail in funnels and a little bit of inverted flying, but that is about as extreme as i get lol.
luke352: 1/4th scale is pretty big, are you are building it yourself?

[Luke352]

luke352: 1/4th scale is pretty big, are you are building it yourself?

Yeah it's being built from a laser cut kit, to save myself the tedious work of cutting ribs etc.. but I still get the pleasure of seeing it come together. I'm getting the kit from the designer in the US, there has only been a couple built. There are a few ARF's getting around though of the Pitts S12, Sebart, Great planes etc. in various sizes.

[Mr. Drifter]

hour upon hours in a simulator, and hundred of dollars in repair costs

[SQXPRT]

This guy was 3 when he started, now 7 in the video...

Edited by Pulse-R, 11 March 2012 - 11:24 AM.

[bob]

If you want a good source for kits and parts, check out www.redgumrc.com.au

[Cide]

Aaaaaand a tiny update. in a move that may end up kicking me in the teeth i am going to try and bypass the expensive first step of buy a first helicopter before building and learning to fly with my multicopter.

I've found a nice affordable Transmitter and Reciever that i have purchased and am currently waiting to recieve in the mail.

Linky

So on most accounts of what i have read from people that actually own the Tx is that it is a pretty decent bit of kit, especially for the price. there have been some reports of poor quality control so i'm hoping that a quick opening up of the Tx and making sure all the soldering connections are solid will steer me clear of the things people have experienced.

I also picked myself up this little combination too. Transmitter conversion and matching Reciever. The Frsky Tx is said to be an all around stronger transmitter than the stock Turnigy and this little baby gives me the added bonus of being telemetry compatible allowing me to get feedback on all sorts of useful extras like Altitude, Windspeed, GPS Locations etc. I also got a little LCD backlight mod for better visibility of the screen in low light situations.

I've also found myself a very affordable Flight Sim which is where i am hoping i can save the money on having to buy a beginner bird.

[Luke352]

I also picked myself up this little combination too. Transmitter conversion and matching Reciever. The Frsky Tx is said to be an all around stronger transmitter than the stock Turnigy and this little baby gives me the added bonus of being telemetry compatible allowing me to get feedback on all sorts of useful extras like Altitude, Windspeed, GPS Locations etc. I also got a little LCD backlight mod for better visibility of the screen in low light situations.

.

I don't know much about the Turbnigy 9x, but can say good choice on the FrSky conversion the FrSky stuff works flawlessly.

[Mr. Drifter]

flight simulators are a good help. I had to learn how to fly dads kite thing via simulator before I could even think of trying to fly it... we still crashed it

[Luke352]

The Pitts is coming along nicely.

 2012-04-05_06.46.55.jpg   1.43MB   0 downloads

 2012-04-10_21.48.45.jpg   1.57MB   0 downloads




My motor also arrived. Should be able to spin a 20" prop around 7000rpm, and produce about 10kg of thrust. Should be able to handle 2000w-2500w constant with bursts in the 2500w-3000w range.

 2012-04-10_17.02.06.jpg   1.47MB   0 downloads

Edited by Luke352, 11 April 2012 - 01:42 PM.

[bob]

Luke, any details on that motor?
What sort of ESC and battery supply will you be running to it?
I have been contemplating putting a plank motor on my lawnmower. I have an obsession of converting piston engine to electric.

[Cide]

finally my first package of goodies arrived today, can't wait to get home and unbox, probably won't start to mod the Tx til the weekend though