There is no want for space in this golf dome. It may look small when one prepares for take off, but fears are quickly put to rest as the model flies throughout the dome (above). Looking like a ship from an alternate futuristic universe, Peter Sripol’s flying aircraft carrier spent the weekend allowing pilots to fly off its deck. Here a ParkZone T-28 attempts to land on its deck.
is one of the larger vendors there and has been attending the event for a number of years. Luke has everything a pilot may need during a weekend of flying, from props to turnkey micro planes from ParkZone and FlyZone. A large spread of brushless motors and micro servos keeps minds like mine ig- nited with ideas on planes that have yet to be built or in some cases be designed yet. It struck me how far this segment of the
hobby has changed. During the first JR In- door, most of us were content to fly our foam and bamboo craft with brushed motors con- nected to gearboxes and Ni-Cd batteries. Through the years the technology evolved into brushless and Li-Po and increasingly got less expensive and smaller. This was evident not only at Luke’s but another perpetual vendor, Radical RC
www.radicalrc.com. Radical RC, out of Day- ton, Ohio, has been here since day one of the JR Indoor event. Radical RC started out spe- cializing in the electric R/C hobby by offer- ing the hobbyist individual Ni-Cd cells, wire and heat shrink so that we could build our
FLYING MODELS
own batteries. Remember building packs and brushless motors from CD ROMs? Rad- ical RC still offers these accessories and a lot more for the serious hobbyist who flies elec- tric R/C. Other vendors such as Dynamic Foamy
www.dynamicfoamy.com specialize in mod- el planes. The great thing about small elec- tronics is they keep improving so just about any airplane can be engineered to fly and fly well. Dynamic Foamy has everything from profile models of the Concorde to the F-105 and F-117 Stealth and in many different sizes. I walked around to the two sponsors of the
event next. Horizon Hobby is the main spon- sor, along with JR radios, for this event and has been the main backer. Horizon had a large booth showcasing their latest wares. There was always a steady flow of people walking in, looking at the product displays and chatting with one of the friendly Horizon staff members. Horizon had some new mod- els in their Ultra Micro line including a new technology called AS3X. More about this lat-
er. Horizon also showed their newer 250 sized Cessna 150 model and Matt Andren was on hand to answer any questions. I grew up at an airport, so seeing a Cessna 150 is a familiar thing. For some reason, many mod- el companies have modeled the Cessna 182 a lot. In reality the Cessna 150 is far more common at regional airports and flying clubs so I have often wondered why this plane has not been modeled more. Horizon’s model fea- tures a balsa built-up structure and a very nice scale profile. Across the way, Hobbico
www.hobbico.com
and Futaba were set up with a similar size booth. The big news in this camp was the new Futaba 18MZ. It still amazes me that to- day’s radios have more computer processing ability than many of our desktop computers from years ago. Chris Sydor, Marketing Spe- cialist for Great Planes and ElectriFly, and Frank Noll, team leader for Futaba, gave me a quick run down on this new radio. 2.4 GHz, of course, 18 channels—that’s right, 18— built-in 8MB camera, uh sure. Yes folks, radios are coming with cam-
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