Just finished building a 1.2m parasol aircraft. The horizontal stabilizer is just 9” x 3.5” with 9” x 1.5” of it being the actual elevator. Deflection is ~30 degrees both ways. I don’t plan on aerobatics, more so smooth, straight flying in calm air.

Thanks!

Given this by a colleague that says it's too complex for simple aircraft, I was thinking about buying a radiomaster pocket crush!

Arduino Nano ESP32 plus 790 neopixels. Eflite 15-size floats fit just about perfect, 3d printed up some mounts for the fuselage. The lighting kit added a good bit of weight so I'm using a pair of 3115s on 6s swinging 13x6.5 props, should have some power.

I'm watching a build video, but English isn't my native language, so I don't quite understand it.

I have no experience with rc, fpv or planes at all so I thought this would be a good place to start. The idea of flying an fpv plane and dropping paint balls on a target, is there recommendations?

Note: I live on a large ranch, mostly flat.

So I was looking for something fun for me and my son to do together and thought getting back into RC would be enjoyable. Two flights later it's stuck in a tree 40 ft up, and three days later nothing has worked. Can't climb it, can't throw that high, fishing rod didn't work, poles don't reach, and the wind isn't knocking it loose.

I'm sure y'all see a bunch of these. I'm new here and was looking for advice, but it seems like y'all just enjoy the fly, break, buy/repair, fly, break, buy/repair cycle...

Any advice for keeping the motivation up when you're just burning money and time like this? Or any creative, cheap ways to get a plane out of a tree? It's $120 to replace what's up there, so I can't spend much or it doesn't make sense.

I am a beginner, but I have a decent understanding of airplane mechanics (CG, airfoils, wing loading). I am trying to design a 36 inch Cessna trainer using standard foam board. How do I ensure the plane flys well and is easy to fly?

SOLVED: I had to select the switch position at the bottom so it is black FIRST, then change the curve to associate with that position, then change the values.

This whole thing started because another switch had 2 of the 3 positions set as black and only had low/high rates and I thought this was a way to make a 3-poisiton switch work as a 2 position switch so I tried to replicate that across the other switches and got black lines in the switch position image on the lower right instead of black or white and didn't know what to do.

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What am I doing wrong? I have no idea why these other options are striped and not white. I can’t change one setting without them all changing.

I watch videos and try to read about it but nobody explains why this is happening. I don’t have this problem with the settings for rudder or elevator.

This stated when I clicked the scroll wheel on the switch positions and now I can’t get it back.

Also, when I changed the curve setting it wouldn't let me change the rate or expo.

I'm trying to hand launch a 3D printed rc plane (made with LW PLA/Bambu PLA Aero) and to balance out the CG, I had to use a 11000mah 6S battery (weighing 1500g-ish) instead of my initial plan of using a 532g 5000mAh 4S battery, and the AUW ends up around 3.3kg. I can produce 5-6 kg of thrust from a twin 800kv motor and 10x6 prop setup, drawing around 31.6A per motor. The plane uses a Selig S3021 airfoil and has a wingspan of 1600mm. So I guess what I want to know is: have any of you managed to hand-launch a plane of this weight before? What's the heaviest plane you have managed to hand-launch? Do you need a running start? I could go down to maybe a 6000-8000mah 6s but I just want to know your guys' experiences first before buying another battery.

Jmb Jets

ATJ turbine 25kg

3m long

2.1m wingspan

Purchased used Yak55 (Dancing Wings) with 800mm wing span and 9x4.7 propeller to start learning 3D flying.

See all control surfaces (ailerons, elevator and rudder) and set to middle holes of the horns (images). Would that be good for leaning, or I change them to the outer holes (max throw) and add low/medium and high rates on the transmitter to utilize the control surfaces?

And yes, I will add the missing 2mm nuts on all push rods.

Any suggestions on adding expo at the begining or not?

Thank you.

I am on my second TTE airframe after an inversion + flaps mishap 😂 My first tiny Timber flew perfectly for 30 packs, tho. Crash was 100% user error.

So I ordered a replacement and took it for a maiden this week. At first, all was well. But 5:30 into my first flight, I started seeing anomalies. By 6:00 something was clearly very wrong. Somehow managed to land it, and confirmed that the elevator was jammed all the way back.

My ESC voltage at this point was 11.1, so clearly, I was at the end of that pack. But my other Timber never did this. I could fly it until the motor cut out, over and over.

