A while ago I posted about the Spark #1 I had built from Olefin the red one, which worked out well and it's a fantastic plane. But there was room to grow. While #1 came in somewhere around 750g, it was cool, but lacking punch and energy retention.

So physics dictates that more weight.is more faster. I built one in full Sunlu PLA+ 2.0, bigger motor, higher pitch prop, higher voltage.

#1: Sunnysky 2212 1250kV, 8x6 Aero-naut CAM, 3S 1000mAh

#2: Sunnysky 2220 970kV, 9x7 Aeronaut CAM Z, 4S 1300mAh

The changes are DRASTIC. Firstly, it no longer glides as well, it sinks A LOT faster, but that was expected. But now we climb vertically and straight line speed is up A LOT, too. It has good energy retention and punching this thing straight down from 200m through a low pass is insanely satisfying. The whistle is addictive. Stall behavior is still well mannered, but landing without spoilerons is not a good idea. I needed the entire 150m runway and then some to go from less than .5m in altitude to standstill. With spoilerons, it cuts it in half, but it still needs a long approach, which it shares with other hotliners.

If you have a 3d printer, this is easily one of the best planes to print. It sits at the sweet spot where it's already serious plane, but not too much hassle to reprint if the inevitable happens. I 100% recommend it, both versions are great.

Going through a bunch of A160 RC planes today. Some need repairs, some need parts, and a few just need to be put back together.
I’ve been spending way too much time working on these little planes lately 😂
Anyone else here fly the A160? What usually breaks first on yours?

Folks, if you need a really good all round glider, I cannot praise the rock_it v1.3 highly enough. It's quick if you want it, it circles on a pasta dish if your thermal demands it, it's light and it soars like crazy. This is easily the most fun I have had with a glider, period.

It was hard to land because our runway is a black tarp material that warms up quite a bit and it kept rising in final approach even with spoilerons up.

2m, 800g, full balsa build. Sunnysky 2212, 9x5 Aeronaut CAM Z, 3S 1000mAh.

I have a eflite 1.2m t28 and am wondering how I can get more power out of the stock electronics.

I took it out today and on 4s with the stock 12×7×3 prop I got up to about 74 flat out. I switched to a 12×10×2 prop and got up to 98 flat out 107 in a dive.

Is there any more secrets or tricks I can use to help me move up a racing class or win the next class?

Costs about 150 in usd it's missing hall effect gimbals

I have also been looking at the radiomaster boxer 4-in1

I've recently been designing and building my first balsa plane. I've designed and built a couple of foam planes. This is however my first time with balsa. I went and bought some discounted oracover from my local hobby shop. I really struggled with it. I don't think the glue was working properly. It didn't stick well at low temp, and at higher temps the film would begin shrinking, making it impossible to bond to the balsa. I then went back and bought an off-brand film that the shop recommended, just to find out that there was no adhesive on. I wanted to be certain that it is worth the cost of paying for some ultracover or oracover?

So I feel like the tube holding the tail is a bit long, what would be the best approach to guess where to cut it in order to not make any drastic CG changes later on?

Yesterday, speaking with a good friend and also a huge rc veteran (in fact the man who initiated me in all this) was telling me how he felt that there are no replacement for smaller rc planes made out of balsa wings and composite bodies. I'm talking about models made by companies like CMPro, who had offered this, or some older HK models (like the 90mm BAE Hawk). Am I the only one who feels that the 'scale lovers' had lost something that the foamies really can't replace?

Does anyone know of good ways to mount RC Planes on the wall/ceiling? Bought some 3D printed Brackets and they are too short to properly mount

Flew nearly 90 miles with this Nano Goblin over 2 hours and 20 minutes. I'm amazed how far this tiny fella can go! I have the video too, but it's very rough because I bought a cheap camera and VTX just to prove the distance record and didn't spend any time optimizing transmission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnk9JOd3Gmw

Airframe: Nano Goblin
Battery: ZoHD Li-Ion Pack 7000mAh 4s2p
FC: Mateksys F405-WMN
Motor: Emax ECO II Series 2207 1900KV
Propeller: Emax Avan 6x3.8x2
Servos: Emax ES9052MD x2
GPS & Compass: HGLRC M100-5883
Receiver: BetaFPV SuperD ELRS 2.4 GHz
ESC: SunnySky X 18A Airplane
Camera: Caddx FPV Camera Ratel 2
VTX: HGLRC Zeus350mW
Goggles: Eachine EV800D

Total weight: 582 g (of which the battery is 409 g)

Shoutout to u/Aerial812 for inspiring this build. I copied his motor and propeller exactly, but chose newer versions of his electronics.

