Recovering History, before it's gone forever...

As I've gotten older, I've found that I am somewhat more interested in history. Family history, history of our country, history of radios, ... anything historical. A few years ago, I started collecting info about the RDRC club. There was a lot of supposition about the origins of the club, the year is was started, etc.

As time moved along, several of the guys in the club located info, talked to older members who are no longer active, dug up old photos, found newspaper clippings, etc. As an example, is was common "knowledge" that the club started in 1962 and had use 3 different flying sites over the years. After this work started coming together, it was discovered that the club was actually founded in 1958, and had had at least 8 different flying sites over the years. The more we uncovered, the more we realized the importance of documenting everything as best we could, before this historical data was forever lost.

So, enter my poor attempt at a website. It's not some new whiz-bang technology, but it does begin to document and archive some of this info. Please visit the archive site and click the RDRC HISTORY link in the LH menu. This is a work in progress, but there's lots of great info buried in there! Here's the link:

http://www.scootworks.com/rdrc/history.html

Dave AMA119484

First Blog, after a long break from the hobby...

The title says it all. I've been out of the RC airplane hobby since the end of 2011. A huge downturn in business, requiring a crazy amount of work just to try and "keep my nose above water", had killed my ability and interest in anything that wasn't related to work. I sold my airplane trailer and my bigger aircraft, but did keep some of my old and smaller items. So, things have settled down a little, and I'm itching to get back in the air.

So, here we go. First, have a look at my website at www.RCDave.net to see some of my RC History, dating back to about 1975. That'll kinda bring you up to now, not that it's really important. I'm just a regular guy who likes RC and tries not to crash... too often :-) 

I've been working on the first stage of getting back in the air: getting my batteries sorted out. Throwing away the bad ones, replacing them with good ones, and cycling/testing those left to see how much life still may be in them. I have a pair of Hobbico Accucyle's, a Hobbico Field Charge, an Ace RC Flight Box battery charge, a home brew pulse charger from the mid-80's, and a couple of ESV's. On my workbench I also have a Fluke DVM and a dual output metered variable DC supply. First things, first...getting things charged to measure their capacity. 

Testing my NiMH batteries wasn't too difficult. After a few days, and had a pretty good pile of bad batteries to dispose of. Most of my LiPo's were OK. I had NiMH batteries that had never been charged, so they were OK and ready to be used in place of the bad stuff. Thankfully, I didn't have to buy any batteries, I had enough to fit up everything in the hangar with good stuff. 

I did run into a problem when load testing my LiPo's on the Hobbico Accucycle...it would overheat and drop into current limiting. I solved that issue by setting up a small blower to force cool the unit in discharge mode, and all was well. Thankfully, Hobbico designed the circuit with a thermal detector and would limit the current to protect the charger, bringing my attention to the issue.

OK, phase 1 of my "return to RC" is completed...now to get my support gear checked out and repaired...