The Story

So here’s the story. It all started when my parents got my little brother a little ready to fly 2 channel plane. It had rudder and throttle. That’s where I learned to fly. The plane was short lived though. We were soon pushing it past its limit getting it to do loops and rolls. One day my little brother climbed it up really high and started to loop in. At the bottom of the loop the wing folded and the plane dive bombed into the wheat field below. After a half hour, our “search and rescue” team found what was left of the plane. Needless to say it never flew again. I wonder if my parents had any idea at the time how big of an impact that little plane would have on my life.

One of the requirements for high school graduation was to complete a Senior Project that included some sort of community service. I chose to do an aerial photography project. I could donate a picture of the high school and fly rc planes. What could be better? I knew nothing about RC planes to speak of. I started out with a .40 size trainer plane to put the camera on. I found an experienced pilot to be my mentor and teach me how to fly a “real” rc plane. We flew it from his house to trim it out and I got my first figure 8’s in with the plane. Then we took it out to the flying field and I practiced several touch and go landings. I wanted to get more practice time in before strapping on the camera so I started flying off the rural roads where I live. The first flight was a success. The next was not. I stalled the plane on landing and busted up the front end. After rebuilding it and practicing some more, I was ready to take some pictures. The results were very disappointing however. The cheap camera I got off Ebay combined with the engine vibration produced very distorted and wavy pictures. Not to mention I had to take about 50 pictures to get one that was framed well because I had no way of aiming the camera besides guessing. But I needed to get a picture to donate to the high school. So, hoping for the best I took off from the high school parking lot, made a myriad of passes, took what would be hundreds of pictures and brought it in for landing. My depth perception was a little out of adjustment that day because on the final approach the wingtip caught a light post, the wing broke off, and the plane came crashing down. Miraculously the camera was still intact and was not even scraped, but it was not on. When I turned it on, it was empty. It must have turned off sometime early in the flight. This was the most terrible moment of all my rc days so far. My plane was in ruins and I didn’t even have a blurry, wavy picture to show for it.

I was frustrated and really started looking around on the internet for ideas. That’s when I found RCGroups.com, a huge forum full of a wealth of remote control experience. That’s about when the GWS SlowStick was all the craze in aerial photography. So, after countless hours of reading and researching those SlowStick threads with thousands of posts, that’s the route I chose. Since I was already way over budget, I outfitted it with a cheap brushed motor and salvaged parts from the wrecked nitro plane. It was so small and weak compared to my previous plane, but after the first photo flight I was completely amazed with it. I would climb for as long as the battery would last and then glide down taking pictures with the propeller stopped. The pictures came amazingly clear. I had a blast taking all those pictures. Unfortunately, I still had to take about 50 to get a good one that was level, and lined up well.

Finally I was ready to go to the high school again and reattempt the photo mission. This time I had great success. The school didn’t look half bad from the ground, but from the air it was an entirely different story. You see, I had planned on getting the picture in the summer or early fall when the grass would still be green, but due to the unanticipated setbacks, it wasn’t until much later in the winter that I could take the picture. I just couldn’t pass up this opportunity to print out this poster and put it up in the school. It stayed up for a couple of weeks, which was a couple of weeks longer than I thought. I wasn’t happy with the picture being my final product though, so I waited until spring time and took another picture when the grass was green.

So that was my intro into real RC airplanes and aerial photography. Since then I’ve continued improving and expanding the fleet.

The summer after high school I upgraded the SlowStick with a brushless motor and lipo batteries. This gave it a tremendous boost in power and flight time. I continued taking pictures and I even managed to sell a couple.

After hearing about flying wings I decided to try those out too. I built a 36” wing and flew it countless times. Several people (girls) got there first taste of rc airplanes with that wing. I’d zip around doing tricks and then take it way up high and help them glide it down. I flew it so many times that eventually the epp foam started fatiguing on one side and it would twist horribly when it was going fast. I had to retire it when it took full stick to keep it flying straight at full speed. I replaced it with another smaller stiffer wing using the same high octane power setup. It (still) flies like an arrow at full speed which is nice. It’s affectionately referred to as the Green Dragon. It has been on even more flights than the first green wing.

