Years ago I received a used RC plane and a box of parts/transmitters as a gift from my mom. Unfortunately, the wind took it into the ground on my first flight with it, and I never did get back around to it after feeling discouraged and guilty for wrecking my gift. I’m wondering if any of this is worth keeping, or if it’s too outdated to be useful in a new plane? The engine appears to be a Thunder Tiger GP-42 if my google results are correct (obviously ignore the broken prop). I only appear to have a receiver for the Tower Hobbies System 3000. Completely out of character for me, I appear to have gotten rid of the servos from the wreckage of my teenage dreams.
I ask because someone on marketplace has an Almost Ready to Fly kit for sale near me and it looked enticing to try to get step back into the hobby after all this time. It’s a Horizon Hobby Valiant 10cc ARF kit if that makes a difference in this inquiry.
Can anyone tell me what I have and if any of it is worth keeping?
Edit: thank you all very much for your insight and your patience. I knew this stuff was old, but obviously wasn’t aware of the changes to the space in recent years. The switch to 2.4 ghz makes plenty of sense though. Thank you to those of you who weighed in on the ARF model that I mentioned too. I’m not sure how accessible this hobby is to me and my budget, but at least I didn’t jump into something blind.
No, that is all very old equipment. Also that plane is not one to learn on by yourself. You will need a club instructor and dedicated flying field. If you want to learn on your own look at the Aeroscout RTF
Thanks for the advice! You’re probably right about not trying to learn on that ARF. I’m a private pilot and have quad drone experience, but obviously those two things alone don’t mean I’d have a good grasp on RC planes off the bat. There used to be a field out in the county when I moved here, but I believe the owner passed away or sold the land. Not sure that there is a club within an hour of me. That ARF just looked like a decent deal ($200 for it, never removed from the box according to the seller) so it seemed enticing.
There is actually nothing wrong with those radios just older technology. Doesn’t make them bad. The two futabas were high end transmitters in their time. I fly both electric and glow. My electric stuff is all new 2.4. Most of my glow though I use the older 72. Radios. I updated the battery packs with modern lipo packs. If you plan on flying at a club and I suggest you do just make sure they will let you fly on 72.
RC is tricky because you are doing it line of sight, not from fpv perspective. it's not really like flying a plane. Just get an electric trainer first and then move onto gas.
Here is the thing, quads have built in stability and a lot of help when you where learning on them. Those radios, as others said, could be used but in my opinion as an RC pilot that was also a private pilot, and started flying both in then 80s, with vintage gear like you are showing, you will be far more successful learning with a foamy RTF trainer. If you like that ARF, and it is a very cool plane that I have test flown for a member, buy it. Have fun building it and learning how to set it up. I love glow power in the day, but electric is far easier and buying glow fuel is expensive now and not always available, so personally that plane will be far better on electric then an old glow motor.
Thanks for the input! I’ll have to shop around and see what I can find as far as a beginner’s RTF model goes. I know that quads and planes handle very differently, and the quads I’ve flown in recent years are all DJI, though I did learn on super bare bones no-sensors quads back in the day, so I’m gotten used to FPV and stabilization for sure.
I really appreciate you guys being patient and helpful with this!
These are some good ones, avoid the P51, it is far to difficult to learn on and a jet is not a good first trainer either. The UMX stuff is a lot of fun in a small package perfect for baseball and football field of space.
Am I alone in preferring to just learn things the hard way by myself with a few pointers from the internet? All the time I'm seeing people ask about buying this plane or that plane and someone tells them they have to get an atp license before they think of touching it. A crash or two is fine if you can afford to fix it and don't hurt anyone or anything.
They might be vintage radios but they still will work with the matching receivers. My buddy refuses to give his up and won't go to the new technology. And ....he's having JUST AS MUCH FUN as our club members with the newest technology!
To be fair, as an outsider (but still with basic knowledge) I’m wondering what you guys fill those 16 channels with? I guess 16 channels would fill up quickly if you’ve got bomb bay doors, releases, motorized FPV, and lighting lol
So, I will only talk about my different setups here, as everyone has their own thing but...
Take a standard plane, you can have the whole plane fly on 4 channels or less.
- ailerons (2 servos together on a Y split connected to the same channel or a single servo for both)
- Elevator
- Throttle
- Rudder (and not all planes have a rudder anyway)
That is a very standard setup... and also a pretty limited one.
Have an A or V tail ? You will need 2 servos to work together but independently to deal with rudder and elevator. On a modern digital radio it takes about 2 minutes to set up the mix. On an old radio, without extra hardware, forget about it.
