Hi all,
I am returning to the hobby after 20+ years of absence, and it's great to see some of the advancements that have been made to make flying more accessible, both on the technology side (digital radios, electric motors, epo foam, etc.), and also on the community side with forums like this one and the great people at Flite Test who are passionate about teaching people to fly. One of the first resources I found was FT, and after watching a bunch of videos and reading a lot of forums, I decided to give it a go as a way to get my "air legs" back.
I ordered a couple kits and a power pack and some other scratch building supplies from FT a few days ago. However, due to a rainy weekend, I decided to build a simple "Mini Speedster" from scratch yesterday with my 3 year old son while we wait for those to arrive. Went down to the Dollar Tree and picked up a foam board, printed out the 8 sheets of paper, and dived right in. ~6 hours later (hey... I have two small kids), we were tossing it around the house. I don't have a motor yet so I taped the rudder and elevator closed and added 4 dead AAA batteries to the power pack housing as ballast. I also added a fake propeller from a broken balsa fling glider (mostly to make my son happy).
For less than $2 of materials, it was a great project and flies better than any freeflight hand glider I've every seen. Plus my son got really into it, which is the best part. Looking forward to cultivating his aerospace interest in the years to come.
I am returning to the hobby after 20+ years of absence, and it's great to see some of the advancements that have been made to make flying more accessible, both on the technology side (digital radios, electric motors, epo foam, etc.), and also on the community side with forums like this one and the great people at Flite Test who are passionate about teaching people to fly. One of the first resources I found was FT, and after watching a bunch of videos and reading a lot of forums, I decided to give it a go as a way to get my "air legs" back.
I ordered a couple kits and a power pack and some other scratch building supplies from FT a few days ago. However, due to a rainy weekend, I decided to build a simple "Mini Speedster" from scratch yesterday with my 3 year old son while we wait for those to arrive. Went down to the Dollar Tree and picked up a foam board, printed out the 8 sheets of paper, and dived right in. ~6 hours later (hey... I have two small kids), we were tossing it around the house. I don't have a motor yet so I taped the rudder and elevator closed and added 4 dead AAA batteries to the power pack housing as ballast. I also added a fake propeller from a broken balsa fling glider (mostly to make my son happy).
For less than $2 of materials, it was a great project and flies better than any freeflight hand glider I've every seen. Plus my son got really into it, which is the best part. Looking forward to cultivating his aerospace interest in the years to come.
