Hobbico E-FEST Was An Awesome Electriflying RC Display! (21 Pix)
Monday, February 11, 2013 at 12:48PM (click any pic to enlarge)
The University of Illinois Armory building is a great place for indoor electric flying!
Hobbico, headquartered in Champaign Illinois, is the largest distributor of hobby products in the world, so it's not hard to understand why they are the host for the E-FEST electric indoor RC event at the University of Illinois Armory building in Champaign Illinois! The big E-FEST event took place over this last weekend (Feb 9-10, 2013) and I made the 4-hour drive (each way) over there on Saturday with my 11 year old nephew Jaxon to check it all out. I figured any huge electric RC event would have to be interesting to see, and it didn't hurt that Scaled Composites had also sent Elliot Seguin to the event to conduct a forum and do a little Scaled engineer recruiting. And for Jaxon, who so far only has a peripheral interest in aviation, I figured some exposure to the world of foam and electric flying toys would have to be a good idea : )
Btw, if you're an engineer looking for one of the coolest companies in the world to work for, I suggest you check out the Scaled careers page right now, this is a rare period of strong growth for the company.
It was great to meet up with Elliot from Scaled, and, the electric RC flying on display was absolutely fantastic. In fact, the entire event was fantastic. It reminded me of the good ole days... lots of cool people doing cool stuff in a kind, gentle, and orderly fashion, with no need for pesky heavy-handed supervision. You just don't see Americans able to operate like this much any more, and it was extremely refreshing to me. Along with all that goodness, the changes and advancement in the world of RC in the last few years are just incredible. As my financial situation is finally showing signs of noticeable improvement, I can promise you that some affordable electric RC flying machines are in my future! If things continue to improve, I'll eventually graduate from RC back into full scale! (actually, you never really graduate from RC, you just add full size fun to the mix!)
The star of the show for me was this little Gee Bee R-2 available from E-flite, which appears to have been out for a year or so but I sure wasn't aware of it. Given my general obsession with all things Gee Bee, the existence of this little critter is a big deal to me. With a small 20.1 inch wingspan and a flying weight of just 3.6 ounces, this Gee Bee would seem like it would have to be a handful to fly. It would be if it wasn't for some amazing technology called AS3X incorporated into the electronics. AS3X is a stability enhancing system that basically keeps the aircraft on whatever flight path you put it in, yet it doesn't prevent you from making the airplane do whatever you want it to. It compensates for aircraft instability and air turbulence, and creates both an easy to fly airplane and one that looks soooo real in flight. It takes a small and extremely twitchy design like the Gee Bee and makes it a fantastic flyer!
Check out this E-flite Gee Bee video to learn more about the airplane and see it in the air. I can't emphasize enough how real and 'scale' the several Gee Bee's I saw at E-Fest looked when in the air. It's just stunning to see them fly. This little Gee Bee is on my short list for getting back into RC once again. They're essentially a ready-to-fly airplane and can be found for just $99 with motor, battery, and servos already installed. All you need to complete is a compatible transmitter that can be bought for as little as $59 (if you don't need anything fancy) or, a more expensive transmitter (about $159 to $250) makes more sense if you plan to expand your hangar of flying toys. Without a doubt, these little foam 'scale' aircraft, and systems like AS3X are transforming small model flying!
Click any pic to enlarge
My 11 year old nephew Jaxon building a freely-provided foam rubber-powered flyer
This was the only flying man model that I saw but it was a well done Ironman that also flew nicely. It wasn't life-size like this one I posted a video of but it still looked really cool in the air. Power comes from an electric motor spinning a prop mounted in his head : )
This young girl spent quite a bit of time flying this extremely light and very small Vapor from ParkZone... most of the flying was done in a race track course that covered the majority of the open space and there were typically 20 to 40 airplanes all flying at once! But smaller and really slow flying machines were often found flying out of this one corner area where she's at. The opposite end of the open space was used for the highly aerobatic but still slow-flying 3D aircraft, the ones that spend a lot of their time in true vertical mode hanging on the prop. The girl flying this Vapor was doing a great job and was very good at a lot of high alpha, hanging on the prop but still moving forward in a very controlled manner.
