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mark_l_watson 10 hours ago [-]
Awesome. I fly very small remote controlled airplanes and a tiny drone. I am a bit nearsighted and I fly my airplanes and drone relatively close to where I stand (10 to 75 feet). A friend flys a few large RCs, but I don’t think that size matters for having fun. I live in the mountains in Central Arizona, and I like to hit the flying fields just as the sun is starting to rise in the morning - beautiful time to fly.
BTW, 60 years ago my father and I used to spend a lot of time building our RCs. To be honest, now I buy incredibly inexpensive planes from China.
JKCalhoun 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I think I lean toward simplicity as well. I would be way too anxious trying to fly that work of art the guy built. I am glad someone out there does it though—it's a joy to watch.
That "almost clipped that tree" and hitting the wing on the tree on the ground gave me heart palpitations.
mastazi 9 hours ago [-]
Those RC glider videos are so beautiful, thank you for the link
jacquesm 8 hours ago [-]
I built a glider and flew it exactly once because I was too scared of crashing it after all the time that went into built it. The whole RC industry has made massive leaps, the first time I saw a modern radio I thought I'd received an empty bag...
phyzix5761 11 hours ago [-]
My first thought was, "You could probably fit a couple of toddlers in there with cute little pilot uniforms."
palmotea 8 hours ago [-]
When do they start passenger service?
gosub100 11 hours ago [-]
A bunch of mice to simulate passengers.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
Ok, who chewed through the rudder control line? No cheese for you!
Ecco 12 hours ago [-]
It sounds like it's electric powered. As much as I love brushless motors, I think a model of that scale and quality would have deserved actual jet engines.
ncrc74 11 hours ago [-]
Tyler Perry owns the airplane and the property. He has said that he does not fly turbines due to the fire risk in a crash. His property is surrounded by forest. If he were to cause a forest fire, the negative publicity could have a major impact on his career.
jcims 11 hours ago [-]
That property is gorgeous and Tyler pulls out all the stops for his builds. That channel (Ramy RC) has quite a few of them.
bombcar 6 hours ago [-]
The closeness of the trees to the runway kept giving me extreme pucker ...
gosub100 11 hours ago [-]
Thank you for inadvertently answering a question I had, which was who owned that estate.
I'll preempt future comments that lithium batteries can catch fire too. I agree with that statement but still think the risk is mitigated by not going with gasoline fuels.
JKCalhoun 10 hours ago [-]
If it had been gas-powered motors, I would have agreed with you. The electrics sound close enough to my ear like actual jet engines though.
ajross 10 hours ago [-]
RC-scale tiny turbines are sort of a boondoggle. They are loud, dangerous, and quite frankly reliability disasters. Expected component lifetimes are in the hundreds of hours, most folks overhaul them every 20-50 hours of use, and they fail in the air with shocking regularity (just check youtube).
It's one of those "impressive that it works at all" kind of things. If that's what you want to see in the air, then do it. If you want to watch your one-off custom plane that represents hundreds or thousands of hours of labor fly, you push it with a fan.
jacquesm 7 hours ago [-]
There is an actual airplane (multi engine) that uses these:
Is that a physics thing, or just jet engines are hard and RC budgets aren't very big?
dijit 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder if it's not a: "maintaining this kind of engine is a heck-of-a-lot of work and is why there are so many aviation regulations and the reason engine overhauls are forced and cost millions-of-dollars" kind of thing.
lstodd 8 hours ago [-]
Mostly physics. It's hard to do small jets, mostly because small things get too heat-stressed
I sorta watched a guy trying to build a hoverboard out of 50-kgf jets, it was crazy, hilarious and didn't go anywhere because flying a backpack of kerosene on four totatally unreliable jets ain't much fun in the end. They also cost about $5K each at the time.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
Just yesterday, someone posted a link to a Veritasium video[0] explaining how a jet engine internal temps of 1500°C work when the components have a melting point of 1250°C. I couldn't imagine doing that at a small scale by hobbyists.
Yes, and those small engines might work for a bit, but then they just burn out, this is inevitable.
If you build an A380 like here you sure don't want to use them unless you want to film it burning down spectacularly.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
Sounds perfect for Hollywood practical effects vs boring CG
lstodd 6 hours ago [-]
One can wish.
Besides, thrust control is shit even on their big brothers, on those, it was like throttle down - flameout, throttle up on the other two - flameout, oh crap, thank god we're doing tethered tests.
Gas dynamics on these scales are tricky too. Electric is the way to go for this.
wazoox 11 hours ago [-]
AFAIK the only existing small jet engines for RC planes are much too small for this one.
jcims 11 hours ago [-]
They've been scaling these things up over the past decade. The JetCat P1000 can exceed 200lbs of thrust.
