Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Emerging RC model airplane technology

Last month I went to a swap meet in Wausau. (I live in Wisconsin)

While there i got rid of some RC model airplanes and acquired some new ones. One was a Telemaster ($125) and the other was a stinger ($35). Both of these are quite large and would have taken me all winter to build. Both had holes in the covering and what I did was take packing tape and patch them. These repairs are a bit unsightly but only affect the aesthetic appearance.

The Telemaster had an old four stroke on it that I cut the mount out with a Saws-All and glued in a box with a sixty sized electric motor. The servos came with it so all I needed to add was a receiver. The stinger did not have a motor and so I will upgrade it like the Telemaster.

For those who are not familiar with how RC modeling works, the pilot stands on the side of a field with a transmitter that has a bunch of switches and two input gimbals (sticks). The transmitter sends a signal to the receiver in the airplane. The receiver takes the commands from the transmitter and sends them down electrical wires to servos which manage the control surfaces and throttle. The control surfaces, i.e. rudder, elevator and airlerons deflect telling the craft which way to move in flight and the throttle is like the gas pedal in a car. So we have a radio signal usually sent of 4.2 Gigahertz that goes from the ground to the airplane conveying the operator's (pilot's) commands.

In the transmitter is a battery that powers the signal to the aircraft. If the battery runs out of charge the airplane crashes. Inside the airplane is another battery that powers the receiver signals to the control surfaces. If that battery runs out of change the airplane crashes.

A modern innovation in recent years is First Person View (FPV). In addition to the above there is a camera mounted on the model. This provides another signal which int this case comes from the airplane and returns to the pilot as video image of what the camera is taking in. No longer is the pilot relying solely on what he sees from the edge of the filed but now has a view like a real airplane pilot would see from inside the cockpit. This signal commonly transmits on 5.8 Gigahertz. If this signal gets fuzzy and goes static, the model crashes.

So it should be evident that Signal Strength is very import in the hobby of Radio Controlled model airplane flying.

To deal with the Loss of a recent development is the Autopilot. If the aircraft loses signal, the this Autopilot is supposed to stabilize the aircraft, climb to a predetermined altitude and return to home, or in most cases the field where it was launched. The way it works is with a GPS that knows the launch point and where the aircraft is above the earth. Using telemetry such as airspeed and altitude a complex algorithm is activated and "Voila!" in a few minutes the model can be seen once more circling overhead... whereupon the relieved pilot can land it using conventional means.

Depending on its sophistication, the autopilot can take the model into the air, fly it to predesignated "Way Points" (usually taken off Google Earth), return it to home and land it. Many of the developments that enabled the development of this amazing capability came from developments in the RC helicopters and later Quadcopter advance in the Hobby. This is certainly the case with the "Stabilization" that now exists and makes flying RC Model Aircraft of all types much easier to learn.

I was a slow learner and it took me several years to learn how to fly an RC Airplane. I won't tell you how many I crashed and I made all the mistakes an aspiring pilot can make, from "Dumb-Thumbing" the input gimbals, to letting the batters run low, to losing orientation, to mistakes in construction and preflight errors. My record with an airplane was twenty flights. Finally I got the hang of it when I purchased a Cessna 150 from Horizon Hobby which had the most advanced stabilization technology installed.

On a windy day flying an RC model airplane can be a handful and flying skills are not easily learned. A strong headwind can cause the pilot to stall on the approach, or a sudden gust can deflect the wing causing bad things to happen. This became self evident yesterday at the flying field.

Like I said earlier I had this Telemaster I had converted to an electric motor. As I flew it the wind was really buffeting, causing it to soar, dip and climb unexpectedly. The airplane is a "Floater" and the turbulence was pushing my remedial skills to the limits. Finally I got it down. "Enough of this," I thought, and went back to my old stand-by, the Cessna 150. There is a switch on this model which activates the Stabilization, which can be deactivated if the pilot wants to fly "Old School." Unbeknownst to me the switch had gotten turned to the "Off" mode in transport. So when I took to the air the Cessna was thrown about and had to be flow in the traditional manner which meant it flew just like the Telemaster. I landed and got the Stabilization to working and took off again. What a difference.....with the stabilization activated the model settled down as the "box" inside started making continuous, small corrections to the control surfaces and the plane started flying like it was a calm day... facing a fifteen mph gusting headwind it landed practically "Hands Off." How cool is that?