Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since I put anything here! It's been a whirlwind of R/C activity for me. A few challenges and crashes but I still enjoy all this hobby has to offer.

Today is the first day of the Arizona Electric Festival-If you have not attended this event you really need to mark it on your calendar for this year or next. As I was preparing for the event the past week I realized I hardly have ANY planes that I took to it last year ro fly this year. A few are in various states of repair or conversion(Floats!) or I sold them. I only have my PZ F4F Wildcat and CMP L-4 Grasshopper that will actually fly this weekend and it's for sale.

The biggest change is the number of EDF's I have. I did not own a SINGLE EDF last year at this time I have really gotten into them and feel comfortable flying them on a regular basis. I still enjoy scale propeller warbirds like my Kyosho Corsair and K & A OV-10 Bronco that are close to being completed but not enough for the AEF.

That's all for now. I'll try to chime in over the weekend about the AEF and a full rundown afterwards.

Check your Six!
Wyldkrd

It's finally Fall-like weather here in AZ. While I flew all summer it was usually a few hours early in the morning.

A lot has happened R/C-wise in for me in the last several months. I have made a significant transition to EDF's. Yes, I still have prop planes but my EDF collection has grown considerably.

I have two Starmax F-5's both with considerable upgrades including motors, fans and e-tracts.

The Venom 70mm F-86 that has been on sale from Venom on eBay has been a great addition and a good flier with all the bugs worked out of the air retract system.

I acquired a vintage Wattage F-86 and between me and Bolibruch1 have modded it to be brushless 64mm and landing gear.

A SkyAngel 50mm T-45 Red Arrows scheme has been a ton of fun.

Latest plane acquired was the Freewing Su-34 Fullback. Twin 64mm with thrust vectoring and retracts. I real beauty in the air!

Looking forward to the AZ Jet Rally Nov 18-20 and the AZ Electric Festival in January.

I will add more soon and continue with my journey in R/C and life.

Well AEF came and went and I survived with minimal losses. The Rodeo Park has closed and I am missing that venue but have joined Arizona Model Aviators since and been out there already to enjoy. i'm a busy guy right now and fitting R/C in for the next month or so is a challenge. I'm working on my second Master's degree and my Action Research Project is my main focus though the middle of April. I think I'll get a little flying in but I can't devote the time to new projects and refurbishments.

Speaking of which, I have a new Blitzworks R/C F-5E waiting to be assembled. I bought the kit version but have acquired all of the electronics and such to get it going. I opted for the E-flite electric retracts as the stock ones are not know for their reliability.

I also finished some mods to my CMPro T-34, mainly how the battery goes in and the addition of electric retracts on the mains. I still need something for the nose but I will fly it fixed for now.

CMPro L-4 is also ready to get back in the air. Completed LG mods with springs instead of rubberbands and remounted motor and cowl. I used magnets for the cowl.

Kyosho Corsair is near completion. I added a battery door to the top, well I cut one, I have not completed the mod yet. Still need to finish servos and retracts in the wing and mount the cowl.

I have almost a dozen new, mod or refurb projects in the barn. Upcoming is my K & A OV-10 Bronco, Scorpio DO-328, and Simprop SU-31.

I love this hobby, can't wait until I can spend a littl e more time on it!

I was trying to recall the progression of aircraft in my early days of R/C. I know we had a Sig Cub with a Fox .36 and some big .60 size trainer that weighed a ton. There was a blue and white Decathlon with an O.S. .20 and a few other odd balls. There was a Pilot Lake Bucaneer we bought almost finished. I remember that we mounted the engine facing forward, they are usually facing back on the real ones. Not sure what the issue with that was

We languished with these birds until we meet a gentleman by the name of Jack Ramsey. Jack lived in Peoria and had TONS of airplanes. I was in awe and fell in love with one after another. For whatever reason, my parents let me buy one after another to the point we had a dozen planes hanging in our Arizona room (I have pics to prove it!) There was a Byron Pitts with a Quadra, A 1/4 scale Cub and the crown jewel-A Wescraft B-17.

Here is the sad part, I never flew these! I guess I just never got proficient and I think I got into R/C car racing more. These planes hung in our Arizona room for a few years and then we slowly started to sell them off. One by one either as consignment items at R/C Unlimited in Scottsdale or though newspaper ads.

