4bangen's new rc tread

[4bangen]

That's awesome man! I gotta update my thread, building a new plane now. Where do you normally fly?

I am currently the president of the North Texas Aeromodelers in Denton. We fly at North Lakes Park.

[jw33]

awesome!

[bird_dog0347]

That's awesome man! I gotta update my thread, building a new plane now. Where do you normally fly?

[4bangen]

I was going to wait till things calmed down to update y'all, but it looks like things are only picking up from here. Two weeks ago I went to an event called Flitefest Texas. I did so to hang out with some friends, fly a few planes, and maybe sell some B-17's. Oh and shoot an episode of flitetest with my B-17's finally doing a large formation flight. Flitetest has 1,000,000 subscribers by the way!
The four day trip turned into something I'm not sure I am ready for. People went nuts over the B-17's and I sold out the first night. I only brought 5 kits with me but by selling them all I paid for the trip entirely. Most of the kits I sold where built that night so they could be part of the formation flight on Saturday. more on that later.
So besides bringing 5 flight ready bombers, and five kits, I brought my rocket Cuda's my regular Cuda' my Mother bear, and my 12 flying school bus. The school bus was a big hit even just sitting there people (550 pilots, their friends, and family) took more pictures of the bus than almost anything I saw there. No one could wait to see it in the air. Things started to go wrong after I finished assembling the bus. I realized I'd left my nice new school bus batteries at home (3.5 hours away). I didn't figure it was to big of a deal though because I did have the mother bear batteries that are actually the old school bus batteries. So I charged them up and went to go fly. This is where things really went wrong. The bus did it's normal roll out and majestically took to the sky... then fell back to earth with a cur thump. After several attempts, and a borrowed set of batteries, I'd nearly destroyed the bus with no successful flights. to this day I don't know why all of a sudden 4s batteries wouldn't work. But then someone offered me a pair of 6s 6500 batteries! All I can say is WOW it flew like a dream. I decided that since it had taken so much damage, and since it was pretty beat up even before that, I was going to put it in combat
So up she went, borrowed batteries powering it so damned well I almost took it easy... almost. The announcer said I'd taken out 8 planes by the time she went down. I saw at least one manage to go through both props as they tried to take me down (sounded like a table saw lol). But she finally did go down, and because of one of the smallest planes out there too. The crowd loved it, the pilots loved it, and FliteTest loved it. We put the wreckage show center and left it there for two days for people to admire and pay there respects. It was a hoot.
a lot more happened but you'll hear about that come December. for now here are some pictures.


me and Josh Bixler after he flew my 200+mph rocket cuda


all the ready to fly bombers about a week before the event. Only one survived the weekend.


off to meet her fait. by this point both axles where broken, two wheels where missing, and her nose and battery tray was mostly duct tape.


me and my new friend (the guy who took down the bus)


that's his propeller that got stuck in my wing, still can't believe that little plane brought down the 12x9 foot airplane. lol


it made a glorious sond when it went in nose first at full power!


so much carnage.




It was a hell of a fight, 40ish planes in the sky, all of them gunning for me and me alone.
I was literally shaking after the crash. video of the crash will be used to launch my next RC model that will be for sale. we maidened it Sunday, and couldn't be happier. stay tuned for more stuff from this event and for what comes of it.

[4bangen]

We had an amazing trip down to apache pass for the ice house fly in. I've got a lot of content to sort through, and will be editing like crazy for a while. Sold all the kits we brought, and one of our 3 demo planes. The sales paid for the gas in the car and RV, it also fed us for the weekend. Made tons of new friends, and got a lot of recognition. The rocket Cuda didn't go as planned the gps didn't work, and we where having control issues with the twin rocket plane. Next time will be better, I've got a lot of work to do. Can't wait till the next event. more pics and videos coming soon.

One of my favorite moments of the entire event was during night flying under the light. we brought our two main demo planes out around 9pm to the main flight line with pockets full of charged batteries. We flew them once, then started playing pass the transmitter. I realized I didn't have enough batteries so I stole someone's golf cart and rushed back to grab all my batteries and my charger. I still don't even know who's cart it was. lol
But as I came back to the main line a group of pilots was waiting for me. One of them grinned and said "hey we hid your airplane, try and find it." I looked up and there it was blazing in it's fresh metallic white stuck at the top of the only tree in sight. lol We did get it down using a sky lift, and flew it the rest of the night. Then the next day a guy came up and said "I want to buy the one that was in the tree!" lol I could go on... but I'll save that for later.


oh and here's a totally random picture I was tagged in on facebook of one of the kits at another event today!

[AnthonyS]

you can fly all the way to the scène of the crash.

Reminds me of a Ron White joke.

[4bangen]

Nice vid. You can’t fly without a tail though.

you can fly all the way to the scène of the crash.

[AnthonyS]

Nice vid. You can’t fly without a tail though.

[4bangen]

Nice stuff. Break the drone or is it okay?

It just broke a prop. no big deal.

[The Sarge]

Nice stuff. Break the drone or is it okay?

[4bangen]

We finally did it! man this was fun, stick around till the end for a sneak peak of the next video.

[AnthonyS]

I have much lighter fiberglass cloth than what you will find in any hobby store. I custom ordered it from thayercraft.

I’d at least consider a carbon fiber spar and glass the leading edge. That said it may still snap at the wing root. A light ply wing saddle might help immensely too. Any way you can get your hands on the current z foam horizon is using to make their planes? It seems fairly sturdy too.

[4bangen]

Here's a quick video I threw together from Sunday. We'd hoped to have an epic rc battle with two B-17's but the weekend got away from us and it rained all day Monday. We did manage to squeeze in a short flight between all the rain though.
The plan for the next video is to take both B-17's with this camera setup, put streamers on each wing tip, and do combat. The goal will be to cut both of the other guys streamers, but knowing us it will end in a mid air collision. lol

anyway, here it is!

[4bangen]

looking good sir.

thank you

Seems like a very large control surface for that much speed...

Oh it's far to large. lol But I'm working the stock airframe right now. I may have him send me a wing without the elevons cut in if it gives me a problem. But for know I an doing as few mods as I can get away with.

[bird_dog0347]

Seems like a very large control surface for that much speed...