One summer I was looking through the (significant amount of) RC stuff I’d accumulated and found the old Evolution nitro motor that was on the original trainer plane. I hadn’t run it since I crashed the plane 4 years prior. So I put it in the vice in the shop and to my surprise it fired right up with a couple of hits with the old rubber stick. That was when I got the idea to design and build a 3D style plane that I could put the motor on. It turned into quite a large project but resulted in an awesome plane. It was so much fun to fly. Eventually the foam fatigued and the plane started to get quite a bit of twist when doing barrel rolls so it had to be retired.

Later on, I built a 2 meter glider for a college project. I modified it and put a big outrunner motor and folding prop on it so I could fly it without being at the mercy of the winds. I also outfitted it with a camera and transmitter for FPV flying. One time, I was flying the glider via the FPV and Kevin was watching it with the binoculars. We kept going higher and higher until eventually the video cut out. Kevin coached me through the decent until I could finally get eyes on it and bring it in for a nice touchdown. The altimeter I had on it reported a little over 4000 feet for a max altitude. (I should say this was before any type of regulations were put in place.)

I even tried my hand at helicopters. Sadly, they were out of my league given the limited amount of time I spent with the simulator. You see, this was before any fancy autopilots, horizon mode, or anything else of that nature (at least that I could afford). The problem with a helicopter is if the main rotor blades even think about touching the ground, say on a rough landing, they tend to explode and take a lot of the drive train with them. Yes this happened to me on a rough landing. I rebuilt the helicopter and got it flying again. Then I was flying and got my orientations mixed up and crashed super hard. After that spectacular explosion of parts, I gave up and boxed up what was left helicopter.

All along the RC plane journey and aerial photography adventures, Kevin was there every step of the way. For his High School Senior Project, he continued down the vein of remote control aerial photography. His project focused on the design and building of an aerial photography plane. He designed the plane from scratch and built it all himself. I helped him a bit, but it was definitely his creation. This plane had some significant upgrades from the original Slow Stick plane, namely a much better quality camera and a two-axis gimbal with a live video downlink. The camera was controlled on a separate radio link so one person would fly the plane and another would pilot the camera. We had a lot of fun with that plane, and we even had some limited success getting some pictures that we could sell. Unfortunately, the plane had some quirks, and…eventually it got crashed. It sure was a fun project though.

The aerial photography adventures pretty much ended with Kevin’s plane. The RC adventures continued but began to wane with all the other busy aspects of life, marriage, work, kids, other hobbies, etc. After a several year sabbatical, I got a surprise birthday present from my brothers-in-law. It was a little quadrotor with a miniature camera on it. I flew it around a bit and got some pretty mediocre pictures and videos from it. It was a lot of fun and a new RC adventure. What happened afterwards was a bit of a surprise. That little quadrotor was a match in dry kindling for the in-laws. Pretty soon there were pictures and videos of the new stream of quadrotors. One time K and I were visiting Bemily when Ben and I decided to go all in and get real FPV racing quadrotors. That was gas on the fire. Pretty soon Ben had amassed more RC gear than I ever had. He was (is) hooked. I’m always a step behind him, but I try to keep up as best I can. It has been quite a fun RC resurgence for me.

It’s been amazing to see how technology has advanced and the RC equipment has gotten more sophisticated and more affordable since I started. One area that has certainly not been stagnant since Kevin and I put the the projects on hold is aerial photography. In fact, there has been an explosion of new technology in that area. Using today’s drones, it’s now trivial to do what we struggled to do not very many years ago. I’ve been mildly curious with the drone outbreak, but generally resisted getting on the bandwagon. However, when DJI announced the Mavic I was genuinely interested. This looked like something truly amazing. The ability to pack that much drone in such a portable package was awesome.

The idea stewed for over 6 months before anything really came of it. I see so many beautiful sights while dirt biking, and then we were planning a brothers backing trip up in the Sawtooths in Idaho. That’s when the idea really started to take hold. I talked to some of my friends at work and we decided to go for it and get the Mavic. I just want to say that it’s been a real blast to have. It’s basically the culmination of everything that we worked for on our aerial photography projects in a more polished and functional machine than we could ever have dreamed of when we were starting out. It’s almost too easy to get amazing pictures and videos. I feel like if I hadn’t had the experiences and struggles trying to get those early aerial photos, I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate the Mavic and every perfect picture we get off of it. It’s the fulfillment of a childhood dream.