hey guys (and ladies)

So my great Uncle has decided to give me his thunder tiger trainer 40 which has never been started let alone opend !!!! still in box unbuilt ! , its 3 years old now ! , but i finally built it up yestrerday and now i need to know a few things ???

1. what cheapo 4ch transmitter / reciever combo set can i get for it ? (prefferbly off hobbyking)
2. what cheapo servos can i get for it ? i neeed 4 ( (prefferbly off hobbyking)
3. are they hard to fly ?
4. will i crash it the 1st time ?
5. tips for 1st time flying ?
6. any additional help

please please help me !! much appreciated

Probably. Find an instructor.

are there any RC clubs around you?...if so go there for help...and someone to teach you to fly
Will you crash the first time out...probably 80% chance of it perhaps greater...with out an instructor....
This is the greatest hobby in the world if you enter it correctly....can you teach yourself to fly...yes but it will be furstrating and expensive...
Best of Luck but get some help

We all crash. It is not a matter of IF but a matter of When.
Find your instructor or someone from the local field before you begin building. He will help you with set up and choosing components as well as flying. Our usual advice is to purchase the best radio system you can afford so you can use it on later planes without outgrowing it as fast.
Good luck and welcome to the insanity of flying.

If you're doing this as a one time lark because your uncle gave you a free toy to crash and forget, have at it. Buy the cheapest stuff you can find, crash your plane and get out. It won't take much of your time. If you are wanting to get into the insanity as a lasting hobby, the one thing you don't want to go cheap on is your radio gear. Save your money to buy the very best you can afford, then instead of buying something, same some more money and buy something even better. You can go cheap on your airplanes, field and support equipment, whatever, but not on your radio gear. If you do and stay in the hobby, you will end up with countless transmitters that may or may not work and they are difficult to store. One good radio will remember settings for many planes and is easy to store, charge and keep track of. We all hope you get in to the hobby in a big way and for a long time, but for a one time thrill, forget it.

okay thanks guys ! much appreciated , i have been in this hobby a while now ! , i have 3 trucks and 2 heli's which ive been going at for 4 years now , just the planes i am new to ! , thanks for the heads up on radio gear , !

hey guys !
how long do you think a 420cc full tank of nitro will last me whilst flying ? i really dont want to get stuck midair with no fuel !!!!! haha

That really is a "how long is a piece of string" type of question re how long your tank will last. Perhaps do a ground based tethered run up for 5 min to see how much you burn over that period, then extrapolate it out from there leaving an amount for reserve/landing.

Ibid on what has already been posted.

Plan on running your plane down to half a tank no less, when you are new to this.

That will avoid some of the problems that plague even old timers.

Later when you are a bit more familiar with glow engines, you'll find out why I gave you that advice and how to fix....

okay sounds good thanks alot ! how long would it usaly take a 46 size engine under normal flying conditions ?

That depends upon your flying.

At full throttle many better ported .46 engines will consume about .8-.9 oz per minute.

But we really should not be flying the planes flat out all the time.

With an 18oz tank I can fly for a good 20 minutes+ until the tank runs dry.... however I set my timer for 14 minutes, to give me a few minutes of "going around" time if the pattern is busy or someone is out in the field retrieving a plane.

We had one guy flying a Telemaster with a weed wacker gas engine one day. His throttle got stuck at 60%.

After thirty minutes of non-stop flying, he gave me the controls because he was tired, and I flew his plane for another 40 minutes before handing it back to him.

The plane flew for 1 hour and 28 minutes before it ran out of gas....

wow !!!!! 1 hour and 28 min !!!!!! hahaha thats incredible how did u guys land it ? just on a glide slope?

Once he heard the engine began to sputter, he brought it lower and kept doing circles at one end of the runway.

Once the engine died he dead sticked it in.

He was flying one of the Giant ( Balsa Overcast ) Telemasters with an engine he adapted.