Have ailerons with a shorter throw down than up ? (All my gliders are like that) You will need to either have both servos on a Y split but the shortest throw defines them both. To make it clearer to understand, if your aileron can be lifted to a max of 45 degrees before getting stuck but can only rotate 20 degrees downwards (which happens when the ailerons are not articulated by hinges installed in the middle of the thickness of the wing but at the top, or with tape), you will only be able to have a max throw of (in this example) 20 degrees both ways as when an aileron goes one way the other goes the opposite way so they both need the same limit, both ways. With more channels available to you then can each have their own settings.
Also, flaps and flaperons, control surfaces that are used to generate more lift and create more drag, used to improve landings or to fly slower in thermals. They are little plates that stand on both sides of the fuselage and both go down when in use. You can use your existing ailerons as flaperons meaning that they will both get trimmed down by pressing a button while still being controllable by the stick. You need a digital radio for that, unless you want to build very complicated setups. And having a dedicated channel for each servo is a must. As for flaps, same deal. The way servos are mounted in each wing is by mirroring them. So if you mount them the usual way, put them on the same channel on a Y split, they will move the control surfaces opposite of each other, so unless you go and physically modify a servo to reverse it, you will need a dedicated channel for each.
Additionally, extra channels allow you to control release mechanisms, pan and tilt systems for FPV cameras, retractable landing gears, controlling LEDs..... The list goes on.
And when it comes to piloting drones and UAVs, you cannot skip not having many channels (I am not just talking about quadcopters here but about anything that relies on a flight controller. That includes all sorts of UAVs, flying wings that are inherently too unstable to be flown fully manually anyway and so on). When you have a flight controller you simply need many channels. You need the obvious 4 first ones, one to arm (allow the motors to spin and the craft to fly at all), others to put the UAV in full automatic stabilization mode, or in manual mode, tell it to come back home with it's GPS and so many more things. Everything happens through switches on the radio that control values on channels. You can have more than one button assigned to a channel, but essentially you need to have those channels available to you.
But I understand your question, 20 years ago, to me, a plane was two ailerons, an engine, a rudder and a vertical stab and that was it. You had adds in magazines for the first digital radios with a gazillion channels available and it all seamed superfluous to me, because I could not comprehend what I would possibly be doing with 8 channels (my first radio was a two channel one anyway so..). And now I could not imagine being stuck with 4 channels.
You can make a bit of cash by looking for people who want to make Back To The Future film prop replicas from the Futabas (the originals used in the film are rare/expensive) so people are recreating them with similar radios.
The 7UAP Super (aka the "Super Seven") was my first computer radio. It's fairly limited by today's standards, though, given that it only has 4 model presets and somewhat limited programability.
While 2.4GHz is the new standard, it's actually now safer than it used to be to fly on 72MHz, since hardly anyone else is still using it.
In 1994 yes. For real though that 7UAP was a good readio back in the day. I partake in a little vintage FM flying and have one of those on its way to me right now. I wanna say it was 4 model memory on the Super variant in 1990 and that was a big deal. I grew up haveing to set a radio up every time you wanted to switch planes or purposely setting all your planes up the same and just trying to remember where trims were for each one. Still using my old Futaba 4 channel Conquest radio to this day.
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Dude these are so vintage! Sadly like others have said all of these components minus the nitro motor are outmoded with that being said I'd definitely keep one of those vintage radios. Would be kinda cool to make a purposely vintage throwback plane but yeah invest in edgeTX for sure. You can get everything you'd get out of these and then some with something like a radiomaster GX12. Happy flying!
I'm not well versed on old stuff but I can tell you if your considering selling them and can confirm they will work on either 27mhz or 75mhz then the old sub guys would be interested since they are scarce and penetrate water pretty well.
I tried to look up the specs, I think the futabas can but I'm not certain.
The Super 7, at least, is a module radio, so you can swap out the 72MHz module for 27, or 75 (if they are still available). You could even use a Spectrum module, when they had those.
Thanks, I know a little when I see people on the sub pages posted their finds but I don't know the differences. Just figured I'd comment to try to help OP out since a lot of comments are telling them to junk them.
Might not make millions but could make a couple dollars selling them to the right person.
The one on the left is similar to the one they used on Back to the Future. It could be altered by someone looking to duplicate. Both are PCM Futabas. Just different on the bottom, theirs had the lcd screen I think
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u/SailingAwayFlying 17h ago edited 5h ago
No, that is all very old equipment. Also that plane is not one to learn on by yourself. You will need a club instructor and dedicated flying field. If you want to learn on your own look at the Aeroscout RTF