Awesome. I fly very small remote controlled airplanes and a tiny drone. I am a bit nearsighted and I fly my airplanes and drone relatively close to where I stand (10 to 75 feet). A friend flys a few large RCs, but I don’t think that size matters for having fun. I live in the mountains in Central Arizona, and I like to hit the flying fields just as the sun is starting to rise in the morning - beautiful time to fly.
BTW, 60 years ago my father and I used to spend a lot of time building our RCs. To be honest, now I buy incredibly inexpensive planes from China.
Yeah, I think I lean toward simplicity as well. I would be way too anxious trying to fly that work of art the guy built. I am glad someone out there does it though—it's a joy to watch.
It looks like the airstrip is attached to the servants' mansion. In parts of the video you an see the aircraft overflying the main house. It's the Temu Versailles.
I wonder at what point you put in a flight control computer. I could imagine with a plane that size it's easy to put some big forces on it with heavy inputs.
It essentially already has one. Probably only self-levelling, but has some extra programming like delayed flaps, wheel-up sequence (first up the wheels, then close the doors), blackbox feature, etc. Likely using a version of Ardupilot [1] that's already in use by everyone. Maybe INav [2], but I'd wager on the former. There's more than one computer in there, too. The receiver is likely double-redundant (2 receivers, each with 2 separate receiver circuits, one 900MHz, the other 2.4GHz). I have planes costing 400 EUR that have dual-bandwidth redundant receivers (costs 40 EUR, a joke).
ELRS (radio), Ardupilot (Flight Controller), EdgeTX (Radio OS), and Mission Control (Ground Station SW) are serious tools used by many in the hobby. Them being open means there's a lot of competition and a lot of features. But also not amazing UX :)
It sounds like it's electric powered. As much as I love brushless motors, I think a model of that scale and quality would have deserved actual jet engines.
Tyler Perry owns the airplane and the property. He has said that he does not fly turbines due to the fire risk in a crash. His property is surrounded by forest. If he were to cause a forest fire, the negative publicity could have a major impact on his career.
Thank you for inadvertently answering a question I had, which was who owned that estate.
I'll preempt future comments that lithium batteries can catch fire too. I agree with that statement but still think the risk is mitigated by not going with gasoline fuels.
RC-scale tiny turbines are sort of a boondoggle. They are loud, dangerous, and quite frankly reliability disasters. Expected component lifetimes are in the hundreds of hours, most folks overhaul them every 20-50 hours of use, and they fail in the air with shocking regularity (just check youtube).
It's one of those "impressive that it works at all" kind of things. If that's what you want to see in the air, then do it. If you want to watch your one-off custom plane that represents hundreds or thousands of hours of labor fly, you push it with a fan.
I wonder if it's not a: "maintaining this kind of engine is a heck-of-a-lot of work and is why there are so many aviation regulations and the reason engine overhauls are forced and cost millions-of-dollars" kind of thing.
Mostly physics. It's hard to do small jets, mostly because small things get too heat-stressed
I sorta watched a guy trying to build a hoverboard out of 50-kgf jets, it was crazy, hilarious and didn't go anywhere because flying a backpack of kerosene on four totatally unreliable jets ain't much fun in the end. They also cost about $5K each at the time.
For anyone not familiar, most of this channel is funded IIRC by Tyler Perry who absolutely loves the RC hobby. You can see his estate in some of the wide shots (especially in the air). He had a custom made RC plane runway and workshop built on the property.
Awesome. I fly very small remote controlled airplanes and a tiny drone. I am a bit nearsighted and I fly my airplanes and drone relatively close to where I stand (10 to 75 feet). A friend flys a few large RCs, but I don’t think that size matters for having fun. I live in the mountains in Central Arizona, and I like to hit the flying fields just as the sun is starting to rise in the morning - beautiful time to fly.
BTW, 60 years ago my father and I used to spend a lot of time building our RCs. To be honest, now I buy incredibly inexpensive planes from China.
Yeah, I think I lean toward simplicity as well. I would be way too anxious trying to fly that work of art the guy built. I am glad someone out there does it though—it's a joy to watch.
On the other end of the spectrum is probably this guy's slope soaring videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SlopeRCGliders
Those RC glider videos are so beautiful, thank you for the link
Aprox how much does something like this unit cost?
Definitely falls into the "if you have to ask" category
First of all you need a house with a runway…
It looks like the airstrip is attached to the servants' mansion. In parts of the video you an see the aircraft overflying the main house. It's the Temu Versailles.
