I feel that I'm at another critical turning point in the hobby/journey of designing, building, and flying RC aircraft, and that with the experience I have now and the direction I want to head in, it is the perfect time to share my experiences, lessons learned, challenges, etc., as well as some of the random RC related musings, ideas, and future plans I may have, in a fashion similar to how
@mayan and
@basslord1124 have been doing it.
For those who might know nothing about me, I'll give a brief summary. I joined in late 2018 with absolutely no practical experience in RC design, building, and flying(but wanting to do all three), having simply seen a lot of YouTube videos, flown a couple cheap RC planes as a teen. I have also been around full scale aviation to some degree or another for all of my life, so I have some passing knowledge of planes here and there, and had made many fancy paper planes as a kid, but at the time I joined FT, I had forgotten everything I may have ever picked up about aerodynamics, including even the names of different control surfaces and how they worked. All that considered, I came in right from the start wanting to work with my own(rather unconventional) design ideas right off the bat, without having bought a ready to fly trainer, built a kit, built off a plan, or even used a simulator. I'm sure most people who don't know the whole story can guess how that went, so that's why I came here to the forum looking for help.
When I first joined, I was(and still am), not at a great place in my life. I had an awful attitude about my experiences with the hobby up to that point, the learning process, and life in general, though I was desperate for a fulfilling hobby, sense of accomplishment, and creative outlet, and RC seemed like a good thing for all of that. I was stubborn at first, impatient, and desperate to prove myself and jump right into my own designs. Despite my bad attitude and approach, I got nothing but enthusiastic help, constructive criticism, and encouragement here, so much more than I would even have expected, and it softened my attitude a bit. I started listening to some advice, making some compromises(that actually turned out to be shortcuts to my goals rather than detours), used a sim, bough a simple trainer, and actually started to see some success, including with a few of my own designs!
Now, here I am, a few months after my first successful flight with a trainer and some of my first designs earlier this year. I can now reliably record footage and have a YouTube, though I'm still not the best at editing and filming. Since my first successes, which were low aspect 3ch RET planes, I have sort of gone on a stint of obsessively slapping together quick, simple, RET planes, and trying a lot of different low aspect designs, usually quick stuff that takes a single evening to make, like Nutball and Flyer level stuff. I've gotten pretty good at building and flying those Nutbally type planes, and even got a slender delta build to fly well on RET(actually one of my first designs to work), but I've had a bit of trouble trying to design and build more "conventional" types of planes(although I can fly store bought ones like the Champ fine) and in moving out of RET and into 3ch AET(ailerons). I've also definitely hit a wall with the slender delta trying step up to elevons.
Why did I start hitting these walls? Well, I have a way of putting the cart in front of the horse and jumping ahead into stuff, and going my own way before learning all the basics. So far, in balance and with a few compromises, that method has actually been pretty successful in getting me very far very fast, but I'm at a point where I'm going to want to drop back and shore up some holes in my basic knowledge base and methods, some of the "little stuff" I overlooked early on, like not discharging batteries past a certain point or storing them charged past a certain point, and having the tools like battery alarms and a watt meter, for example, as well as some basic aerodynamic related stuff. I'd like to avoid getting stuck in a rut and still only be able to build and fly low aspect RET planes with no air foil(as awesome as those are!) a year from now, while a lot of other people who took a more conventional approach are already building and flying much more ambitious and complex planes.
Anyway, long spiel over, thanks for listening. Time to set a few goals and objectives for moving forward.