You really need an instructor, if for no other reason then to answer your questions. Most of us have had a mentor at some point to teach us hands on during the learning curve. It will save you a lot of time and money not to mention frustration. When I set up a plane I figure one ounce of fuel a minute. They don't often use that much but I never run out of fuel. Most flights last about 10 minutes. During training and on a buddy box you are usually only flying at about 1/2 throttle so milage is very good. If you can fly a chopper then your time on a buddy box should be short. As mentioned, if you just want to try your new toy out then buy cheap crap for gear. If you plane on teaching yourself how to fly then the cheap crap is all you really need. As an instructor I have a buddy box system and a lot of older gear that is still good and I will help a student set up his trainer so they don't need to spend a lot of money until they know if they want to make this a hobby or not. Once they decide then I tell them to buy the best gear they can afford. It seems to work because I have only had one student fall out of RC. He was only 12 when he learned. I told him it wouldn't last long, he had yet to discover cars and girls and how much they both cost. I have had a lot of older students that just didn't have the time to learn so they walked away. Only the kid had a lot of money in gear though. I tried to talk him out of buying all high end stuff.

Here are the short answers:

1. what cheapo 4ch transmitter / reciever combo set can i get for it ? (prefferbly off hobbyking)

You can see what they have as well as I can tell you, but none of them are really trustworthy. So if it must be super cheap, get any Hobby King unit that looks cool and hope for the best.

2. what cheapo servos can i get for it ? i neeed 4 ( (prefferbly off hobbyking)

See answer to Q1.

3. are they hard to fly ?

Yes, for a beginner.

4. will i crash it the 1st time ?

Yes, if you're a beginner without an instructor.

5. tips for 1st time flying ?

Get an instructor and fly at a proper RC facility.

6. any additional help

Make sure everything is secure and solid before flying, and do a little reading on how to break the engine in properly before using up the instructor's time.

If I may on a more serious note, I'd like to get you to rethink the way you think about RC flying. Many start out thinking of the plane as a toy, meaning they want to get out and enjoy it ASAP and do so with as little effort as possible. There are RC planes like that, but a better way to think about it is a hobby, a set of skills to build up. A hobby is much more long term, which means the trainer is just that, a way to start building skills. If you'll think of it that way instead of a toy, you'll be a lot more successful.

All newbies in this hobby are scared off by the prices they see initially.

A $200.00 - $300.00 cost for a good TX for instance, appears to be simply too much to deal with.

However ( as I too found out the hard way ) that "view" ends up costing you FAR MORE in the long run if you keep going.

I purchased a couple of cheap TX's. I immediately discovered that they did not have the features I needed.
So instead of doing the smart thing and getting a decent TX, I looked for a very cheap alternative....

After a while I ended up with a collection of incrementally better TX's.

At the end I had spent far more than I would have from the start getting a decent TX. Silly me.

-

That's not to say you cannot get bargains... IF you are willing to experiment a bit and take SOME risks....

I've purchased HUNDREDS of cheap $7.00-$9.00 high torque standard servos from Hobby King and have not had a single one fail. Yet better name brand servos have both failed and been bad out of the box.

Yet I've also purchased a dozen 1300 Micro servos from them, and it they are subjected to more than 4.8v even for a few seconds, the servos are ruined.

The .46 Tower Engines and .47 GMS engines I purchased years ago for about $60.00-$70.00 all are still running just fine though they have long been discontinued.

Good places to save money are used airframes, field equipment, and engines. It's easy enough to look at airframe over and see if anything is broken, and as long as engines turn over smoothly and have good compression, they should work fine with a little cleanup. Used servos are more of a crap shoot just because electronics look the same whether they are new or worn out, and ditto for radio gear. IMO, you should never buy used batteries because their service life is so short to begin with (3 years or so usually). So search the classifieds for planes and field boxes and such, and invest your startup money in a good new radio, servos and batteries.

You best find an instructor help you built it. usually,we have some people don't know built it.