Back in the day, we used to build balsa wood airplanes and hand line fly them. We'd cut, sand, straight pin and glue the perforated wood kits pieces together a top of the outlined templates. I recall we'd put wax paper on top of the paper templates so when the pins were pulled, the sub-assembly would just pop off the templates ready for final assembly, wet paper skinning the ribbed wings and fuel proof painted with dope........A lot of FUN my Dad passed to me when I was maybe 8 yrs olds........ We used the infamous Nitro fueled Cox engines, .049, .049 Golden Bee and the like, hook up a start battery to the ole glow plug and finger start these things (forward rotation hopefully if it didn't back fire, smack your finger and run backwards). We'd hand control line fly them for hours, we never had enough extra money to install the RC servo's and buy a radio but, had a ton of fun flying at any rate ........................Fast Forward.
Drones!! Yah yah, "grrrr, grumble grumble!!" So aside from all the irresponsible people that exist in all walks of life doing all kinds of dumb things (you know, driving boats over others in boats, drinking and driving at 1000 MPH going wrong way on our interstates, shooting up our kids at our schools and flying commercial 747's jets full of families while high on coke), these things are out of this world fun to fly!!
To a old kid who cut his teeth building and loved flying balsa wood model airplanes, these higher end drones (not the Wal-Mart type toy drones) of today with all of the computer controlled flight stuff, GPS navigation and images stabilizing controls and real time displays are yesterdays RC planes on mega steroids.
And funny thing is, actually drones (most if not all, non-toy type) of today's era are much safer then yesterday's flying RC models with all their built in real time FAA safe fly stuff such as no fly zones alerts/warning/shut downs, obstacle avoidance sensors and GPS/vision guided auto fly home features that weren't even possible in the RC planes of yesterday.
So yeah, if ya have a chance and loved flying those things we did and might have hand built as I did in the past and are still a bit of a kid at heart, do ignore the BS stigma due to a few bad apples in the bunch and get one!! If not just to enjoy flying again, which btw some fly so wonderfully easy but, get one for taking beautiful pictures, video's while on vacation and the like.
And/or for perhaps gathering otherwise more difficult real time look ahead info on like potential hunting, camping, driving area's and terrain's, fishing area's potentials, roof inspection, back 40 surveillance/quick flood damage assessments/hazards, property wide Insurance policy yearly snap shots, 4000 acre dairy farm cow counting/wellness checks, wind mill inspection, wolf reporting, crop circle monitoring, what's over that next ridge look ahead, saving a life or two, limitless possibilities..........They are, IMO, a truly wonderful advanced tool (not a toy, not mine anyway) and a pinnacle of today's technologies brought together to do something not even possible once upon a time and not so long ago either. And unlike the commercial aspect and introduction of the TV for example, they're definitely not a evil demon seed brain washing tool made to take over mankind and manipulate his free thoughts and will but, I'm hooked none the less and was long before these ever came about
BTW, I have and fly the DJI Mavic Pro Platinum, DJI Spark and pre-ordered a Oori for my office fun and just ordered a DJI Mavic Airlane:
More Air info, these really do fly this well FWIW
I remember my Dad buying me one of those planes that flew with a string. If I had to guess, it was around 1962. We just flew it around and around in a circle. It had a Cox engine.Back in the day, we used to build balsa wood airplanes and hand line fly them. We'd cut, sand, straight pin and glue the perforated wood kits pieces together a top of the outlined templates. I recall we'd put wax paper on top of the paper templates so when the pins were pulled, the sub-assembly would just pop off the templates ready for final assembly, wet paper skinning the ribbed wings and fuel proof painted with dope........A lot of FUN my Dad passed to me when I was maybe 8 yrs olds........ We used the infamous Nitro fueled Cox engines, .049, .049 Golden Bee and the like, hook up a start battery to the ole glow plug and finger start these things (forward rotation hopefully if it didn't back fire, smack your finger and run backwards). We'd hand control line fly them for hours, we never had enough extra money to install the RC servo's and buy a radio but, had a ton of fun flying at any rate ........................Fast Forward.
Drones!! Yah yah, "grrrr, grumble grumble!!" So aside from all the irresponsible people that exist in all walks of life doing all kinds of dumb things (you know, driving boats over others in boats, drinking and driving at 1000 MPH going wrong way on our interstates, shooting up our kids at our schools and flying commercial 747's jets full of families while high on coke), these things are out of this world fun to fly!!
To a old kid who cut his teeth building and loved flying balsa wood model airplanes, these higher end drones (not the Wal-Mart type toy drones) of today with all of the computer controlled flight stuff, GPS navigation and images stabilizing controls and real time displays are yesterdays RC planes on mega steroids.
And funny thing is, actually drones (most if not all, non-toy type) of today's era are much safer then yesterday's flying RC models with all their built in real time FAA safe fly stuff such as no fly zones alerts/warning/shut downs, obstacle avoidance sensors and GPS/vision guided auto fly home features that weren't even possible in the RC planes of yesterday.
So yeah, if ya have a chance and loved flying those things we did and might have hand built as I did in the past and are still a bit of a kid at heart, do ignore the BS stigma due to a few bad apples in the bunch and get one!! If not just to enjoy flying again, which btw some fly so wonderfully easy but, get one for taking beautiful pictures, video's while on vacation and the like.
And/or for perhaps gathering otherwise more difficult real time look ahead info on like potential hunting, camping, driving area's and terrain's, fishing area's potentials, roof inspection, back 40 surveillance/quick flood damage assessments/hazards, property wide Insurance policy yearly snap shots, 4000 acre dairy farm cow counting/wellness checks, wind mill inspection, wolf reporting, crop circle monitoring, what's over that next ridge look ahead, saving a life or two, limitless possibilities..........They are, IMO, a truly wonderful advanced tool (not a toy, not mine anyway) and a pinnacle of today's technologies brought together to do something not even possible once upon a time and not so long ago either. And unlike the commercial aspect and introduction of the TV for example, they're definitely not a evil demon seed brain washing tool made to take over mankind and manipulate his free thoughts and will but, I'm hooked none the less and was long before these ever came about
BTW, I have and fly the DJI Mavic Pro Platinum, DJI Spark and pre-ordered a Oori for my office fun and just ordered a DJI Mavic Air
More Air info, these really do fly this well FWIW
Oh yes model rockets and RC planes was my two main hobbies up until my two son learned to fly them. Then after a few years we drifted way from them because securing a decent field to fly was getting harder to get and keep.
So cool. I miss being in that biz.
Heh heh... yep, it's like that. When I was on a deep space probe project, it was about 45 minutes one-way light time, 90 minutes round trip, to the spacecraft.