What they really for this kind of build are RC turbofans, which are extremely uncommon. This thing puts out over 300lbs of thrust at full throttle:
There are certainly turbines available that could power the model. He chooses not to.
hybrid_study 8 hours ago [-]
Aprox how much does something like this unit cost?
thebruce87m 8 hours ago [-]
First of all you need a house with a runway…
jeffbee 8 hours ago [-]
It looks like the airstrip is attached to the servants' mansion. In parts of the video you an see the aircraft overflying the main house. It's the Temu Versailles.
dmos62 6 hours ago [-]
> servants' mansion
What makes a person say things like this?
bombcar 7 hours ago [-]
A house with a runway is cheap in some places; I've seen driveways that are marked as private runways in the rural areas.
dylan604 8 hours ago [-]
Definitely falls into the "if you have to ask" category
selectodude 6 hours ago [-]
Apparently the real big ones are like $100k.
qingcharles 8 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't want to imagine, but it's funded by a billionaire, Tyler Perry, so I'm guessing the cost wasn't an issue.
janlaureys 9 hours ago [-]
Been following this channel since the very early days and it's honestly mindblowing the scale and attention to detail of these models.
ambicapter 10 hours ago [-]
I wonder at what point you put in a flight control computer. I could imagine with a plane that size it's easy to put some big forces on it with heavy inputs.
zero_k 9 hours ago [-]
It essentially already has one. Probably only self-levelling, but has some extra programming like delayed flaps, wheel-up sequence (first up the wheels, then close the doors), blackbox feature, etc. Likely using a version of Ardupilot [1] that's already in use by everyone. Maybe INav [2], but I'd wager on the former. There's more than one computer in there, too. The receiver is likely double-redundant (2 receivers, each with 2 separate receiver circuits, one 900MHz, the other 2.4GHz). I have planes costing 400 EUR that have dual-bandwidth redundant receivers (costs 40 EUR, a joke).
ELRS (radio), Ardupilot (Flight Controller), EdgeTX (Radio OS), and Mission Control (Ground Station SW) are serious tools used by many in the hobby. Them being open means there's a lot of competition and a lot of features. But also not amazing UX :)
INAV is a hot mess, I would recommend against it unless you like beta testing stuff in flight. They don't really have a good SW development process, which kind of surprised me. Betaflight is good for Quads (it nominally also supports some other vehicle types but it is pretty clear where the focus is) and for fixed wing or more complex or strange vehicles I'd use Arducopter or dRehmFlight.
ambicapter 8 hours ago [-]
> But also not amazing UX :)
This sounds exactly like the sort of business I would want to build :D
richwater 10 hours ago [-]
For anyone not familiar, most of this channel is funded IIRC by Tyler Perry who absolutely loves the RC hobby. You can see his estate in some of the wide shots (especially in the air). He had a custom made RC plane runway and workshop built on the property.
dcrazy 8 hours ago [-]
I assumed this was a case of name collision but no, this really does seem to be the same Tyler Perry who created the Madea movies.
nickmcc 7 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: He builds these with / for the actor Tyler Perry, whom has a hanger and RC airstrip at his home.
MisterTea 7 hours ago [-]
He also learned to fly as in obtaining an actual pilots license to over come the fear of flying.
pants2 8 hours ago [-]
There's definitely some overlap in size between this and some real airplanes
mrweasel 9 hours ago [-]
Would there technically be any issues with remote controlling a real A380?
mikewarot 9 hours ago [-]
Since it's got autopilot, and AutoLand, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, there have been remote controlled full scale airplanes since WW2[1].
BTW, 60 years ago my father and I used to spend a lot of time building our RCs. To be honest, now I buy incredibly inexpensive planes from China.
On the other end of the spectrum is probably this guy's slope soaring videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SlopeRCGliders
I'll preempt future comments that lithium batteries can catch fire too. I agree with that statement but still think the risk is mitigated by not going with gasoline fuels.
It's one of those "impressive that it works at all" kind of things. If that's what you want to see in the air, then do it. If you want to watch your one-off custom plane that represents hundreds or thousands of hours of labor fly, you push it with a fan.
https://pilotweb.aero/aircraft/flight-test-colomban-jet-cri-...
I sorta watched a guy trying to build a hoverboard out of 50-kgf jets, it was crazy, hilarious and didn't go anywhere because flying a backpack of kerosene on four totatally unreliable jets ain't much fun in the end. They also cost about $5K each at the time.
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtxVdC7pBQM
If you build an A380 like here you sure don't want to use them unless you want to film it burning down spectacularly.
Besides, thrust control is shit even on their big brothers, on those, it was like throttle down - flameout, throttle up on the other two - flameout, oh crap, thank god we're doing tethered tests.
Gas dynamics on these scales are tricky too. Electric is the way to go for this.
What they really for this kind of build are RC turbofans, which are extremely uncommon. This thing puts out over 300lbs of thrust at full throttle:
https://www.frankturbine.com/en/FT1500.html
What makes a person say things like this?
ELRS (radio), Ardupilot (Flight Controller), EdgeTX (Radio OS), and Mission Control (Ground Station SW) are serious tools used by many in the hobby. Them being open means there's a lot of competition and a lot of features. But also not amazing UX :)
[1] https://ardupilot.org/ [2] https://inavflight.github.io/
This sounds exactly like the sort of business I would want to build :D
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite