Flying a radio controlled plane can be very difficult and requires a considerable amount of practise to get it right so that you don’t crash the thing. This video shows someone who’s mastered the art of flying an RC plane as he banks, and lands on a makeshift aircraft carrier made from a few tables.
I wonder how many attempts he actually had before doing this correctly. I expect there are a whole host of crashed planes on the floor next to the aircraft carrier.
A while ago we wrote about the incredible radio controlled car that allows you drive it and see through the ‘eyes’ of the driver, the VTS Vision racking System camera car. We’ve found some more photos of the kit that comes with it, including the really cool video glasses (which look great by the way) and the leather look brief case that contains all of the equipment.
You can buy the car, for a very expensive price it has to be said, from the geek site Red 5.
Who wouldn’t take you seriously wearing that?
Plus, imagine what you could with a radio control car that has a camera mounted on it… Interesting.
Park Flyers are small radio controlled planes that weigh less than two pounds and are capable of over 60mph. They’re small, quiet and light and represent a change in the direction of radio controlled planes.
The planes are generally powered by electric or rubber, or some other silent propulsion method.
The AMA is currently looking to get Park Flyer sites setup throughout the US, which can be either indoor or outdoor sites. When deciding on a Park Flyer site members need to determine if the site is safe to fly the plane.
According to the Academy of Model Aeronautics:
As an aid in reaching this goal, we’ve developed a special ‘How to Start a Park Flying Site’ turnkey package so members who are trying to secure a field won’t have to start from scratch when they approach landowners or officials responsible for regulation of public facilities. The package includes a DVD to show landowners and park officials what park flying is all about––and how different it is from the engine-powered, radio-control flying with which they may already be familiar. There are tips on how to approach officials and landowners, plus instructions on how to set up a field. It even includes a guide for how to quickly and efficiently organize a club, its bylaws, and field rules. And best of all, members will be able to inform landowners and officials that they’d be covered by AMA site liability coverage in the amount of $2.5 million, which should serve as a great incentive. The goal is to make it easier for official AMA recognized flying sites to be developed quickly and in great numbers.
Fourteen year-old Gareth Hunt (not the guy from the coffee ads) is looking forward to winning a big radio controlled car race in a few weeks. Gareth, from The Lane, Sauchen, has been racing radio controlled cars for four years and competes in both indoor and outdoor races.
Gareth recently competed in the Much More Grand Prix in 2007 and finished as top junior.
Coming up shortly is what has been described as one of the world’s largest radio controlled car races, in Mineralwell Park, Stonehaven, and Gareth will be there to compete.
Running from June 13 - 15, the race is expected to have over one hundred entries on each day. Friday is the practise session.
Gareth says about his racing:
Now that I am older, I also enjoy the challenge of building my own cars, painting the body shells and setting up the car to race on different tracks and surfaces - this can be indoors on carpet or outdoors on tarmac.
I have won a few races locally in Inverurie and Stonehaven, I also had a good finish (third) in the UK juniors last summer.
I am looking forward to the Much More UK GP at Stonehaven because the driving standard will be really high and I will have the opportunity to race against drivers from all over the UK and from different parts of the world. Hopefully I can also learn more from these very experienced drivers to help me drive faster and to improve my car set up.
I will also be taking part in the UK juniors again this summer to be held in Bedworth, England, so it will be really busy again this summer racing both in local club rounds and national events.
I hope lots of people come along to watch the racing at Stonehaven - it’s really exciting and you will be surprised at the very high speeds the cars reach on the fastest section of the race track.
One of the things I love about racing radio controlled cars is the fact that you can thrash the cars round the track without any thought or care for the car itself. It’s just a toy, therefore you can take corners at speeds (scale speeds obviously) you wouldn’t normally consider in your own car.
I always think this is much like when you’re driving a company car or a hire car. I recently had an accident in my own car and was given a hire car to drive around for a few weeks, and besides my initial disappointment that it was a lowly Mitsubishi Colt, I soon got into the swing of the hire car ethos. As in, I was revving the nuts off it.
It seems to be the case, when you have a car that isn’t your own you always treat it, well, a little more frivolously than your would had you bought the car yourself.
I imagine it may have been a little different had I been given a personal contract hire car, and was responsible for the wear on the car myself. I wasn’t though, the car was just a courtesy car and I was able to treat it just like an RC car, as in, not very well at all.
It was good fun too, though if I’d been a little more careful with my own car in the first place I wouldn’t have needed the hire car.
Now I own a game called Mr Soccer, where you control robots on a football field with radio controlled devices, and try to kick the ball into the goal. The game comes with two robots (England and Brazil) but you can have several players on each side.
This version I’ve just found features penguins, kicking a football around the pitch. What a quality concept.
The students were awarded trophies, medals and a prize of $1,500 each for their invention, which allows the user to perform unmanned reconnaissance via a radio controlled plane. The US Air Force provided them with the prize.
The plane is made from Styrofoam and is just three feet long, housing two digital cameras. One of the camera takes photographs while the other is linked up to a set of video goggles, that allow the user to control the plane, and see through the camera, from the ground, as though they were looking out of the cockpit window.
Alex Wold, one of the inventors, stated:
What makes our plane unique is that it’s so inexpensive anyone can do surveillance from the air.
His colleague Jerry Farke said the plane went down very well at the event.
We had at least 30 judges look through the goggles. Some people even wanted us to patent it.
The future looks bright for these two RC enthusiasts.
If you’re a real lazy gardener, the sort of person who thinks gardens are for drinking in and letting your dog use as a toilet. The sort of person who has ‘a man’ come round a few times a year to perform ‘magic’ on the grass to make it shorter; then you’ll be interested in this radio controlled lawn mower.
No more back breaking work sitting their watching the weeds grow, now you can actually do something about it without standing up.
To be honest, it still looks like a lot of effort. I mean, having to start the thing to begin with looks like hard work. Maybe you could just have someone lay some concrete?
A couple of kids have created a project that they displayed at Atlanta’s ‘Intel International Science and Engineering Fair’ named Radio Controlled Reconnaissance: A Bird’s Eye View.
Alexander Wold and Jerald Farke explain the concept of their RC flying reconnaissance invention. I doubt it’ll be too long before these guys end up working for the military or NASA.
Their plane comes with a carbon fibre rudder, they’ve matted out the camera ports so that they can reduce the glare and they’ve worked on the cooling system of the electronics.
In the world of photography there are a great many different techniques for getting the right photos, the right effects and best setups. Using radio controlled toys to assist isn’t something many photographers would have considered, however Alan Ramsdell from Sandford, Maine, USA, has been using radio controlled helicopters for photography for many years.
Alan works as an electrician by trade, but uses RC helicopters to fuel his love for photography by taking aerial photos of buildings and houses. It’s become more than a hobby though as Alan has launched a new business around the concept called Maine Aerial Photography Services. Photos of your home from the sky are quite novel, and having one taken by a radio controlled helicopter would be something of a talking point.
Alan has spent thousands of US dollars in rigging a camera to a radio controlled helicopter in order to get the right blend of balance, safety and control. The camera is very expensive, so he doesn’t want a nasty accident to cost him is new found business!
It has hit the ground before … not with the camera on it. I have to be careful when it is in the air because I have $2,000 flying up there.
Luckily Alan is very experienced at flying radio controlled planes and helicopters as he’s been a fan since 1977. That’s quite a few hours flight time.
The rig that holds the camera to the model aircraft was designed and built by Alan himself, and it has built in shock absorbers which limit the shaking of the camera. He then controls the camera from the remote, being able to take photos with the press of a button, and using a video screen as a view finder.
Fourteen year-old Gareth Hunt (not the guy from the coffee ads) is looking forward to winning a big radio controlled car race in a few weeks. Gareth, from The Lane, Sauchen, has been racing radio controlled cars for four years and competes in both indoor and outdoor races.