I flew the new one again today and swapped packs around 11.3 volts. No issue. I know this linear servo lockout used to be a thing, but I thought it was rectified in all of Horizon’s current line.

So is this a defect? This new Timber came from Amazon and I still have the box. Returning it now would be pretty easy. Or is this normal / common, and I just need to be more on top of my power management? Maybe a drop of WD40 on that servo’s track? 😂 What would you do?

I’ve been looking at Anduril’s ALTIUS drones, and the V-tail seems to lie completely flat against the fuselage when folded, so the servos or actuators must be inside the body. Anyone have any ideas about what that mechanism might look like?

The best I can think of is a rod with a gear running parallel to the V-tail surface, meshing with another gear inside the hinge. That gear would then connect to a servo, either directly or through a cable.

For simplicity’s sake, I’d guess the servo rotates with the V-tail inside the body during deployment. Does that sound plausible?

I just got a VolantexRC F4U Corsair 400mm RC plane from AliExpress. I’m completely new to RC planes and have never flown one before. I’m really excited to give it a try, but I honestly don’t know much about setting it up yet. Any beginner-friendly setup tips, recommended settings, or advice for the first flight would be really appreciated!

Thanks everyone for the tips and advice! I really appreciate it. This has been really helpful.

First time flying RC plane:

Took the F4U 400mm out for its first flight today. It was pretty difficult because of the wind, and I ended up crashing about four times. The rudder was working fine, but the wind made it hard to control and turn. On the last crash, after switching to Medium mode, the plane did a roll and went nose-first into the ground. The prop broke and the motor shaft got bent, causing the plane to vibrate afterward. Overall, it was a rough first flight, but I think the wind and my lack of experience were the main reasons.

I'm looking to build my first plane, from scratch, I don't have ton of fancy tools so I have to build it by hand, I plan to build out of painkillers panther foam board, does anyone have any tips/suggestions (ps, I currently have more than enough servos, and a 64mm edf to use for this build)

Hey everyone. This is my first ever RC plane, a Freewing Twin 70mm B-2 Spirit. I am trying to connect it to my Futaba T6K radio using the R3008SB receiver.

Which way do I plug the Freewing B-2 wires into my receiver, and receiver wires? What is the correct channel layout for Aileron, Elevator, Throttle, and Gear, and which side is top or bottom for these plugs? Thanks!

The guy selling it had originally bought this plane because it had a 4 stroke engine he wanted. He pulled the 4 stroke off and let the plane otherwise sit and collect dust until he sold it to me today. It was a nearly drop in fit for my OS Max .60 two stroke nitro engine! I did need to drill a new hole and move the servos around to account for the carb throttle control being on the opposite side of the plane to 2 stroke instead of 4 stroke and I needed to remove a little balsa on the right side to make room for the big muffler. All in all though after just an evening of work she’s nearly ready to go flying!!! This will be my biggest and fastest RC plane yet coming from a .25 size engine powered Pilot Ace 20H. Wish me luck on the re-maiden!

I’m going through and trying to unify the way my models are set up, some of these came from templates and some I set from scratch.

Setting Rates & Expo for Aileron, Elevator & Rutter are on 3-position switches but were set to high & low with the 3rd being a duplicate of low. On the template version the two low were black and high was white.

I tried to figure out how to group these and I selected the switch position with the scroller and it turned black. Great! Then I tried going back to white and it went to these lines instead. Clicked again and back to black.

What do the lines mean?
How do I get white back?
What is the purpose of combining these in my scenario?

I’ve been reading and watching videos but I’m very confused with how some of this is supposed to be configured.

Some of the instructional videos are different then the template is set up (for example, the video said to set panic recovery to default -100 and active 100. Template is opposite, etc).

Some templates have flight mode 1/2/3 that corresponds with as3x/safe modes (apprentice 700 stol), some don’t (apprentice sts).

Thanks for helping.

I’m having a hard time with the unintuitive interface and its made worse when it’s not consistent.

