New to RC?
Step
One: Find an experienced modeler to help you! I cannot recommend this
critical step strongly enough! If one is not immediately forthcoming in your
life, a trip to the local hobby shop or R/C club field will quickly remedy
this. Most modelers are friendly souls who will be more than happy to show
you the way (they’re thrilled that someone else shares their interest), from
construction to first solo flight and beyond. The hobby shop/ new modeler friend
will help you choose your radio gear, hardware, and supplies to see that your
first model is a success.
If you live in an area where there’s not a lot of apparent modeling activity,
start instead with free-flight (F/F) models. This is actually the best way
to start, for anyone—it teaches the basics of model building and aerodynamics
with little financial investment and without the complexity of radio gear—but
requires quite a bit of real estate as the resulting model is unguided and
simply circles around the sky at the mercy of the elements (which is fascinating
in and of itself!).
Step Two: Learn to be patient. Modeling is a hobby of delayed-gratification
and subtle reward. Are you a licensed pilot? Then it will be even worse! In
the course of my two-thousand hours as an instructor pilot, I found that while
student pilots who had been competent R/C pilots advanced more quickly learning
to fly ‘real’ airplanes, the reverse was not true: my instructor buddies I
taught to fly R/C on weekends had a hard time with it, though they all learned,
if they stuck to it. The point is this: learn to enjoy the process as much
as the result. You will understand the value of this when you first launch,
fly, and land your model solo!
By the way, my position is that the best way to start with model airplanes
is with a glider, not a powered aircraft. By learning to fly playing the sailplane
pilot’s intriguing game (how long/high/far can I fly for free on updrafts?),
you learn to be disciplined and efficient on the controls, plus along the way
learn a quite bit about the behavior of the atmosphere as it affects an aircraft
in flight. Generally speaking, you can fly your glider one of two ways:
1) Thermalling, which is flying on columns of rising, heated air found over
surfaces such as parking lots and plowed fields during the warmer seasons.
The glider is typically launched by a winch-drawn cable or ‘Hi-Start’ (which
is merely a long bungee line) attached to a hook on the glider’s belly. At
the height of the launch, the line falls away and the glider goes hunting for
thermals. You know you’ve hit one when the glider starts climbing with the
fuselage level. Circle within.
2) Sloping, which is flying on the air forced upward by a steady breeze over
a steep (greater than +/- 30 deg.) slope. Simply go to the top of the hill,
launch into the wind, and fly paralleling the top third or so of the slope.
This method is dicier than the one above, as it involves weaving your glider
at low altitude through a bumpy, high-velocity stream of air, but is proportionately
more exciting.
Some sailplanes fly with a low-powered motor to help them launch and get out
of trouble, but in my book that’s cheating!
What is “Printwood” and why do you use
it?
Printwood
is simply wood sheets with the outlines of specialized kit parts (such as ribs,
fuselage formers, etc.) printed on them. The modeler then cuts these parts
out with a #11 X-Acto knife, lightly sands them to match exactly their images
on the kit plans, numbering them for reference with an appropriate writing
utensil if desired. This was the way all model airplane kits were produced
before the advent of die- and laser-cutting.
The advantage of this method is that it is far less expensive. Set-up and tooling
costs for laser and die-cut kits are substantial, which in turn drives the
product cost up. My simpler kits are engineered for a minimum of specialized
parts, relying instead on balsa and spruce stock cut and bent to shape.
By spending an evening freeing these parts from their sheets, you’ve
just cut the price of your kit in half!