Model Airplane News

There are many, many reasons to love our RC hobby. But one reason you may (or may not) have thought of is that you can literally never know everything about the hobby—so there is always something new to learn. It’s essentially a never-ending adventur

Scott built this Tom Williams design from a Sky Bench Aerotech kit. The MK-I wing has a flat bottom airfoil for excellent thermalling performance. The Viking was originally covered with translucent orange MonoKote. When that got brittle, Scott re-cov

If you have small bottles of glue, kicker, paint, etc., that are prone to tipping over and spilling their contents, this trick is for you. Use a little bit of hot glue to secure them to a scrap wood base. You can still easily use the contents of the

Pilot-RC’s first “true scale” aircraft, this composite jet has full scale detail with rivets, panel lines, simulated hatches and more. It comes painted outside the mold and has hidden linkages, quick-release wings and elevator. The turbine-ready mode

At Model Airplane News, we get a lot of inquiries about how to get started flying RC airplanes. We love encouraging new pilots into our favorite hobby! For this article, we compiled 10 of the most frequently asked questions, and our pro contributors

Gas engines are fairly easy to operate. If you can operate garden equipment and chainsaws, there’s no reason you can’t properly set up and run an RC gasser. Your basic gasoline engine operates using the “fire triangle” principal, meaning it needs air

Some good basic tools are needed in our day-to-day operations. Needle-nose pliers, hex drivers, Phillips and straight-slot screw drivers of various sizes, and surgical hemostats with both straight and curved tips are just a few examples of what it re

Model Airplane News: Tell us about building the T-34 and its history. Will Berninger/Mike Barbee: The T-34 is a derivative of the widely successful Beechcraft Bonanza series aircraft that were built starting in 1946. The T-34 is an aerobatic capable,

The Zlin Aviation series of Savage aircraft is similar in construction to a Piper Cub, and its Savage Bobber is a fully customized build that’s durable, reliable, and ready for adventure. Legend Hobby is now offering a 92-inch-span, ARF version with

Night flying is fun, different, and pretty cool. I’m lucky to belong to a club, the Ravenna Thunderbirds, Jetway Airport, Ravenna, Ohio. We can fly until 11:00 pm at our field and we have multiple club organized night-flys during the year. To fly at

When casual modelers see a turbine-powered jet, they see a hodgepodge of wires and fuel lines running all over and think “Wow! I could never figure all that out.” The truth about it is that it isn’t all that complicated once you understand what every

The world’s leading manufacturer of commercial thermal imaging systems, FLIR, announced a major new initiative in the drone space with the unveiling of SIRAS at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas. While the company had previously offered the Black

With drone delivery services in the news lately, most people have been wondering when—and how—they’ll get their first packages. RC’ers, however, have been wondering whether drone deliveries will affect their flying. We asked Adam Woodworth, CEO of Wi

There are a handful of mistakes that nearly all recreational RC pilots make that stem from not having a plan before flying. This article is aimed at addressing the two bad habits that probably lead to more damage during landings than any others. Inde

Scale and unique airplanes always appeal to me, and when I first saw an article on the full-size Tipsy S2, I knew I needed to model it. I used 3-view drawings from the article to develop my 1/6-scale plans. The Tipsy line was designed by Belgian Erne