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this guy owns a private SR-71.

how complex do these R/C planes get? That video linked to a bunch of other cool R/C jets, including F-18s, F-16s, and even F-22s! But a lot of these planes in real life depends on computers to maintain control or they'll crash (at least according to the history channel).

Do these R/Cs have little computers inside them too? Or are they flying purely because the thrust ratio to drag/weight is much greater on R/Cs....making them into mini-rockets with wings essentially.....

-feng
 
Feng, I don't know about the planes, but some (if not all) helo's use gyros wired into the radio systems to stabilize them. I once knew a guy that raced an electric 10:1 dirt modified. That type of racing requires power slides while counter steering - hard enough in the real thing, but tougher when you can't feel your way around the turn. Well, this guy got inventive. He put a helo gyro inline with the steering servo. Once he had that working, all he had to do was tell the car which way to go and the car did the rest. He told me that you could watch the front tires twitching and jittering to make corrections all the way around the turns! Of course, once the rest of the guys caught on, they quickly enacted a new "no gyros" rule and informed him that he was no longer welcome at that track!
 
some stuff I've found from youtube has been pretty crazy. like some guy building High Alpha/Angle of Attack-capable foamie, as well as tailless X-36 look-a-like that flies like a dream. how, you ask? three gyros and lots of patience and studying ones mistakes. :icon_lol:
 
The foamie stuff is all power to weight obviously.
They can get really, really complex. But no on board computer help flying it that I know of other than the prementioned gyro stuff.
They have on board computers for some cooling and fuel things but this is only on really high end stuff. I rememeber a guy who had a large scale model of the Flying Wing back in the 80's that was unbelievable. The scale stuff that's out now is truly amazing! It was either this year's or last year's "Top Gun" scale competition winner that really blew my mind.
An F-16 in Thunderbird paint. Other than size and lack of afterburner, can't tell the difference. EVEN UP CLOSE! Amazing detail.
 
Tom Clayton said:
Feng, I don't know about the planes, but some (if not all) helo's use gyros wired into the radio systems to stabilize them. I once knew a guy that raced an electric 10:1 dirt modified. That type of racing requires power slides while counter steering - hard enough in the real thing, but tougher when you can't feel your way around the turn. Well, this guy got inventive. He put a helo gyro inline with the steering servo. Once he had that working, all he had to do was tell the car which way to go and the car did the rest. He told me that you could watch the front tires twitching and jittering to make corrections all the way around the turns! Of course, once the rest of the guys caught on, they quickly enacted a new "no gyros" rule and informed him that he was no longer welcome at that track!
Click to expand...

They've gotten so small and lightweight, I've seen other guys do that on RC cars as well.

Lately, I've seen guys are using the heli gyros to stabilize their high powered rockets these days too, for fin control and even gimbaled engine mounts.

This guy is is building one that is a little different, but has devised a unique gimbal engine mount:

[YOUTUBE]0KDiMu-HlSc[/YOUTUBE]


[YOUTUBE]wQk2z1nT3cU[/YOUTUBE]
 
Tom Clayton said:
Of course, once the rest of the guys caught on, they quickly enacted a new "no gyros" rule and informed him that he was no longer welcome at that track!
Click to expand...

i don't understand why that's wrong. i think innovation should be rewarded. once everyone installs gyros, the playing field is level until someone figures out something else. i thought that's what progress is all about.

the other way, you end up with crap like the way nascar is. incremental changes with very little overall gain. everyone trying to figure out how to successfully cheat/beat the rule book. anytime there is a real inovation it gets squashed. it's not racing. it's high speed advertising.
 
This racing group had a rather uncanny resmeblance to the old NASCAR anyway - it was a tight-knit bunch of "good ole boys" and the guy I knew was an outsider. They didn't like someone else coming in and showing them different way!
 
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