Remote control stuff

Anything you have to say or ask about R/C craft is fine for this thread.


Lately I have been getting more into remote control craft. There is my own interest and the knowledge that my since my son loves all sorts of vehicles, RC craft will be a way to pass time with him in the future.

The first RC vehicles I had were simple cars when I was a kid. They were no good outdoors except on smooth concrete.

In my thirties I bought a simple pusher-type airplane. I promptly crashed it not knowing I had to take the rubber bands off the stabilizers. Not a word about them in the video or the instruction manual. And I figured they were there as tension to bring them back into place. Nope. They were too strong for the servos to budge them. So the whole flight was at the mercy of the torque of the motor. Although a wing got a chunk torn out, I fixed it with tape and flew it fine after that. But how much I lost in aerodynamics I don't know.

Currently I have a couple boats that I got for a song, but had to repair, and a couple hovercraft, one old with a jerry rigged battery case for off the shelf AAA rechargeable batteries, and a new one you can get at Toys R Us for about 7,000 yen. This is it.



Its fast and overall I think a good buy. But you must keep in mind that being a hovercraft it constantly uses power so you only get about 10 minutes for each charge. Plus, no replacement batteries unless you set up your own battery assortment (and you can. 10 AAAs will fit and give you the 12v it needs).

But the big news is the helicopter I bought yesterday. I have buyer's remorse. And I urge caution to anyone who considers buying one of these cheap RC helis available just about anywhere. First I charge it up this morning and could not control it. After a bit I found out the tail rotor was not spinning. So I took it back and got a new one. Was more careful to make sure everything worked this time, but JFC, even with a slight breeze I could not keep the thing in the yard. It has a vertical tail rotor but its so weak it can barely tilt the thing even with no breeze. With a breeze, forget it. It flies with the wind. Its a stupid waste of 6,000 yen.

Nearly as annoying was the utter lack of detailed instructions concerning the lithium ion battery. One thing you don't want to screw up is the battery cause you often cannot replace them. But they give you a charger without even indicator lights. All I could do is put it on a timer and pray, cause they don't even tell you what is optimal for a first charge. Nothing. Nada. They just say 120 to 150 minutes charge time, which is not very helpful at all.

極空(Gocoo) Tough RC3.5CHヘリ - 株式会社トーコネ｜同軸コネクターの製造・販売/ライフスタイル商品の製造・販売



This the heli. I got it at Don Quixote. I figured since it was medium size and not one of those tiny ones, that it would be okay for outdoor use. And it does say its for both indoor and outdoor. But its too big for indoors and too weak for outdoors. GRRRRR!!! If I had not taken one back already I would probably take this back and tell them to keep their junk.

This was a mistake. I could have gotten the same thing small and cheaper and had something for indoors.

That said, I want to get a better one, something I can use outside even with a breeze. Anyone got any advice?

I am thinking I better get something with a proper cyclic, as in 4 channel. One thing I did not realize about these co-axial/ vertical tail rotor/ 3 channel jobs is that you can not guide them sideways or at angles. It makes course adjustments choppy. And, the tail rotor has to have mega power to overcome the gyroscopic effect of two main rotors keeping it level PLUS fight the wind. I suppose you could find some with that sort of power, but, how do you know until you get it home?

This is looking interesting. Might have to have it shipped though and not sure how it would deal with the 100V outlets in Japan.

[video=youtube;gmuSzK8dqCw]
Proper cyclic control and actual control of the copter. And cheap. Plus two batteries in the package which are easily removable. The charger has indicator lights to tell you when they are done charging. I don't remember seeing anything like this on Japanese store shelves.

Everything I have seen looked like crap, and this thing I already bought was just the crap that finally fooled me.

So it was you......


that did this.

Man, those things are no joke. The first time I saw one was driving through Chiba. I was amazed that such a thing was even available to the public.

I got the v911 and man, it does not need to get very far away before its really hard to tell what is going on with it and what direction it is facing. I cannot even imagine what a bear it must be to fly one of those big helicopters around a field from the ground, and navigate those power lines. I think I would sooner get a small one man heli to spray with, but strangely, I bet the licensing to get one of those is tougher than the remote control job.

Here is one in action:


I would think it would be much cheaper and safer to just put some poles in the ground, run a rope between them on some pulleys, and guide the sprayer over the crops that way.