I am really glad I found this site and forums. I have been rather intimidated by the rcgroups and rcuniverse forums but found a lot of overwhelming information. It also seemed biased as vendors have their own sub forums. This site is really helping me out separating the wheat from the chaff and make sense of all my choices. I have been into RC land for about 2 years but all that time was spent on surface. I was bored with only racing half the year and then having my truck sit for the other half as my local track at the fairgrounds get shutdown in the summer for fair related activity.
I decided that I wanted to spend more time with my father and he has always had an interest in RC Airplanes. First, I found a super cheap DX53 and Blade MSR on Craigslist for $50 bucks was a great deal and super steal. After much crashing and learning how to rebuild the whole helicopter twice! Broke two main frames from going full throttle into the ground! I have learned a lot about flying the heli.
Then I found my way to RC Super Powers on Youtube and learned a lot about foamies and how they work. They looked really fun so I decided to get a plane instead of another helicopter so I can spend more time with my dad. This brought me into the Wild Hawk I got at Harbor Freight with a 20% off coupon. The radio was really bad so I got a AR6200 from my LHS and use my DX5e with it now and flys much nicer. After breaking the nose and front section pretty bad, hot glue and strapping tape to the rescue, I broke down and bought the Dynam RC Simulator.
The simulator arrived today and I have been working with FMS and having a lot of fun after about 30 minutes of calibrating.
This has been my journey over the past two weeks.
Now to the future!
Goals: (Everyone needs one)
1. Have run with air based RC be it planes or helis
2. Be as frugal as possible (If this means I use chinese items that is okay with me as I do not have $1500 to drop on a radio)
3. Practice every day at least 30 minutes on FMS with either a plane or heli (both is optimal so 1 hour a day)
4. Build the Blu-Baby Trainer
5. Learn as much as possible about RC flight power system (Thinking about buying Dave Power's book)
6. Gather the necessary parts to make the Blu-Baby fly
7. Acquire a functional and useful radio that will last me many years to come
8. Fly the blu-baby and learn how to land
9. Progress to stable FPV flights
10. Progress up to EDF jets
11. Progress to large scale RC
My travels though all of these goals I hope to keep me coming back to this site. I am really happy I found it since the product reviews are invaluable and the chance at winning stuff is always nice. Subscribe to the youtube channel! If you have any advice or pointers to help me along my way that is appreciated. The most helpful are PDFs or ePub books that I can put on my iPad and read when I travel for work.