Conference vmszoo::rc

Steve and Randy - great note idea.

Can't say I'd disagree with your predictions since you are allowing 50 years.

But I have some for 10 years.

1.  Sound levels will go way down - even for pylon, Ducted Fans, and CL speed.

    I suspect the loudest thing we will have will be the blade "whop whop whop"
    from the helicopters.

2.  Harriers will be successful and affordable.

3.  We will switch radio technologies again (ala 1991).  We will be allocated
    own RC Aircraft frequency band and it will be a spread spectrum
    technique.  The technology is here now - but the cost will continue
    to fall until we can't afford not to switch.  Also because of all the
    500 watt paging systems between our .75 watt RC systems we will see
    many frequency restrictions though out the United States.  The FCC will
    become painfully aware that by not being the primary user of our channels
    that we (they) are presenting a danger to life and property.

    In this new radio technology you won't have channel numbers.  Only
    limits on the number of planes in the air at one time (somewhere around
    30).

4.  Along with above radio vendor will start developing standards.  Think
    of the air waves as an ethernet.  They will sell transmitters and all
    transmitters will be compatible with all receivers.  All servo plugs
    will be the same.  All charge connectors will be the same.  

5.  Battery technology will advance to the state that (A) Transmitters and
    receivers can run all day (throw away the expanded scale voltmeters)
    and (B) electrics will become method of propulsion rather then a complete
    building technology - that is they will run 15 minutes without building
    the airframe lighter than the glow equivalent.

6.  There will be federal labeling standards applied to adhesives.  That is
    there will be warning labels on bottles of CA.  This means that I expect
    somebody will have to get hurt real bad first in order to cause this
    action.

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Along the lines of Dan Miners latest predictions in the scale note here
are some light hearted ones.

Tom Tenerowicz will become an evening professor of English and write a
  book on spelling and sentence structure.

Dave Walter will build a 3 oz HLG.

Ajai will write a short note.

Anker will write all his notes with EMACS.

Ken Colby will sell his Helicopters and take up RC cars.

Norm Collins will get that Mustang to fly.

Hazel Sig will tell dirty jokes at a Scale Masters banquet.

Byron's Originals will offer an all balsa 1/2 scale B29 kit.

Futaba will market a new radio that is plug compatible with
at least one other previous Futaba product.

Airtronics will only offer Futaba Servos on their products - however
there will be a warning label on each Servo that "this servo will
only work with a Futaba radio - use with any other equipment will
void your warranty".

JR will hire Eric Henderson as their new head of marketing.

Polks hobby center will be larger than Tower.

Tower will ship my backordered OS muffler from last year.

OS will offer a new intercooled 1.2 four stroke.

Duke Fox will write an article telling how he tried intercooling
and determined that it was not cost effective.

Harvey Thomasian will have 7 more basement clean out sales.

This is fun - I could go on for ever...

Bye          --+--
Kay R. Fisher  |
---------------O---------------
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         Here is a future with far reaching implications.  An electric
    motor for aircraft using superconductor materials.  Imagine the
    performance of ducted fans!  No vibration to speak of, minimal power
    loss in the windings, and enormous power output.

What about a real live workable Gas Turbine. Many (several) have been built but 
none really commercial quality or price.

Think of it; cheap fuel, lots of power, and the true Jet Sound. May be even 
eventually with an afterburner. Boy would that make Al's Mig gooooo.

Fewer people will build models. ARF models will approach 100% of models flown. 
I think I read that in the US it is presently 40%+, here in Oz it would be 15%.

Electric motor technology will improve and ride on the back of the ARF in 
popularity. The risk I see is models being flown on the local oval (park) 
injuring persons or property giving us a bad name. 

    
          Several members of the HTA have already mastered vertical 
    takeoffs, and I have witnessed more than one vertical landing! The
    only difference is the takeoffs are repeatable, and the landings are
    usually only 1 per plane :) :)

Can anyone see any applications for a CPU in future planes? (Seeing as how we
all work for a computer company :-)) There are obviously places for it in the
transmitter, but how about in the plane.

