Build Your Own RC Plane from a Kit or Plans
Building your own plane adds variety to your RC model fleet
The ParkZone Cessna 210 is an extremely popular micro RTF RC model plane
Up until quite recently, to enjoy the hobby of flying RC model aircraft required you to build your own plane. Today’s high quality, affordable and well performing ready to fly and almost ready to fly RC model aircraft did not become commonplace until after 2000. Until this time, if you wanted to fly a model you had to build your own plane. A few modelers acquired their RC aircraft at swap meets or hired a professional builder to build their plane. But the vast majority of radio control aircraft were from modelers who built their own planes from kits or plans.
ARFs and RC Modeler magazine
Without doubt, the vast fleets of almost and ready to fly RC model aircraft are here to stay. This is a good thing. If you ever get a chance to thumb through an old issue of RC Modeler or one of the other model aviation publications, you will be surprised to see that there were essentially no ads or mention of ARF or RTF radio control model aircraft. Everything offered was a kit. One just had to build their own plane to have something to fly on the weekend.
Early ARF ad from July 1998 RC Modeler magazine
There was a stigma of sorts with someone who flew ARFs and did not build their own planes. Modelers were just expected to build their own model aircraft, and the few ARFs available really did not fly all that well. As mentioned, the concept of a marketable and truly ready to fly RC airplane did not come to fruition until after 2000.
RTF RC planes offer great value
Today, every modeler has several RTF radio control models in their fleet. This is one of the great developments in the RC hobby. Today’s ARF and RTF aircraft employ good aerodynamics and provide great value and the models fly very well. Especially for the specialized world of micro indoor RC aircraft, today’s wide variety of ready to fly aircraft cannot be beat.
However, there is great worth in knowing how to build your own plane. You can construct an RC model aircraft from either a kit or from plans. Building your own radio control plane is really not that challenging, especially when using modeling tips. Start with something simple from a kit with an illustrated construction guide (for example, a non-scale trainer) to learn the basics of building a model airplane. Check out some free CAD model plane plans here.
You will find that model airplane construction methods share the same basis in just about every model you might build. Wings have ribs and spars, and fuselages have formers and engines will have some sort of mount and firewall. Building your own plane from a kit will provide valuable training in reading a model airplane plan, leading to the next step of be able to build your own plane directly from a set of plans.
Proctor scale RC airplane kits ad from July 1998 RC Modeler magazine
Building from plans
Being able to build your own aircraft from model airplane plans is really the best of all worlds. With the plans, you have complete insight as to what the model airplane designer had in mind for the original aircraft. By carefully following the original plan, you can be assured of flight success.
You will discover, as you progress with your model aircraft construction skills that you will make a series of adjustments and adaptations to the original design as you build the model. These updates are an accumulation of your workshop and field experience, experience that can only come from building your own plane from plans. You may discover some way to make the model a bit stronger, or to provide some lighter arrangement to the aircraft’s structure. With the wide variety of electric motors and batteries available today, you can easily make the necessary adaptations to the engine’s mount and battery tray to accommodate the aircraft’s power system.
The skills acquired from knowing how to build your own plane will help with your ARF and RTF fleet of models as well. You will incur some degree of hangar rash or model damage from various bumps and crashes. Today’s modeler should have the ability to make these small repairs, either at the field or in your workshop. Once again, the foundation skills gained from building your own RC planes will permit you to easily make these repairs to all of your aircraft. The net result is savings for the modeler and more time in the air flying your latest radio control model.