How much Quality do you need for Noobs to fly foam?

[WhatDoesThisButtonDo]

There is a GREAT RC shop in town, they cover it all. Planes, boats, helies, RTF, ARTF, balsa, all the parts you can look at, all the elecs, batts, craft gifts for kids ets and know their stuff. I told them what I was doing and they guided me. I even applied for a part time gig there over the holidays etc so I could learn more (I'm 45), but do not mind doing skut work for the discount.

They advise me to the good motors and metal gear servos (the $12 each ones x 4). For a foam built one, instead of the $2 each ones on eBay. I also have a work college who has built 9 RC planes, and said "All 9 are hanging up in a tree somewhere". I was planning on going the swap-able model type to have two sets of motors, one set of Rx, two sets of ESCs and a bunch of servos to add to various models, but if you lose them all to a tree, what is the point. Noob here.

I understand quality is better, but I figure most of my first models are going to either:
(a) smashed up on the ground (ok if I get the bits back)
(b) lost over the horizon (my fault)
(c) stuck up a tree and still lost, with $200 of bits inside it.

I've built a NutBall as my sacrificial lamb with lots of reinforcement for when it smacks into the ground and flies to bits before I fly a Stork or something else, just the elecs and motors bother me. I don't mind buying props. Spekrum DX7 Tx.

Any advice chaps? -- WhatDoesThisButtonDo

 

[TEAJR66]

Fly the cheap stuff till higher performance becomes a factor. If you don't know the difference or cant perceive an appreciable difference, higher end components are just more money.

 

[Timmy P]

Dude I've been running the cheap $2.49 Turnigy 9gram servos. I crash plane after plane transplanting the same servos. The 30 some servos I have not one has failed on me.. I know I'm stupid lucky but its hard for me to buy the good stuff with there being something else I know wont fail on me.. But on the other hand its good to buy locally when you can.. It helps everyone that way.

 

[airhawk]

fly cheap for your first 3-4 planes then when you need high precision like 3d or high end sport flying then look into getting high you should be able to build a plane for around 45 bucks or so(rx and tx not counted)

 

[Craftydan]

Who says your electronics won't survive?

So long as you stay out of trees (I know, they're SNEAKY, but you choose the field you fly in), most bad crashes result in your option "a" -- a pile of salvageable parts. Fly-aways happen but are surprisingly rare . . . and there are methods for removing planes from trees . . . some more extreme than others.

Would you rather the typically unsalvageable parts (like the airframe) be the most expensive thing in that pile? If there isn't a significant difference in the chance of crashing between two similar performance parts, is there a reason to get the more expensive one?

No and No.

the airframe is the biggest second most-likely unsalvageable part. Props are more likely, but they're a consumable item so it's fair to assume on any flight it's not going to come back.

So build a cheap airframe (hard to beat a DTFB build), load it with reliable but inexpensive gear and keep her away from trees

 

[makattack]

I have a complex relationship with trees. In addition to them providing me with clean air, shade, and something nice to look at, they make me sneeze and scratch my eyes in the Spring, they like to capture and hold onto my planes, and their leaves block my RF transmissions at times.

Here's how resilient a cheapish DTFB plane can be: I had about $200 in electronics in a DTFB FT Blunt Nose Versa Wing -- good question - why put $200 worth of gear in $2 worth of foam? It's fun, that's why! I had a APM (RTFQuads $110 for everything except airspeed sensor) and about $90 in flight electronics including a large 3300mAh 3S battery.

On my second flight of this flying robot, I was tuning it in an autotune mode where it's flight profile is limited/restricted to about 45degs maximum roll/pitch and you have to fly for a long while repeatedly doing full stick rolls and pitches about 20 times in each axis. As you can surmise, it involves a lot of flying back and forth. After getting the roll tuning done, when I went to pitch tuning, I didn't have enough altitude on one of my passes and since the field I was flying at is surrounded by trees, I was horrified when I heard the crunchy sound of a DTFB plane get captured by tree branches. It was high up in the canopy and there was no way I was going to get it down myself.

I saw in the forecast that a storm was coming for later in the evening. After checking on it all day (it was in a field/tree just behind my work office -- that's another point. It's a little embarrassing when this happens in front of a few employees smoking by the rear loading dock. Their comment: "oh wow, it's really stuck up there.") I saw it wasn't coming down.

After work, I went home and waited for the storm to arrive. It arrived with strong winds preceding the rain. As soon as the strong winds came, I went back to work to see if it had fallen down. Unfortunately a heavy downpour started before I could get there. Thankfully, the wind combined with rain did bring it down and it looks like I got there shortly after it came down as it was in the middle of a access road (lightly used after business hours).

Needless to say, the airframe was destroyed beyond repair -- but EVERY single electronic component except the battery is still flying between two more sheets of DTFB in a new FT BN Versa build!