My first Remote Controlled Airplane

• Author: DigitalMind
• Filed under: Techie Toys'n'Games
• Date: Apr 5,2011

My whole life I’ve loved all things remote controlled, and I’ve always wanted a remote controlled helicopter or airplane. As you know, I bought a small and cheap RC helicopter a few years back. That one eventually broke and my friend got me another at Christmas this year. This got me back into RC flying; my research started and my new favorite hobby was born.

As I started researching remote controlled airplanes, I came across something spectacular. Something I’ve wanted my whole live but never knew it : FPV flying.

FPV flying, also known as First Person View flying is when you attach a small video camera and video transmitter to your airplane (or helicopter) which transmits the video back to you on the ground in real time. With the use of video goggles or a laptop, you literally fly the plane as if you were sitting there in the cockpit.  (The camera even moves left/right, up/down as you move your head!!) You can also record all your flights. This takes RC flying to a whole new level !   You can fly much further since you don’t need to actually see the airplane from the ground and figure out which way it’s heading.

So I spent many hours on the internet, and found the youtube channel of AltitudeRC which is a small group of Montrealers who are involved in this hobby.   Thanks to AltitudeRC, I was able to get myself everything I needed to get involved in RC FPV flying.  (Actually I’m still missing the video goggles, those are really expensive)  They were really great.  For a couple of weeks I was sending almost daily emails packed with questions about which RC plane I should buy, which video transmitter/ receiver I need, which Camera, how to put it all together, etc, etc, etc ….

In the end, I got a SkySurfer airplane / glider from BananaHobby (their customer service sucks, but their prices are good), I got an 800mw transmitter / receiver from DinoDirect (Slow shipping, but can’t beat the prices!) ,   a micro video camera from FoxtechFPV (they’re awesome) , and an “easy pod” to mount my camera and transmitter to my plane from NG Hobbies (also awesome).

I haven’t yet done any FPV flights, however I have gone and flown my new airplane a handful of times at the park near my house.   My first time out was really stressful.  The first 2 times I tried flying I didn’t stay in the air any more than 5 seconds per “flight”.   After that things started going better. (I say that, but that first day every time I “landed” I had to fix things on the plane so that I could fly it again)  There really is a large learning curve to flying RC planes,  I don’t think I could have done it as a kid.  I’m still stressed out when I go flying since it’s still very new to me, but things are getting a lot better.  The park I fly in has lots of obstacles, so I recently figured out that it makes things MUCH easier to simply fly the plane WAY above any obstacles; that way you don’t need to dodge them.

Here’s a video of my first day out with the plane :

Here’s a video of my first time trying to fly on a windy day :

Here’s the video of the first time I REALLY crashed my RC airplane (flew it into a tree) :

And here’s the video of the last time I went flying (after I crashed it into a tree) and decided to try going really high to avoid obstacles :  (kinda boring since the plane is too high to see most of the time, but checkout my sweet landings )

For more information about RC flying, checkout the website of the guy who helped me : www.altitudeRC.com   .. (actually, I made the site to thank him for all the help he’s given me, but all the content is his )