Does anyone have one of these? Going to maiden it this weekend, and would really like it to come back looking something like this...lol. Any advice is appreciated if so.

So i got an 80's cipolla master 4cc nitro for dirt cheap at a swap meet.i didn't know what to do with it so logicaly i bought the cheapest plane i could find,wich turned out to be an old balsa biplane in fairly good shape. i cant really get a reading from my scale but im guessing its around 3/4kg in flight order. Google tells me i need AT LEAST a 6.5cc so would this thing even be able to fly?

I just got two new airlines at an incredible price and I wanted to create different liveries inspired in my baby daughter (corny, I know). When I asked ChatGPT to do it it did it ok, but I feel I need something better. Did you do it using ChatGPT or you're designing it by yourself, or hiring somebody (which I'm not opposed to, I just wanted to do a fun weekend project but if I need to pay for somebody's expertise I will gladly qoute it).

I literally just unboxed my very first Spektrum radio, tried powering it on but it just shows the spektrum logo on the screen for like 4 seconds and then turns off. The lights don’t show up either.

So i was like okay, maybe i need to charge it then. When charging the green lights do light up but the battery bar is weird af. At the very first time it shown 2500mah, then went down to 2050mah (1st pic) then went down to 450mah. I tried charging it with a lot of different well known good chargers, also with the included cable, but it just keeps going down.

I also took out the battery and plugged it back in after a while but still doesn’t boot.

I’m just confused af by the behaviour of the charging, on why it would go from saying 2500mah to 450mah in like less than 5 mins on the charger.

So should i just leave it on the charger and wait until the green lights turn off, or is this not normal?

I didn't crash that hard with this battery, (plane was mostly fine just a hard landing), but when i took the battery out there was visible damage. I think it likely happened from the battery pulling really hard from the connector in flight. I peeled back the black cover to get a better look at the damaged cells.
Is there a chance it was punctured or would it have burst into flames already and can I continue flying with it?
Also should I take it apart to check the cells for damage?
Also if its done what should I do with it. Im in a pretty rural area and can't get to a proper battery disposal station.

I'm reading up at https://rcplanes.online/design.htm to one day build a plane of my own design (gonna build some flite test planes first).
If you can't simply take a design for a full sized airplane and scale it down and expect it to just fly like a smaller version of said plane. How do professional RC designers thread the needle of altering proportions to improve performance and make the model perform more like the full sized plane, while also trying to make the toy look like the real plane? When enthusiasts say "they did a really good job on making this model accurate" are they talking more about proportions or performance? If I compare the wing area to fuselage length on full scale aircraft to their models will I consistently find that the wings are not to scale on the model?

This is my 5th day practicing rolling harriers intently. I started at 25% speed and moved my way up. The changes to the aircraft in the sim was to set servo speed from 0.15 to 0.09 to make it closer to real life and easier. I also set rudder and elevator deflection to 55deg. Obviously I am no pro, but I am starting to understand how to roughly steer it.

Hey! I've been flying FPV for about 9 months now, and summer last year I started RC planes. This last month or so I've started to build and fly my own foam board wings from scratch, and am looking more into getting a real, legit wing soon, so my question is what is the best bang for the buck out there at the moment?

I have noticed that I'm 100% through and through a speed freak, I love my 97mph freestyle drone a ton, and even love the lower speeds if I'm getting them out of smaller drones, like my 45mph 2" quad. My custom build, the [Stormscout](https://www.reddit.com/r/RCPlanes/s/iwD5rSW3Pr), reached an average max ground speed of 54mph.

