Hello and welcome to my R/C page.
My Story
My love for R/C projects first started when I was building models I believe. I built those plastic models of cars or planes. These were pretty difficult to me because I was only about 8 years old or around there. I liked these but the painting was difficult and they were too tedious. The next step was rockets. I used to love making rockets as a lot of kids did. I made a ton of them including some of the hardest. It was very cool to see them move as opposed to the models which just sat there. Eventually rockets were getting boring to me. I didn't launch them off very much and I wanted to have control instead of having them just go straight up and then down. I needed something new.
The next thing came up kind of oddly. One day while I was at Joe's Hobbies my mom and I were going to buy a rocket. If you haven't ever been there, the ceiling is covered with these amazing scale airplanes hanging down. While looking around I said to her that I wanted to build one of those gas planes. She didn't really think I was serious and said maybe when I was older. That sparked the whole thing. I Kept on reminding her that I wanted to make one of those big r/c planes and fly it. Sure enough on my birthday I got the Electra electric sail plane. I was so excited. After a very long time and a lot of pain I thought I had finished. I brought it back to Joe's and a very nice man there looked it over for me. Obviously it sucked but he really was amazingly nice. He decided that he was going to fix it for me for free. What a deal. So he fixed it but the rest of it was screwed up so it turned into a test plane. Unfortunately it never got off the ground.
I wasn't discouraged though so I decided that I was going to move on to a little more complicated plane. I chose the gas powered Sierra. It was still only a trainer but at least it had an engine. Another epoch later and some more pain it was finished. I monokoted it with black on the wing and fuselage with blue control surfaces and red flames on the top of the wing. I though it looked pretty cool. After another inspection from the same savior Dave; outcome was a little bit better. He said it was flyable and didn't need too much work. The only thing I remember him fixing besides adjusting the control surfaces was that the plane was pretty badly out of balance so he put in some very large weights in the nose and gas tank compartment. It was ready to go. I fueled her up and whoa. It got off the ground. I got to fly it a little bit but then the trainer took over. After one or two more flights disaster struck, the plane lost control. I can't remember exactly what happened but all I know is that it hit the ground pretty hard. Thankfully I wasn't driving and the instructor was good enough that he save most of it. After assessing the damage, it was found out that all the damage that really happened was that the firewall had been knocked out and the front was cracked a little. I picked up the plane and walked to the car. It was a sad moment. After a little bit of time and some glue the plane was as good as new. I took it back up to the club and It flew a few more times. That was the last time the plane flew. All in all it was a good experience and a little better test plane.
Since then I have built a new plane. The plane of choice was the Piper Cub. This is bigger than the sierra and now I had had some experience. Currently it isn't finished but all I have to do is the finishing touches. The wing is a navy blue with yellow triangles coming out from the center. The tips are also yellow. It looks very cool. The fuselage is blue with the bottom of the tail yellow and the rudder also yellow. It would look good but I haven't completely mastered the whole monokote thing. I haven't bought an engine yet for it but I am thinking about the Supretiger .60. One day hopefully I will finish it.
I have recently got into a new area of R/C. R/C cars. I started out with a woosy sandmaster buggy. It served me well for a little bit. When I first got it, it was the coolest thing ever because of the engine and the crazy speed. I quickly learned a well known lesson; you get what you pay for. My engine was hard to start and the pull starter was the biggest pain. The cord broke on the starter and I decided that it would be better to buy a new car than a $15 new pull starter. After a ton of research and looking on Ebay for months I narrowed what I wanted down to a few cars. I knew I wanted gas, and most likely an onroad car unless I could find a very good deal on an inferno or mbx-2. What I really wanted was a BMT because it was full blown racer, wasn't as expensive as a serpent or a mugen, and it had a 3 speed transmission and I knew it would have some ballistic speed. I saw a few but there was always a complication. On one lucky day I found a serpent that for some reason wasn't get bid on too much. I went for it. The outcome was a serpent excel with novarossi red top engine and some accessories. I paid 265.00 for it and I think I got my moneys worth considering this car was at least $1200 new. The condition was pretty good and look well maintenanced. Everything was ready to go except for a radio. After going from the lowest to the best car that one the world championships in 95, I made an executive decision that I couldn't use just any radio. For my first car I was using the 4 channel radio from my plane. The sticks were pretty easy to use but for this car I needed a real car radio. Some more ebay shopping unveiled an Airtronics 3 channel pistol grip computer radio(CL-3PS), tekin 3 channel miniature receiver, and a dirt bagz carrying case. All this was for $120, not a bad deal. Now that I have all this, all I need is a starter which I just bought so hopefully I should be able to get this car running soon.
R/C Links
Electronics projects for R/C
John Nooyen's Aeromodeling Homepage