I have driven RC cars for many years now but I'd like to get into some flying. I was thinking about park fliers because they are some and slow enough to learn on but I wanted one with ailerons(I may not use the ailerons immediately until I get more experience) so:

I wanted to get:
this plane
this radio, because I may want to expand my fleet later.

However, I am a little concerned about flight times with batteries. I want to be able to go and fly for an hour or two and not just 5 minutes.

Do you think these are good choices as a beginners? And could you ease any anxiety for the flight time

Hopefully you are aware that this is a kit, and that you will have to build and cover the airplane yourself. It does not come out of the box looking like the picture.

I can't say as I've heard much about the Great Planes park fliers, as most people are put off by the fact that they have to build the plane. If you truly are interested in the building aspect of the hobby, I applaud you. Being able to build your own plane seems to be slowly becoming a lost art these days.

Looking at the plane, I don't see any reason why it woudln't be a good first plane. It's a stable high-wing trainer type. The stock power system might prove to be inadequate, but I can't say for sure because I am not familiar with the plane. My main concern is with the fragility of the airplane. It's balsa, and will not take the abuse of a newbie trying to learn how to fly without expert help, which is what I presume you want to do.

The radio is a fine choice, but the receiver and servos it comes with are not suitable for the plane you chose. Using them would add too much weight to the airplane, IMHO. You will need to buy a micro receiver and two micro servos. You can sell the standard receiver and servos on Ebay to recoup the cost of the micro gear.

There is no way this plane will fly for "a couple of hours" on any battery that's light enough for the airplane. Five to ten minutes per flight is about all you can expect on the recommended packs. To get more than one flight, you need a field charger and/or multiple battery packs.

Long story short, it'll work, but frankly, I think you can do better for a lot less money. Look into a GWS Slow Stick ($35, includes motor and propeller), the GWS flight pack for the Slow Stick ($85, includes micro servos, battery, micro ESC and micro receiver), and if you want a fancy transmitter, the Hitec Eclipse ($189.99 for the transmitter only, including a Spectra module which lets you fly any plane on any channel).

The Slow Stick is mostly foam, and can stand up to the abuse from a newbie pilot much better than the Tutor. All the parts you need come in the plane kit and flight pack, so you don't face the risk of choosing the wrong parts and having an unflyable plane.

Jgrepps,

Can I make a suggestion for a first plane?

Graupner Tipsy from Hobby-Lobby.

The Tipsy is an easy plane to assemble, but it's not so easy that you miss out on learning how to build, test, trim RC planes.

And it's incredibly easy to fix. I've split my Tipsy into 4+ pieces twice now. The first time hitting a goalpost while on final approach when it got too dark to see the grey plane against the ground clutter behind it. The second time when I looked away for a split second while I was flying it at full throttle only a few feet off the ground. (My flying buddy said "uh oh," and I turned my head to see what had happened to the plane he was piloting (a plane owned by me).) After the first crash, it took me an hour to fix the Tipsy when I got home. The second time, I had 5-min epoxy in my field kit, so I had the plane back in the air within 20 minutes!

I get about 20-40 mins of flight per battery pack, depending on how I manage the throttle and how much lift I find (it's easy to thermal the Tipsy). If you take a field charger with you, you could fly non-stop with only three packs, cycling them between flight, cooldown, and fast charge.

There are other dealers that sell the Tipsy cheaper, but I found Hobby Lobby to be the most helpful of all the hobby shops from whom I've made recent purchases (approx 10 different shops in the last two months). You can buy the motor, ESC, servos, etc elsewhere for less, but if you're just getting into flying, ordering from H-L is a no-brainer.

BTW, I bought my Tipsy compatible batteries from AeroMicro for $23 per pack.

The radio I use is the Hitec Flash 5. Five channels, five aircraft memories, mixing, exponential travel, travel adjust. I bought the radio from H-L, because they had the receiver and servos with it that they recommend for the Tipsy. If you're interested, go to H-L's Hitec Radios page and scroll down to "5 Channel Airplane Systems." Catalog number HTR971R ($169) comes with a Hitec 555 and two HS-55 servos. You can use these in the Tipsy.

Although the recommended 555 receiver works great, the Hitec Electron 6 is actually a better receiver for the Tipsy (the interior of the nose area gets pretty tight with a 555 in it). FWIW, I bought a Berg-4 DSP receiver from AeroMicro for my second Tipsy.

Anyway, good luck with whatever you end up getting!

If you don't want the challenge of building for your first plane, I offer another possible candidate. The GWS Slow Stick has a 46" wing span and is made of foam flying surfaces and an aluminum stick fuse. It assembles in about 4 hours and is easy to fly. It costs $35 and comes with an adequate sized motor.

A number of threads exist on RC Universe, just do a search on "slow stick" and you should have some reading and hints.

