The case for the FloaterJet

Everybody's favorite radio plane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EfomKG7w18&feature=relmfu



Ages ago, there were rubber-band aircraft including large ones with multiple strands of Pirelli rubber, and control-line airplanes, but NOBODY could make radio-control work. The planes themselves were made of balsa wood, the radios were basically junky FM devices good mainly for sending airplanes off to Kansas or to the top of some oak tree, and the motors were 2-stroke nightmares running on caster oil and nitro-methane and if nothing else destroyed an airplane that stuff would sooner or later. One way or another you were always talking about spending two or three weeks building one of the things and then getting one or two shots at trying to fly it.

But the hobby turned some sort of a giant corner six or seven years ago. The airplanes now are of EPO foam, light, very tough, and you just glue the pieces together without having to construct them; LIPO batteries and brushless motors, stronger in fact than the old 2-stroke engines; and radios operating at 2.4 gigahertz i.e. an order of magnitude above anything the neighborhood could produce and broadcasting data packets like tcp/ip and locking to a particular receiver/airplane, so the radio system is basically immune.