Down at the 3D area they typically had open flying with several wild and good sized aircraft doing things that you just wouldn't think an airplane should be able to do. Many of these models have a wingspan around 36 inches yet only weigh 5 to 7 ounces! Combine that with generous electric power and crazy stuff happens. Note the wheels pants, but no actual wheels : )
These two pix came from the time when they had a competition in Red Bull Air Race style with cones set up and a course to follow. One pilot at a time went thru the course, and with you being able to stand right up close to the action, it was very cool to see.
A couple really sweet mid-motor and simple B-58 Hustlers that also flew really well
There were many very unusual and extremely simple foam profile flying machines on hand... here's a couple very short span flying wing designs, the blue made from house insulation foam board (I think) and the white done up as a funky little flying fish!
This super simple Flutter-By looks like the little Vapor but as you can see in the second pic with the pilot, it's a pretty good sized airplane. Slow flyers like this are very pleasing to watch as they hardly seem to be moving fast enough to fly.
This Mosquito from ParkZone is only 15.2 inches long with a flying weight of just 2.6 ounces! But like many of these really small airplanes it flies really well. You should check out this video to learn more about it.
I spotted this weird looking thing shortly before I left the event as it was flying around the pattern with 30 or so other airplanes. I couldn't tell what it was since it was both fairly far away from me at the time and rather small... but I could at least see that it barely had any wing on it. When I looked at the pic I could see that it was a T-28, I assume like the one pictured above in the backgound of the Mosquito pic, but the wings have been clipped to essentially the span of the stab! The full span on that model is only 16.8 inches, so you can imagine how tiny it is. The crazy thing is that it seemed to fly great! I love this kind of crazy and wild experimentation that these affordable and hyper-light flying machines allow. I can't wait til I get going myself so I can do my own brand of (very) crazy experimentation : )
There were some of the Quad Copter machines on hand but I didn't really see a lot of them. This small-ish one was being flown by a young boy, who was sometimes flying it just inches over his head... just like I would want to do!
This was an impressive collection of old-school balsa and tissue models of the WWI and WWII variety. I didn't see any of them fly (I assume rubber powered) but it was very cool just to see them. It was also an impressive display of hangar stacking!
In the late afternoon this rather large and extremely cool RC blimp flew out over the flying area during a short break and people were encouraged to run out to catch the discount coupons (little orange pieces of paper) that were dropped from it. It made for a very entertaining break from the hours and hours of wild, crazy, awesome and cool electric RC aircraft that had been filling the air.
The Hobbico E-FEST is a great way to spend a day or two, especially if you're like me and you're not all that familiar with the state of the Electric RC art. I learned a lot... mostly that I gotta get into this asap! Hopefully I'll be going back to E-FEST next year with some cool flying machines of my own so I can join the huddled masses : )
Reader Comments (5)
Too cool, Martt. Just found out that there is an electric show up in Columbus every November for the past 5 or 6 years. After the fun I had just going to a couple R/C swap meets last month, your statement about the laid back atmosphere is better than I could articulate it. Glad to hear things are looking up.
Nice article and great photos. I got here because this article appeared on Facebook via the AMA Facebook site.
Glad you took photos of the Flutter-By, I have 5 of them. Two large ones, two mini ones. One is a Biplane. Great flying airplane and you would be surprised at how much wind you can fly them in.
Orrin Eldred
Conehead
on RC Groups.
Orrin Eldred (Conehead)- I'm glad you liked the post and pix! Thanx for sharing that the AMA fb page had put the link up... was nice to see that they did that : )
Great pictures of remote control airplanes. Looks cool!!! I have a model of this planes. Nice blog!!! Thanks for sharing with us.
kaurulan e3d3fd1842 https://social.mediamogul.co.uk/amsecording