I wouldn't want to imagine, but it's funded by a billionaire, Tyler Perry, so I'm guessing the cost wasn't an issue.
There's definitely some overlap in size between this and some real airplanes
My first thought was, "You could probably fit a couple of toddlers in there with cute little pilot uniforms."
When do they start passenger service?
A bunch of mice to simulate passengers.
I wonder at what point you put in a flight control computer. I could imagine with a plane that size it's easy to put some big forces on it with heavy inputs.
It essentially already has one. Probably only self-levelling, but has some extra programming like delayed flaps, wheel-up sequence (first up the wheels, then close the doors), blackbox feature, etc. Likely using a version of Ardupilot [1] that's already in use by everyone. Maybe INav [2], but I'd wager on the former. There's more than one computer in there, too. The receiver is likely double-redundant (2 receivers, each with 2 separate receiver circuits, one 900MHz, the other 2.4GHz). I have planes costing 400 EUR that have dual-bandwidth redundant receivers (costs 40 EUR, a joke).
ELRS (radio), Ardupilot (Flight Controller), EdgeTX (Radio OS), and Mission Control (Ground Station SW) are serious tools used by many in the hobby. Them being open means there's a lot of competition and a lot of features. But also not amazing UX :)
[1] https://ardupilot.org/ [2] https://inavflight.github.io/
> But also not amazing UX :)
This sounds exactly like the sort of business I would want to build :D
It sounds like it's electric powered. As much as I love brushless motors, I think a model of that scale and quality would have deserved actual jet engines.
Tyler Perry owns the airplane and the property. He has said that he does not fly turbines due to the fire risk in a crash. His property is surrounded by forest. If he were to cause a forest fire, the negative publicity could have a major impact on his career.
That property is gorgeous and Tyler pulls out all the stops for his builds. That channel (Ramy RC) has quite a few of them.
Thank you for inadvertently answering a question I had, which was who owned that estate.
I'll preempt future comments that lithium batteries can catch fire too. I agree with that statement but still think the risk is mitigated by not going with gasoline fuels.
If it had been gas-powered motors, I would have agreed with you. The electrics sound close enough to my ear like actual jet engines though.
RC-scale tiny turbines are sort of a boondoggle. They are loud, dangerous, and quite frankly reliability disasters. Expected component lifetimes are in the hundreds of hours, most folks overhaul them every 20-50 hours of use, and they fail in the air with shocking regularity (just check youtube).
It's one of those "impressive that it works at all" kind of things. If that's what you want to see in the air, then do it. If you want to watch your one-off custom plane that represents hundreds or thousands of hours of labor fly, you push it with a fan.
Is that a physics thing, or just jet engines are hard and RC budgets aren't very big?
I wonder if it's not a: "maintaining this kind of engine is a heck-of-a-lot of work and is why there are so many aviation regulations and the reason engine overhauls are forced and cost millions-of-dollars" kind of thing.
Mostly physics. It's hard to do small jets, mostly because small things get too heat-stressed
I sorta watched a guy trying to build a hoverboard out of 50-kgf jets, it was crazy, hilarious and didn't go anywhere because flying a backpack of kerosene on four totatally unreliable jets ain't much fun in the end. They also cost about $5K each at the time.
AFAIK the only existing small jet engines for RC planes are much too small for this one.
They've been scaling these things up over the past decade. The JetCat P1000 can exceed 200lbs of thrust.
What they really for this kind of build are RC turbofans, which are extremely uncommon. This thing puts out over 300lbs of thrust at full throttle:
https://www.frankturbine.com/en/FT1500.html
There are certainly turbines available that could power the model. He chooses not to.
Been following this channel since the very early days and it's honestly mindblowing the scale and attention to detail of these models.
You rarely see advertisements for confiscatory income taxes quite as effective as this one.
For anyone not familiar, most of this channel is funded IIRC by Tyler Perry who absolutely loves the RC hobby. You can see his estate in some of the wide shots (especially in the air). He had a custom made RC plane runway and workshop built on the property.
I assumed this was a case of name collision but no, this really does seem to be the same Tyler Perry who created the Madea movies.
The size of that thing! And what a landing...
Would there technically be any issues with remote controlling a real A380?
Since it's got autopilot, and AutoLand, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, there have been remote controlled full scale airplanes since WW2[1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite
Range?
...And here I am scouting for remote meadows to fly my 7 and 10 inch prop fpv drones...
The large ones dust crops out here where I live. Pick a field, ha ha.