Too bad he ruined a really cool deed with his horribly foul mouth. To bad for him.

For all my flying friends in the northern hemisphere winter weather......5mins from home, I went for a fly over the beach.

I went scouting for new places today. Found a new field not as boggy or wet. AND got access to an old disused runway that's been closed for as long as I've been alive. So that'll be good for my planes with wheels. Hopefully get to try it out tomorrow or Wednesday after that weather looks grim -4 and -5 brrrrrr that's cold for us

I'm going flying......

with a sharper looking JPower P-38 Lightning tomorrow!!!!

How?

Because I stopped off at the local Home Depot today with the battery-hatch in-hand, and let them color match it to a $2.95 jug of 'sample' paint (turns out that their 'sample' size is enough paint to do an entire RC airframe!).

You can see from the hatch picture, the upper red square was me trying to match with whatever on-hand green I had to touch it up. Ugh! Not even close. But the lower half of the second (lower) red square is the paint that they mixed up for me. It does turn out to be more of a matte finish than stock, but other than that, it's a near perfect match!

As you can see from the attached "before" pic taken today after flying my loved but battered $40 RC flea market special, it is certainly long overdue for some paint-based TLC.

So why make this (potentially off-topic?) post here?

To encourage all of you to go to the local Handy Dandy's, Lowe's, or Home Depot near you that has color matching services, and get some touch-up really cheap for your favorite model! We live in an amazing time to be able to enjoy this hobby -- high energy Lipo batteries, brushless motors and controllers, 3-axis gyros, high tech manufacturing, low labor costs in China, high tech radio gear, etc, etc, etc, and now you can add to that the ability to instantly and perfectly match even the most arcane color (even if it's been weathered!) on your model, and get it for less than 5 bucks per color!

Do it!

For all my flying friends in the northern hemisphere winter weather......5mins from home, I went for a fly over the beach.

Nobody likes you, Grazer. You can just take all your warm weather, sandy beaches, and bikini-clad women and go... Somewhere else, dammit

Really, though, that looks lovely right now. In 24 hours I'll be en route back to Fairbanks where it's a balmy 36 degrees ABOVE zero due to cloud cover, but it will soon be dropping far negative once the sky clears up. I normally quite enjoy the cold, but a nice beach like yours looks like just the place to sit and maybe float my Hawk Sky around for a few hours.

So why make this (potentially off-topic?) post here?

... Because it's an excellent tip and those of us who didn't know are all the better for it now I was raised under the wings of the BOC; "off-topic" has a very, very, very loose definition in my book. Very nice job on the paint, by the way. Looks excellent.

I have been flying my park flyers out here in the Chicagoland and having fun flying with frozen fingers. The temp 22 to 30 degrees and they batteries are a bit warmer. What would be the coldest you can fly before it would affect the LiPo and servos?

Hey Burner - I've been thinking it's the new FPV gear that eats the battery on my EasyStar II. My flight times went from 25-30 minutes late summer to 12 minutes or so in December and January, flying between 0 and -10 degrees F. I was sure it was the Vtx. Yesterday the temp was up to 28, and I had it up for 19 minutes, so I guess the problem has been the cold. That's with a 3S 2200mah Turnigy battery. My servos work fine down to -10, but fingers start to suffer! My greatest worry in the cold is cracking the insulation on the wiring. I change batteries in the car when I can, and move the wires as little as possible. I've had to replace an aileron servo wire and the video cable for my DVR, but the connections to the batteries have held up.

Did u notice batteries warmer after flight? It hard to tell if they warmer or my hand just frozen and it feels hot. Just worried about burning out batteries. I know the ESC loves the cold weather. Can't find anything in manuals.

I'm gaining confidence with FPV. Yesterday I flew my EasyStarII 873 feet up and 3400 feet away - max up and sideways for me so far! That's with a 600mw 5.8ghz Immersion Vtx, Fatshark Predator glasses, Spironet antennas, Dx6i controller, Ar6115 rx and DORA for RSSI. I had solid video except when the plane passed directly overhead.

I could have flown higher, but I was getting RSSI glitches at a distance of around 3000'. I don't think the Dx6i will reach much further without an antenna upgrade. I have a 7db patch antenna to stick on the controller.

Jan 13 Goldstream Valley (9 min 0 sec)

Dx6i range (2 min 16 sec)

Nobody likes you, Grazer. You can just take all your warm weather, sandy beaches, and bikini-clad women and go... Somewhere else, dammit

Too funny! Happy to share the weather, sandy beaches but I keep the bikini-clad women. Mahahahaha! They are mine, all mine!!!

Nice day. I messed around on the UM t28 for warm up, then I put the UMX stryker through some aeros: Snap rolls, harriers, and inverted flat spins.

Then I FINALLY maidened the PZ F4U-A1. I like it. Its not as fast as I thought it would be, but it's not too slow either. Definitely more aerobatic then I thought, so I flicked to low rates. One thing that's annoying about it is that it really needs prop wash. The tail surfaces barely respond with the motor off, and it slows down pretty quick. All in all, it flies nice, like you would expect with a PZ model. It doesn't do that weird tail-dragging thing that some corsairs do on aileron-only turns.

I managed to nose it over on the landing One of the drop tanks came off. Oh well,YOLO. A little epoxy and It will be good as new

Calm variable wisps of wind today in Chicago area. Sometimes good for flying but noticed my planes started to fly tail down making landings a bit weird...

mutski - love the vids! I'm working on getting a realtime FPV rig myself! Until then, it's recorded video for this guy

Here's two from lunch time today with 808 #16.

DSM Ladybird:

Walkera Ladybird V2 (2 min 10 sec)

Edge 540QQ

Edge011513 (0 min 0 sec)

Originally Posted by JDMJim

Calm variable wisps of wind today in Chicago area. Sometimes good for flying but noticed my planes started to fly tail down making landings a bit weird...

Which plane?

Rain rain go away . . . .

Three full days of it, and no sign of stopping. I'm thinking its a good thing that my flying area is on TOP of a hill, because at this rate, I'm already gonna need floats to fly. I hope Noah's got that Ark finished . . . .