One of the last to go was the Wescraft B-17. This was by far the biggest and most expensive. Sometime during high school or my first go at college we sold it. We had a picture of it hanging up at the hobby store and a guy named Ray Hoffman bought it. I didn't remember this fact for many years. As you may have realized by now, there is more to this story in a future installment...

Remember, Always check your six

I managed to get another bird out of the barn thanks to my Dad. Yes, my Dad still likes to play with airplanes. I'll give him my major crash damage and new ARF's to put together up to a certain point. He'll get it structurally together and servos installed, sometimes the motor/cowl mounted. I usually takeover and finish the radio/power system install and get it ready to fly. Our latest collaboration was a Sapac T-34. It'a cheap foamie kit but looks cool and flies good once it's balanced well. I had one of these that I lost to radio issues a few months back and picked one up at Ultimate hobbies in Orange CA for 30 bucks. It came with a brushed gearbox motor. I had a steerable nosewheel installed and it bumped into this setup. I switched to brushless with a Turnigy 1050kv motor and it should be just right.

I hope to get my Kyosho 40 Corsair further along tonight. I picked this one up on Ebay and drove to somewhere Northeast of LA to get it months ago. It was actually pretty far along and a good candidate for E-conversion. I picked up a Precision Aerobatics Thurst 50 on RCG for a good price to power it. All that is left is installing the aileron servos, canopy, cowl and landing gear.

I'm torn between installing the fixed gear(easy) or the retracts I bought for it(A little more work). Fixed gear results in having it ready for AEF, retracts stretches it out a little...
Decisions, decisions!

Here it is just a few days before the AEF! I am really psyched to for this long weekend. I've been working on planes for the last few weeks, spent Friday night until 1130 getting my T-34 ready to maiden on Saturday. That was successful with a few mods needed to make it a great plane for the event.

I've come a long way in a year that's for sure!

Last year I had a token airforce at the event. While I have been "in" the hobby off and on for 20 years, I had been out for so long it was like starting over. I had a PZ UM Mustang, PZ Decathlon, and some other Decathlon that had Ailerons. I had purchased a Fokker D7 but did not fly it. I had some other plane but I can't remember what it was

Different story this year! Big L-4, Big T-34(for me at least) and my Stinson, AT-802 amongst others.

If your're at AEF, be sure and stop by and say "hi" I look just like my avatar

So, twenty plus years ago my Dad sees some R/C airplanes at the swap meet. He haggles with the guy for a few minutes over price with no agreement and we walk away. We come back about 30 minutes later and they are still there. More haggling and we walk off with a Midwest Strikemaster in the original navy jet markings and a pattern ship that I never figured out what it was Whoever built the Strikemaster sure put a lot of time into it.

That was the beginning of my exposure to R/C. For the next 4 years both planes hung in our workshop. The Strikemaster had an O.S. .30 and the pattern bird had nothing. My Dad came home with an OLD Futaba 5 or 6 channel radio. Each servo had 5 wires and it was on 27mhz. After a few trips to local hobby shops (Exeter and Desert come to mine) to purchase hardware, fuel, etc...we thought we had a plane ready to fly.

We had heard about people flying at Scottsdale Community College so we went there on a Saturday morning and saw planes in the air from the street and followed them via a dirt road. When we got to the "field" there were 6-8 cars and double the number of planes. I was in paradise! We started talking to some of the guys and they looked our plane over. Boy, we had a lot of work to do according to them. The radio was the biggest concern but also how we hooked up controls was an issue. If you didn't know the Strikemaster isn't considered a trainer either, its high wing but resembled a navy jet and we were told it flew like one. We were advised to try something else first.

That really hurt but it didn't end there, that's for sure. More next time...

OK, you may know me from GQF and a few other threads I post on sporadically. So I'm curious what is it that brings you to my blog This is the first entry and I'm not trying to come across as negative, I'm thrilled someone would think of following my exploits. I'm middle of the road when it comes to social media. RCG and Facebook are about it. Doubt I'll ever do the Twitter deal...

This format is not entirely foreign to me. When I worked for America West Airlines I had a text-based information page in our reservation system that is not unlike a blog. The term blog did not exist, we simply called it "infotainment". I did have quite a following. I would nonrev(airline speak for free travel) and when I would check-in at various ticket counters the agents would say: You're GGSHANNON! (GG was the reservation system code to access our information pages).

Moving forward, I will share my experiences with R/C both recent and past. I have been in this hobby off and on for over twenty years so I think I have a lot to offer and still a lot to learn
Shannon "Wyldkrd" Gallagher