Sierra Gold

I was looking at a GWS pico or lite stik, or a Wattage mini max for my first plane. Because I am soon to move to an area with numerous soccer fields and such within walking/biking distance of my house-to-be, my airplane is bound to be of the parkflyer/ultralight variety. For reasons of price, size, and flying area, these appear to be the best choices for me, although I am open to suggestions. I intend to purchase a hitec lazer four radio transmitter, a cirrus 16 gram narrow band reciver, and two of those 9 gram servos commoly found on ebay. However, I do not know what to use for the speed controller and battery. As I want to be able to fly for more than 5-10 minutes, I intend to purchase some lithium batteries, or possibly use re-worked Qualcomm packs. However, I do not know what to use with these planes in the way of voltage or number of cells, and do not know what to use with them in terms of a speed controller. Just a thought-Could'nt I use a Zener diode to shut down the motor when the current drops below 3 volts? Thank you for your help and support.

How about a personal review of the Aerobird from a new RCer, me. I looked at
the Firebird II, XL, Fighterbird and the Aerobird. With three channels you
can do a lot more, so I went with the Aerobird.

I was not interested in building. If I spent a month building and then
wrecked it, I would be crushed. I wanted a RTF that could take some
punishment.

I am a first timer. However I am also one of these guys that goes into intense
research when I get interested in something. After several months of research,
talking to people, flyers and non, I bought an Aerobird. It is a super value
but there are other good starters. Here are the plusses and minuses in my mind
of the Aerobird.

Very inexpensive and rugged for a three channel starter - $140-$170
The plane comes complete and fully assembled. Charge the flight battery, put
on the wing, put the batteries in the transmitter and up you go! Even the
batteries for the transmitter are included.

New flyers like me are going to crash, so you don't want something costly to
start with. There is a full line of parts available at reasonable cost. You
can replace the whole main fuselage for $49 including the motor and all the
flight electronics. A wing is $15 and the tail is $9. So, if you crash badly
you can get everything for under $75 and you are back in the with a three
channel plane.

Batteries and charger:

The battery will run for a full 5-6 minutes at full throttle and 10-15
minutes+
at half throttle. Many planes in this class run 4-6
minutes. And unlike many of the 2 channel starters, it comes with a peak
charger that you can use in your car. If you pick up two spare batteries you
can stay in the air all day. A full charge takes about 40 minutes.

Another plane I liked was the Sky Scooter Pro, now the Pro II. This plane has Ailerons but is still three channel so it is still fairly simple to fly. You can get it
as a base plane and motor and add your own electronics or get it ready to fly
with a 72 MHZ Hittec 3 channel radio for about $150. This was my second
choice to the Aerobird. I like it a lot!

The Aerobird also has an X-Pak hop up kit available for $30. It includes a 7
cell battery (the basic is 6) and a larger tail. This makes the plane faster
and more maneuverable. So, once you get good you can soup it up! I bought the
X-Pak when I bought mine. I will use the 7 cell as my second battery and save
the tail for later.

WIND

All new flyers should start in winds under 5 MPH so that you are learning to
fly the plane rather than fighting the wind. I didn't do that and crashed a
lot because of the wind. However, now I am very comfortable flying this plane
in 10-12 MPH winds. Handles it very well.

27 MHZ vs 72 MHZ Radio

The Aerobird uses a 27 MHZ radio which is assigned to general use for planes,
cars and boats; mostly low end stuff. There are only 6 available channels. So,
if you have a kid with a RC car in the same area where you are flying, and he
is on the same channel you are on, and he is close enough, when he switches on
his transmitter, you will lose control of the plane and probably crash. Even
with 72 MHZ radio systems, this will happen if you get two flyers on the same
channel, but 72 MHZ is dedicated to airplanes. High end RC cars are on 75 MHZ
so they won't interfere.

The flight control is a single stick radio with rudder and elevator on the
stick. Throttle is on a slide on the left top. It is similar to a Futaba or
Hitec single stick arrangement. I find it very comfortable to use and other
flyers who have tried it say they find it easy as well.

If you are going to join a club, check with them. Some clubs will not admit 27
MHZ based planes because they can't be flown with a buddy box, a training
system, like a dual controlled car, that is used for pilot training. After
long consideration I bought the Aerobird, but these are things I took into
consideration. My club, www.lisf.org has many firebird pilots, so the
Aerobird was welcome The Sky Scooter Pro, mentioned above, is on the 72 MHZ
band set-up so you don't have any of these considerations.