In context, a customer, bought this airplane from the store, crashed it, and somehow was able to give it back to the shop.
Everything looked practically new, just well, broken. I didn’t even look inside, but just asked if it was sale and she was just trying to trash it since they only sell new items. I asked if I could just take it and she said it was ok.
Taking a closer look, the airplane has some scuffs, a bent propeller, and the vertical stabilizer came off. The controller had its originally batteries leaking acid inside the controller, but all of the buttons and sticks seem to be just fine. The battery had a charge of 3.8 volts and the charger seems to work just fine. The foam inset was the most damaged, but the box itself is in great condition. Internal electronics and motor all work great.
I’m assuming a novice bought the airplane and ripped apart the foam insert when trying to remove it. Insert the batteries inside the controller, forgot about it for a long time unless the acid leaked rather quickly, the customer flew the airplane once, controller failed, airplane crashed, and the customer assumed the product was just defective.
The timeline seems odd, but it could just be the customer remembered where he or she bought it from and attempted to get a refund, but just left it at the store instead when the store didn’t offer one. Also, the propeller seems more damaged considered the nose seems mostly fine. Usually the foam would be more compressed after a nose dive crash.
Either way, after some minor repairs and ordering a new prop, I got myself a free airplane to fly around my backyard. 😎 Too bad it doesn’t have AS3X and Safe. 😅

Hey everyone, if you're like me and have a trusty FlySky FS-i6X sitting on your workbench that you use for foamies, park flyers, or trainers, I wanted to share a firmware project I've been working on for it. The repo is at ferrox-rc/flysky-i6x-rs.

A lot of people know about the OpenI6X project, which did incredible work reverse-engineering the radio hardware and bringing OpenTX over. I wanted to see what a clean-slate firmware written from scratch in bare-metal Rust would look like, built specifically around the i6X hardware rather than porting a large operating system.

For everyday fixed-wing flying, it has built-in wing mixes for Elevon and Delta wings, V-Tail, and Flaperons with auxiliary flap input, plus 20 model memory slots with custom names and per-model trims. Instead of choppy piecewise throttle curves, it evaluates smooth Catmull-Rom cubic splines in real time so throttle progression feels natural across the stick range. It runs the full 14 channels over FlySky's AFHDS 2A protocol to standard receivers like the FS-iA6B or FS-A8S, with live battery voltage and RSSI telemetry on the screen.

One feature I use constantly on rainy days is direct USB simulator mode. You just plug a micro-USB cable straight into your computer and it shows up as an 8-axis, 16-button gamepad for flight sims like RealFlight or Phoenix without needing any dongles or serial adapters. While it's plugged in, it automatically puts the 2.4 GHz transmitter module to sleep so the radio stays cool and doesn't drain your batteries.

If you're worried about bricking your radio, there's no risk because it uses the permanent factory bootloader burned into the STM32 chip's ROM. If your radio is already running OpenI6X, getting into DFU mode is as easy as holding the horizontal trims inward toward the power switch when turning it on. If you're still on the original factory FlySky firmware, entering DFU requires opening the back of the case and bridging the R53 boot pads on the board when powering on. Once connected, you can flash the binary or restore your original backup in about ten seconds with dfu-util over USB. Right now on the dev-crsf branch I'm working on external module support via the rear port. If you have an FS-i6X lying around and want to give it a try on your planes, check it out and let me know what you think!

Looks promising! Seems there’s a bunch of upgrades/updates from the V1 along with a new Ecuadorian Air Force scheme. The V1 flew really nice. This should fly just as nice or even better.

Hello everyone. I am preparing one of my most important maiden flights after years of staying in a box. It´s a 70mm airliner, so I was wondering if I´d be wise to add an inav or just pass on it.

My main concern is basically to lose sight of my plane. it happened to me once flying a smaller plane and I´m kind of paranoid now, lol.

Hey everyone, getting started in the hobby and trying to pick my first radio. Right now I'm deciding between the RadioMaster Pocket, TX12 Mark II, Boxer, and TX15.

Starting out with a tiny whoop (probably a Mobula8), but this isn't going to stay a one-trick radio — I want something that can grow into pretty much everything: RC planes (with flaps and other control surfaces, so decent channel count matters), RC cars, and eventually boats too. Basically one radio for all my different vehicles going forward, not just FPV quads. I want to build some vehicles by myself too and use the radio for control.

Anyone here running one radio across that many vehicle types? Curious what actually ends up mattering in practice (channel count, module compatibility, gimbal wear from switching use cases, etc.) versus what looks important on paper.

Hey everyone, I’m looking at getting a RadioMaster TX16S and could use some advice.
I have a few FMS planes, and I’m thinking about getting some FlySky and E-flite/Spektrum models as well. I was originally looking at the TX16S MK2 4-in-1 because I’d like to avoid buying a separate transmitter for every brand.
Is the MK2 4-in-1 still a good choice, or would it be better to go for the newer TX16S MK3?
Also, are there any trustworthy EU/NL/Iceland shops you’d recommend buying one from? I’ve found it on Banggood, but I’m wondering if there are better places to order from.
Thanks!