Could maybe be used for monitoring fuel, engine rpm's, etc.

In a solar powered plane, how about the ability to move the cells somewhat for
maximum charge.

Automatic landings?

As to the rathole, I have no problem with and/or argument against qualifying
people to fly, I just don't see the link...

Arf's don't crash planes into houses, people crash planes into houses :^)

For the record, I have only used one ARF and it was a disaster, and it was after
I had learned to fly. Everything else has been built from 'regular' kits.

Steve

I have soundly chastised Steve for starting this rat hole (pun intended? I'll
never tell). Oh yeah, Steve could build a model quite well if he wanted to
its just easier if I do it. I'm on to him now though and you can bet there
will be some changes. :-)

Anyway, on the topic of futures:

CPU's on board - they're already there aren't they? My (limited) understanding
of PCM systems is that you gotta have a CPU of some sort on the receiving end
to make some sense of the gobbledey gook that the transmitter sends and turn it
into something that the servos can use.

If my understanding is correct then the failsafes we see in the PCMs is the
first onboard "application". Other uses might be:

Onboard flight performance recording for downloading to a computer at the end
of the flight. Some running shoes already have this feature - why not our
planes? Keep track of rpm/airspeed/groundspeed,fuel utilization, receiver
performance - glitches/unit time, servo performance and on and on and on... 
Wouldn't it be neat the next time the official club jerk throws a tantrum 'cause
his favorite plane was just "shot down" to run through the flight data and
show him that in fact it was the application of up elevator while inverted at
six inches that actually caused the problem?

How about automatic camber adjustment for gliders?

Automatic in-flight fuel mixture sensing and adjustment. Many automobiles have
it today. Again, why not miniaturize it and put it in our planes?

Auto trim for straight and level flight. As an instructor I'd love to have this
one! I'm not talking about totally self righting aircraft as some articles in
the rags have talked about recently. Just the ability to push a button on the
transmitter and have the computer and sensors in the plane trim it for straight
and level and then give it right back to me. Also having the trims "remembered"
in the plane rather than in the transmitter would sure help in the do I have
the right trims for this plane? problem. (I have two channel 24 Airtronics radio
sets - and have gotten confused a couple of times when I had both at the field.)

Along the same lines move all of the fancy mixing from the transmitter to the
aircraft. The transmitter may still serve as the input device, but you no longer
have to remember to set the transmitter for the plane being flown.

And last, but not least - autopilot. For when a fly lands on your nose, or you
just have to scratch or whatever. Just push the auto pilot button and the plane
circles at constant altitude while you take car of the problem.

Randy

Ok.  Now for a genuine, for-real futures note.  I agree with the
earlier noter that mentioned spread-spectrum...if not that, I
expect some variation on it.  When I was working of for a
telephone microwave company, they had a form of modulation (and I
think this is spread spectrum)  where they could put many calls
on a single carrier.

In RC terms, suppose the club had a microwave transmitter with a
bunch of jacks on it.  We would walk up with our box and plug it
into the transmitter, and our receiver would be able to pick out
our signal.  Heck, they can put a couple of hundred calls on a
carrier, so all RC'ers could be on a single frequency, and clubs
could divide up the channels amongst themselves if they were
close together.  Our boxes could switch between the channels,
since the intellegence would be in the decoder and could be
easily put into a chip.  With the addition of a small transmitter
in the plane, possibly using the new superconductor technology,
we could even have telemetry.

I do expect us to be kicked upstairs in the spectrum, and
sometime soon too.  

Also, I expect to be offered some of the new composites soon as a
substitute for balsa.  In fact, the honeycomb sandwich stuff that
Voyager was made of, and is being used now for everything from
homebuilts to the latest fighters is an absolute gold mine of a
resource that hasn't begun to be tapped (somebody revive Casey
please).  I'm really surprised this hasn't happened yet, as far
as I know the material hasn't even been used in ARFs.

Then again, what do you expect from someone that builds models
from cardboard. 

