Espresso-Outfitters

Too true in some shops, but not all, at least in my neck of the woods. There is always going to be a factor of these shop owners wanting to stock only items that make the most profits for them, that is a factor involved with paying for the inventory and overhead, the costs to run one are tremendous, but if you are only selling obscure, or inferior wares just to make a buck, patrons will eventually find another suppleir. I have 3 close by, only one took any time out to help me with my RC venture. My quest was just to get a decent set up and start flying, all too often potential RCers are dismayed with the field out of the start up expense only to have something that is incompatable with the mainstream down the road, we feel we've invested x amount of dollars, we expect something that is not an island unto itself.

I also finally got paired up with a quality plane, it's normally flown at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle and have gone even slower then that, I'm amazed it doesn't stall, yet can crank up the power to do some acrobatics, 3rd maiden flight I was doing double loops, hehe. 2 years before, I had the Parkzone J3 cub as my first RC plane, if you go that route, you need to insure you have plenty of space, it just didn't last long with what I had, I did mess with the thrust vector planes as well, but my background is more into building free flight versions, both from kits to scratch so it gave me a good understanding as to how it's going to react. Getting a good bird up in the air in reality is different then the sims entirely due to perspective, so the idea here is that even though you can do inverted knife edge loops cutting the grass on the landing pad at your feet in the sim's, you will be thankful for starting out with a slow, 3 channel bird. What the sims do not duplicate are the flaw's of the design, humidity, temperature, wind "gusts" wind currents, prop size, weight distribution, etc. etc. on down toe Murphy's laws which reign absolutely supream on the field at all times. So, use them as a training tool to get used to the interface, but do not think you are going to be able to just go out in the field and duplicate any form of it "without destroying your plane" without it, "mensa people are ommitted, hehe".

Radio, equipment, etc. the moderator guys covered that, I'm liking the compatibility of the GWS flight pack system, sticking with 6 channel receivers in it, but the idea is that everything is there your ARF will be asking for to complete the plane and have it ready to fly. You may only use 2 servo's when you start, you'll be able to use it for more afterwards on another plane. I have a Futaba 4 channel radio, was 135 including receiver, 2 servo's, and charger. It even has the interface I'll be hooking up to my PC eventually for, GWS makes a very good one as well, the idea here, you want something everybody else is familiar with, this gives the manufacturer reason to stock replacement parts as well as focusing upon compatability. I literally took this 135.00 set up, cut up $3.00 worth of foam, added a motor and battery, hot glued it all together and was out flying, be it not well, at least it was a start, and foam is cheap to crash, the radio, receiver and servo's are your main purchase, those can be switched around into a whole fleet of planes.

This is a photo of my butterfly, it required no trim after it was assembled with no modifications necessary so I didn't have to worry about it doing weird things as I launched it, take note, it's a high wing, large wingspan area plane with plenty of "dihedral", the dihedral is that V, or angle the wings are opposed to each other if you look at them from the front, the more there is, the more stable the plane, thus making it easier to handle, so if you turn to hard, letting off on the controls, the dihedral design will balance the plane to a level flight pattern eventually.