Luke ‘n’ Bill

The following is a very long rant on flying model aircraft…so if you’re not up for it, I’d stop here.

I started writing a little about my hobbies a while back and so I figured I would continue it on with a little about hobbies that I’ve had in the past. I’ve always been someone that gets busy with one thing or another and depending on the activity, it may just catch and turn into a hobby.

One of those which did catch was RC planes. Radio controlled airplanes was really a perfect hobby for my dad and I as I was getting older. I can’t quite remember when we started doing them, but I think it was somewhere when I was around 13 or so. We got started with the hobby when I walked into a hobby store in Baudette, ran by this scary looking long haired dude. They had a few models and some of the basics to get you started in the sport and it wasn’t much later that my dad and I had our first model airplane ready to fly.

Now we both enjoyed building them (I think my dad enjoyed that part a little more than I did at the time). He had the patience that comes with maturity and I just wanted to get it ready to fly! The plane we had picked out (with the help of the scary long haired guy) was an Ugly Stick! Now I believe there are multiple versions of the ugly stick, but they all fall under the same premise. They are durable, cheap, stable (forgiving in the air), and simple to put together. All the features you want in your first model airplane.

It wasn’t long before we were out at the international airport flying our model airplane. Now let me back up here quick. I grew up in northern MN in a town that was around 5 minutes away from the Canadian border. The town that we started flying model airplanes at was literally right on the border, so even though it was a town of 1500 people and it only had a tiny airport, it was still an international airport.

This is where we put in our first runs of taxiing around on the ground to get accustomed to the controls and the movement away from you and towards you (which can get especially complicated once you get in the air).

After a little while we started to try our abilities with the plane in the air. The beautiful part of this is that we didn’t have to try to go through the hardest parts of the flight (which are takeoff and landing). The reason for this is because the crazy long haired fella (who was Kevin to be exact) had a buddy box system. How that works is the plane is controlled by one radio control transmitter which is then connected to another transmitter via a cable. When a lever on the main controller is held in in place the abilities to control the plane transfers to the second transmitter. This allows the trainer to give the person trying to learn, the ability to fly the plane until they start getting into trouble. At that time, the lever is released and control is automatically given back to the trainer. This allows the beginner to start and end there flying for the first few times when the plane is what is called “a few mistakes high”.

One of the craziest things you see is all these youtube videos of people trying to learn how to fly these things without any training at all. It’s really a pretty wreckless idea. If you think about it, you’ve got probably around $500 at least into this high speed projectile that has spinning knives on the front connected to a block of aluminum capable of traveling through a human body with no problems and it is restricted by only your ability to control it. If you don’t know how to properly control it, you can have a small missile on your hands with nothing to stop it. Because as you know…you may not always be able to take off…but you’re always going to land…one way or another.

So now that I’m done ranting on the safety issues, back to flying. It really wasn’t long before we were able to start taking off and landing on our own. The hardest parts of it was first flying backwards. When the plane is coming towards you your left and right controls are reversed. After that, the next most difficult thing is judging distance. This becomes an issue when you are trying to land the aircraft. You need to give yourself as much leeway as possible when bringing it down to the runway in both directions. Coming in to slow will leave you doing a tip stall before you ever get to the runway and coming in too fast will have you landing at the end of the runway having to fly your plane into the ground in order to get it to stop. This all becomes even more difficult when you end up running your plane out of fuel and having to deadstick it in. (flying without thrust)

We ended up being able to keep our crashes to a minimum and we slowly started moving up in the ranks of planes that we flew. I can’t remember all of the planes that my dad had, he has gone through a ton because of his love for building them (and of course flying the models when completed). The planes that I flew went as follows (I believe): Ugly Stick, Great Planes PT-40 and the Ultimate Biplane. It made for a great way to learn and by the time I was flying the Ultimate Biplane I could make that thing do just about anything.

I’ll probably write about this more some day…but for know it was just good to write about all of this up to here, it definitely brings back some great memories.

On a side note…if you’re ever interested in flying model aircraft…I would suggest checking out the following link to the Academy of Model Aeronautics.