Great Beginner R/C Planes
So, you’re looking for your first R/C Plane. You found a really nice 1/5 scale WWII replica that you want, but are you sure it’s the right plane to start out with? Perhaps you typed “Beginner R/C Plane” into Google and Google gives you a daunting 527,000 results. Who has time to look through a thousand, let alone five-hundred twenty-seven thousand results? Maybe you don't even know what to look for in a beginner remote control plane. Hopefully this article will help you.
Dihedral
Dihedral is the angle of the wings. Imagine an airplane. Your looking at it head on. The wings might be flat.
Take the wingtips and pivot them up, as if they were boards on a hinge and the other end of the hinge is on the cockpit.(place where the people sit.) Now your wings look like a very wide v, right?
This is dihedral, and the more of it you have, the better. Don't get me wrong, there is a such thing as too much dihedral. Too much and your plane won’t fly, but a little is good.
What does it do?
Dihedral helps keep the plane level, so you don’t have to constantly fix every little rock the plane makes in the air. It works by lift.
When the plane rocks to the side, the wing that is pointed down generates more lift, thus bringing the wing back up, leveling the plane.
Landing Gear
Landing gear is the wheels, axles, bars and rods that help hold the plane off the ground. You want this to be very strong and durable, so it can survive many hard landings that are likely to occur, so retractable landing gear, although fun and cool, is probably not the best thing to have on a beginners plane.
Controls
It is best to have a small amount of switches to worry about. You don’t want to be flying, forget what switch does what, become overwhelmed and crash. I personally found a 3 channel airplane (Throttle, Rudder, and Elevator) the best to learn on, as it becomes much harder when you add ailerons into the equation.
Flight Characteristics
With a beginner R/C Plane, you your gonna want a low and slow plane. Sure, the ones that go 200 miles an hour may be pretty awesome… but they get away from you FAST, and if your not careful, you might just loose sight of it. Will you one day be able to fly a 200 mph plane? Yes, but only if you keep practicing.
Another characteristic you’re going to want is gentle stalls. This video will explain stalls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywPZWJ9hMc
Good Stall
A good stall for a beginner plane would be that when it stalls, it just noses right over and keeps “flying”. This is good for a beginner plane because if you stall upon landing, you can recover easily and land without damage.
Bad Stall
A bad stall is when one wing goes up and the other goes down and the plane plummets back to earth. This is not good for a beginner because if you stall upon landing, you don’t have NEAR enough time to recover, and you’re more than likely to crash.
S.A.F.E. (Optional)
SAFE stands for Sensor Assisted Flight Envelope. In other words, it is an Anti-Crash Technology. Some planes, such as the Super Cub S, have the added ability to turn on or off the system, but for beginners, it’s best to keep it on.
How Does it Work?
S.A.F.E. has a series of sensors that can tell if the plane is tilted or not, and it WORKS! I have the Super Cub S that I mentioned above, and as a R/C Pilot, I find it effective even after learning to fly because it helps keep the plane stable in windy conditions.
Conclusion
So, if you find a plane that you want that has all of these characteristics, then it’s probably a good one for you to start out with. However, if you are willing to take a risk, then go get that WWII model you want, but you might first want to think about a precautionary bottle of glue.