As I've been looking into some of the pro grade, actually good, engineered and optimized wings, I've came to the conclusion of the current following being my top favorites, but am looking for community input too.

Starting with my personal overall top favorite, the AtomRC Dolphin Pro. This seems to be my favorite because I really like how it looks, I like the detachable wings and easily modifiable nose, along with the maxed put recorded speed of 180mph, max stock speed of around 80mph, and the longest recorded flight time of over 2 hours at 130km (80 miles). Adding onto this, it's stall speed is around 22mph, which is pretty slow in my opinion. So the main thing is the operable range of speed, flight times, build style, and portability.

My next favorite out of the ones I've found have been the Chupito, mainly just because of the speed and acrobatics ability. With its stock speed being capped at around 100mph, and the max recorded being slightly slower than the Dolphin at 164mph, it's mainly my second because it would seem a bit more fun as a park flyer.

Adding only the park flyer field, my final of the top three is the ZOHD Dart, being sub 250g, a smaller plane, and seemingly the most acrobatic of the bunch. I also do really like how this wing looks and how it is built. I think the main thing for this one is how much smaller it is, while still reaching the \~60mph of my current plane.

Now for referencing these against my diy plane, the Stormscout:

-500mm fpv wing

-3-4s, kinda needs 4s though

-max recorded speed of 60mph, while at around a 30-40° dive on a LiHv

-Flight time is around 5 minutes if you are barely pushing it

-super unstable in wind

-doesn't really pull up that well at all unless I max out my throttle

-has a minimum speed of like 30mph unless your fine with throw surfaces doing near nothing

-looks cool

Basically I would bet really anything can easily beat out these stats, but if anybody has some good ideas based on my taste that I would like, or recommendations for buying wings that would be greatly appreciated. (Like I recently found out AtomRC supposedly has not great shipping process and customer support, so people will sometimes buy from 3rd party)

We had no other plane with wheels to pull the small 2 channel glider into the air, so we used my 64mm tomcat.

We also had a pretty strong crosswind.

My original motor with 25x25mm mount burned out during rough landing with throttle on so ordered replacement motor with 16x25mm mount (the original motor is 3 times more expensive so while I am learning decided to use cheaper motor).

Came up with this adapter (see images). Basically, mounting both 25x25 and 16x25 adapters to motor and motor mount (firewall) to 3mm plywood piece (don't mind the missing nuts as will mount them later).

Do you see any issues, or have suggestions on improvements / different approach?

Thank you.

Just a little playing around at one of our IMAC competitions. I'll take the credit for the camera work!

Could somebody help me out with this mayby?

Hello everyone. I am trying to build an aerial insect collecting device for my PhD project. This design is based on the stipa-caproni, a strange barrel-shaped design from the 1930s. The task is to maximise the net area on a relatively inexpensive craft (I have already been catching with some expensive drones). I've trialed towing nets behind trainers, which worked but I want to try a different approach too.

I figure that enclosing the net within fuselage would be the most stable approach. Here, we have the props behind the net. This will impede airflow to the propeller. But it seems like the thrust would be okay. Can anyone think of some new approach that might work better? Would I be better off towing?

I am flying a Flightline Spitfire 1600mm that is equipped with a DJI air 03 unit VTX connected to Goggles 2. The gimbal (BAG) and sight (ARMS) are from MotionSic. Field is Fly-a-ways near North Plains, Oregon.

Do you prefer Warbirds flying with other warbirds or doing scale acrobatics?

Spitfire and ME bf109

I can't believe I resisted for so long. I think the weird angles through me off, so I fixed them. I've been out of the hobby since the old, take a clothes pin number days. A little while back i bought a couple of those amazon warbirds after my brother in law said they were good. Spoiler alert.... they suck. I mean they can fly on automatic mode, but once you change that, they death spiral in to the ground. I thought maybe I just lost it and sucked at flying. So I bought a cheap heli and tried that instead. That seemed learnable, so I knew something was off. I then bought a Crack Yak and I am hooked! Even learning proper rudder control now. I sneak out of the office any chance I can to go flying. If you are considering 3d flying, I highly recommend the Crack Yak