    If some of us think of the ARF as some kind of shortcut to getting into
    the hobby, just think of what will happen when the video game companies
    develop pattern programs for all our totally programmable radios. 
    Imagine this....you buy an ARF or TRF (Totally ready to fly) and a
    Programmable radio/reciever combination that has plug-in programs for
    any type of maneuver yet known to pilots.  You sit up all night
    designing the flight pattern you want in the sequence you want, storing
    it in the RAM in the radio.  Next day, you go out to the field, start
    the engine, taxi out to the runway, push the auto button, and your
    plane takes off all by itself (it has an on-board gyro coupled to the
    reciever system so ti operates on auto-pilot), and procedes to do a
    world-class pattern performance totally hands-off.  At the appropriate
    point at the end of the routine, the plane lands itself, and all you
    have to do is turn off the rx and tx, refuel, and begin all over.
    
    Sound far-fetched?  The technology to do this is here today, but it
    will take several years to a decade before all the hardware is designed
    specifically for model RC planes, and just as important, that it
    becomes economically feasible.
    
    Sooooooo Al, you think you got problems with the ARF of today???   Just
    wait till this future arrives.   I think we've only seen the beginning
    of a trend that will see manufactures move further and further up the
    scale of doing all the integration and building for us, but at the same
    time giving us all MUCH more functionality and performance than we
    could get by ourselves.  I still think there will be a hard core of
    devoted modelers, and I count myself among them, who will always adhere
    to the rewards of self-crafting our birds and taking that ultimate
    pride in accomplishment as its own reward.  But I'm here to say that
    the world isn't built that way, and given some people can go out and
    buy rather than build, they will.
    
    Well, I managed to mix FUTURES with a little SOAP BOX, but this has
    been one interesting note, and I couldn't help myself. :^}
    
    -Joe (the Eagle 2 has over 100 flights now)

    The high tech sandwich stuff that John mentioned two replies ago IS
    being used in the glider area.  It is basicaly a piece of Roacell
    sandwiched between two pieces of glass cloth held to a shape in a mold
    while the epoxy sets up.  You then take the top half of the wing and
    the bottom half of the wind and glue them together, presto hollow wing.
    This is the technology that Rich Spicer and Rich Tiltman use in
    manufacturing their F3b planes called the Synergy.  Really a great
    technology but like Kevin Ladd and I were talking at the Auction. You
    have to make a mold of the wing (or fuse as we were talking) and that
    involves alot of labor and you end up with a mold for 1 piece, you
    change the design on the piece, you make a new mold.

    There some amazing technoligies in mold making these days. One such
    item is a plaster like material that uses a polymer instead of water.
    You make a box large enough to house your plug and the cur the plug
    in half. Mount this 1/2 plug at the bottom of the box and then float
    the mold material into the box. Cures in two hours. Do this twice
    and you have a complete mold. It's spec'ed to shrink no more than
    .010" and be light.
    
    There is a pattern plane designed by a local flyer to western ma
    that we are working on developing a fiberglas fuse for. It also
    helps to have two mold makers by trade as members of the club:_)
    
    
    Tom

Actually, I was thinking of the stuff being available in sheets,
much like cardboard.  We would use it in the same way we use
sheet balsa.  Mark, it sounds like you're talking about some form
of layered material, say with carbon fiber on top and bottom, and
some material like wood in the center.  What I have in mind is
something I saw on TV recently about the Voyager; the material
was like cardboard in that it had sheet top and bottom surfaces
and a honeycomb material in the center.

In cardboard, the weight of the material is relatively
independent of thickness.  That is, a piece of 1/16 inch
cardboard weighs as much or more than a piece of 1/8 thick
material.  This is because most of the weight is in the paper
facings.

However, with the composite material, I would expect
that the weight would be evenly distributed throughout the
material -- I've never seen or handled the stuff, so I'm just
guessing.  Anyway, I'd expect to buy the stuff, cut it with my
jig-saw, and glue it with CA or epoxy.  

How about a reliable on board starter?

No more cut fingers.

Steve