Downed Plane Locator:

Resources Aerobird, Sky Scooter Pro

Here is an internet site that sells the Aerobird. They also have a
link for a video of the plane flying:
http://www.parkflyers.com/html/aerobird.html



As I said, my alternative plane was the Sky Scooter Pro. It had been about
$260 RTF, but they recently released the Sky Scooter Pro 2 at about $160 so
you might want to give it serious consideration.
http://www.hitecrcd.com/Funtec/Pro2.htm

Videos
http://www.hitecrcd.com/Funtec/videos.htm

So, that's my evaluation of the Aerobird and why I purchased it. I fly as
often as I can. I have about 50 flights on my plane since the end of March.
I am fully self taught. At this point I am just loving it. My friend has a
Wingo and liked flying my Aerobird so much he bought one too.

Well i can say i have droped a lot of money in to trainer planes and have crashed every time i try to fly them. I built the frist two planes i had thay where 40 size trainers with nitro engines nice planes Until the found the ground I never had anyone to help me with the building of the planes or the flying so after three badly damage planes i gave up Now two years later i got the bug again so i went to the LHS and got a Firebird Outlaw I thought if i kill this one i wont be out of much money And maybe I will have more than one chance to learn how to fly. Well the first time i went out with it I made a good 5 min flite and the plane was still in one piece The best 49.95 i ever spent . So if you dont know how to fly and dont have anyone to help you dont drop a lot in it to start with You mite end up like i was the frist time i tryed. out of a lot of money and still dont know how to fly. The small slow flyers will help you learn and you wont go home mad And broke.

rcnut1


Congratulations!

There is nothing like success to help you find the next success.

Electrics are so much easier to deal with, especially when you are new. And since they are quiet you can fly them lots of places that would never allow a glo plane.

I have been flying the Aerobird for 3 months and loving it. I bought an Electrajet ARF for my second plane and hope to start building soon.

The club I joined is primarily a glider club, so I just ordered a Great Planes Spirit, a pure glider.

I hope you have continued success and are able to progress along what ever path appearls to you.

Ed

Thanks Ed i took the plane out today to fly and just about dark i was making some last min runs and found a tree. well the plane is still stuck in the tree As for now i will have to get a rope and try to get on the lim that the plane is on and shake it out Hopfully it is not hurt i broke the motor mounts on it last week when i ran it end to a tree lim. The plane dont turn real fast and i have a heck of a time missing trees with it LOL well it will get better i hope I think i am going to look at some better park flyers. I am trying to sell one of my RC trucks to help pay for a nicer plane So maybe i will have a new one soon Again thanks George Thomas Manchester GA

Depending on how high up the plane is here are some tips.

8 ounce sinker on the end of some light line. You can toss it pretty high, then let the sinker down and pull up some heavy rope to shake the tree.

Spinning rod with sinker. An underhand or overhand cast can get some REALLY high spots.

Find someone who likes to climb trees.

Good luck getting your plane down. At least you know where it is.

Well i got the plane back out of the tree today and it dont have any damage that i can see and seem to fly ok. I did not fly it long today after i got it back took it out and made one pass with it and all was good. Thanks for the info and have fun Flying

One of the problems you can run into with trees that reach out and grab planes is sometimes you can't see where it went.

Or, if you fly near tall grass or thick woods and the like. You can see where the plane went down and still have trouble finding it.

I lost a plane recently. Then I learned about plane locators that emit a sound to help you find your plane in the woods, corn field, back yards, top of houses, or whatever is near your flying field.

Here is a review of an Emergency Locator Beacon that illustrates its value (this site is somewhat unreliable)
http://webhome.idirect.com/~arrowmfg...s/elb-revi.htm

Here are examples of locators for 72 MHZ flight systems.
Postings I have read say you can hear them for about 50-100 feet. Some have internal batteries, others don't work if the the flight battery becomes disconnected.
http://www.hobbico.com/accys/hcap0335.html
http://www.rcelectronics.bravepages.com/Locator.html
http://www.customelectronics.co.uk/lma.htm

For really long distances - measured in miles
http://www.texastimers.com/helpful_h.../wal_cover.htm

For some of the low cost, ready to fly planes, like the Firebird, e-gull, or my Aerobird, these locators are either too expensive or there is no place to plug them. I found an answer. I ordered
a pair of these: http://www.keyringer.com

Works great on my Aerobird.

They look like a small clicker for your car door locks. You click one of a pair which sends out a chirp that the second one hears and answers. I tested them to about 150 feet. Here are photos of a test mount on an Aerobird. I typically put it on top of the wing under the rubberbands.
http://www.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=...21b33b641c4516

I am surprised no one suggested the Dandy from Mountain Models This plane comes as a standard 3 channel that is slow and very easy to fly for the beginner and when you are ready for a little advancement you can get a sport wing for it for some aileron training. Even though it is balsa, it is pretty tough and very easy to build. and its 2 planes in one

I second that, I am just about to order one for myself, One of my flying friends has one and said he wasn't bringing it out anymore when we are at the field as everybody else takes turns flying it and by the time he gets it back the batteries are all drained and it's time to go home.
Now all i have to do is find another secret field, He He.