[rotor spins]
[motor catches]
[motor purrs]
[motor chugs]
*
- Kevin Kopp: I've got a bunch of different airplanes
and every one of them flies different.
They're all fun to fly in some unique way
and watching some of them,
some of them just look really cool in the air.
Other ones can do amazing things
that I would never be able to do in a real airplane.
The name of the club is the Lodi Area Radio Control Club.
We have about 25 members.
- Gotta keep your eye on it at all times.
You don't want to lose your orientation.
- Kevin Kopp: We can do anything a full-size airplane can and then some.
So, I stick to scale aerobatics mostly.
I do loops, rolls, spins, vertical maneuvers,
pretty much anything that you'd see at EAA at Oshkosh
we can do with these airplanes.
And I stay kind of in my comfort zone.
And if I practice a maneuver, it's up high.
And eventually, I'll work it down to where it's, you know,
closer to the ground and I'm comfortable doing it there,
but I've never wrecked one
that I have not been able to fix.
[motor zooms]
I've had one that I've radar gunned
at about seven or eight miles an hour.
Otherwise, some of the other stuff I've got
will do in excess of a hundred miles an hour.
[vroom]
I've got a couple of gliders that will do
about a hundred and twenty
to a hundred and thirty miles an hour.
We can go higher than you can see.
Pretty much everything now is 2.4 gigahertz technology.
You have a transmitter that you hold in your hand.
It sends a signal to the receiver that's in the airplane.
And then, each of the control surfaces
has a servo connected to it to that receiver,
which actually moves
the physical surfaces on the aircraft.
[wings switching positions]
So, electrics typically are about 8 to 12 minutes.
They really depend on how big of a battery you put in 'em.
The glow engine stuff that I've got,
I can typically fly for 15, 20 minutes pretty easily.
[motor revs]
I have a little of everything.
I have everything that's down to like a 29-inch wingspan
up to third scale is about the biggest I've got,
which ends up being just shy of 100 inches.
So, a lot of times,
I'll go to different events and meet different people.
You just walk up and down, and talk to people,
and it's a way to get into aviation that's cheap... somewhat.
[motor rumbles]
- That started nice!
- And it's just-- It's fun.
It's a good all-around community
to be involved in
so it's fun to come out here and hang out
on an afternoon and fly and watch everybody else fly
and teach people new stuff, too.
*