Redecorating Radio Control

A really long rant on just a little bit of work to make some flying models look like something a little more special.

If you‘ve been following this newsletter for any time at all, you will know I have a special love for things that fly. Both in fantasy and in reality. From birds to the space shuttle. Both artificial and natural (except mosquitoes and June bugs. I really hate June bugs). I also absolutely love radio-controlled models, especially if they are scaled-down versions of the real thing, be they cars, boats, airplanes, or helicopters. It all ties together with my fascination with miniatures that do as much as possible to mimic the full-scale subjects that they represent, especially when used in visual effects in TV shows and movies. This story tells of my most recent venture into doing just a little bit more to satisfy that desire with as little expenditure in money and time as I could to have fun with those parameters. The photo below is a lot more than a hint.

First, a little history. Brace yourselves, folks, this is a long one. And it has a bare minimum to do with any work I have accomplished. I didn’t do much. But I had some fun doing it.

Radio-controlled model helicopters in the recent past, especially scale models of the real thing, have usually been one of the most difficult vehicles to replicate and operate. In some ways, “cheats” due to technological limitations were needed. For example, in motion pictures, helicopter crashes of course had to be simulated with miniatures for obvious reasons. Long before CGI and modern computerized technology, those crashes and planes being blown out of the sky were done with miniatures, sometimes with models suspended on wires in a studio or by using radio-controlled flying models outdoors and actually blowing them up in mid-shot. This can be seen in movies such as “Capricorn One” where two miniature Hughes 500s are seen crashing into a cliffside. Radio-controlled miniatures are made somewhat obvious by the way the model breaks apart, and with the windows blacked out to hide the non-scaled inner workings of the models before they crash. Radio-controlled model helicopters were in their infancy back in 1978, even by professional VFX artists. The models shown in these screen caps from the film were about 3 or 4 feet long.

Or in “The Battle of Britain” from the mid-1960s where many WW2 RC scale models are blown up to such effect that these visual effects shots reportedly even fooled actual combat pilots of the era.

Below, a Messerschmitt 109 miniature is blown to bits using prepared charges in a flying model shot against the outdoor sky in a couple of screen grabs from the film. Examination even shows the balsa pushrods used in RC models to control flight surfaces as the miniature breaks apart. Of course, only geeks like me who study such things would ever notice such anomalies or even care. The general audience would never have such details occur to them.

The popular 1980s TV show “Airwolf” showed a number of RC miniatures, especially helicopters, being blown to smithereens on a weekly basis with, unfortunately, many of the same shots being used over and over and over again, as blowing up radio-controlled models as opposed to the real aircraft still does cost a lot of money (but remains a lot safer and more economical than having a human pilot sacrifice his life for a spot on film!). By that time, audiences were privy to the phony shot of the plane ducking behind a hill or stand of trees while a prepared charge was detonated in the foreground, or a stock explosion superimposed over a real aircraft that looked just like the quick cut edit it really was. Or most disappointingly, a cutaway to an actor’s face or similar that just implied that the plane crashed. Miniatures allowed the audience to actually see the bad guy get blown to bits in the aircraft he was flying satisfactorily without “cheap cheats”. or boring, let-down edits.

Throughout the years since the mid-1980s, I have built and flown a number of radio-controlled airplane models as well as free flight and so on. But as life goes, I more recently just don’t have the time to build the models I always wanted to design, build, and fly. And, most recently, our “ruling class” has determined that us nerds who build and fly scale model airplanes are as dangerous as an automatic weapon in the hands of a terrorist in the middle of a Superbowl game. Draconian laws have been recently introduced that I have no wish to partake in, so my dreams of building that 50” wingspan Piper Cherokee (or even refurbishing the models I built 30 years ago) have now been dashed unless I choose to go along with unjust, oppressive and useless laws. The rules state that any model aircraft weighing over 250 grams must be considered equivalent to a machine gun with a missile launcher and therefore must be registered and tracked by those who we have been “democratically” chosen to rule our lives at every step. I won’t do that. It’s insane. It’s a balsa wood model airplane weighing less than 3 pounds that does about 20 MPH through the air at an altitude of about 50 feet, not a supersonic cruise missile. So I guess I’m relegated to enjoying the hobby at a much more reduced level than even that.

Most ironically, China, a most oppressive country that enslaves people with an oppressive social credit score system and endless surveillance, has provided that escape. Go figure. But it is a double-edged sword of course, as with almost everything.

Various companies based in China have been making tremendous advances in the radio-control hobby, mostly due to cheap labour and electronic technical advancements, both for better and worse. People no longer need to build model airplanes from sticks of Balsa wood and covering, taking weeks to build like I used to do and therefore had a lot more than just money invested in them. Today, they can just cobble them together with injection molded foam that takes an evening or, in the most extreme, just yank them out of the box and go flying (or at least attempt it) with absolutely nothing invested in the understanding of model aircraft at all. The models have become far more attractive to the “just get it out of the box and use it” crowd who are used to pushing virtual buttons on a video game provided on their dumb-phone and have no understanding of the laws of physics or the nature of aerodynamics. This is likely why many of the insane laws were introduced. Idiots who have nothing invested in the hobby beyond paying some money in an impulse buy have ruined it for the rest of us. Ready-made and relatively cheap “drones” and the like have proliferated, thus causing various (yet still very uncommon) accidents and infractions on property and privacy, etc. This is much more of a concern to those who watch mainstream media that exaggerate everything, as the “real” hobbyists were self-governing and very responsible, making accidents and incidents to the average citizen exceptionally rare to nonexistent. Now that any idiot with a few throw-away bucks could buy and fly a camera-equipped “drone”, the fools started causing problems and attracted the ire of those who wish to control and scam even more money from us, using any excuse possible, thus bringing the heavy hand of the unthinking and grinning authoritarianist hand-wringing bureaucrat to add further oppression to their already insane repertoire. These remote “drones” (actually quadcopters, as a true “drone” operates autonomously once pre-programmed… but the biased and uninformed media destroyed that definition too) allowed people to fly in the middle of cities which serious RC aircraft hobbyists in the past would never even consider. The fools ruin it for everyone. The bad apple in the barrel.

But that 250-gram limitation at least allowed for those of us who want to go Small (see what I did there?) an outlet for RC enjoyment. Fortunately, electronic technology, which has made automobiles far more complex, expensive, and less affordable for “less fortunate” people, and made many more things we use, like computers, have a much shorter life span due to deliberate planned obsolescence that causes us to waste more money than ever before, has nevertheless allowed us to fly model aircraft that can be enjoyed without selling our souls to our insane governments. The models covered in this article, which I will now finally get to, are an example of the positives of that technology.

I first was made aware of these little electro-mechanical wonders through a YouTube video produced by “The RC Saylors”, a nice midwestern and “folksy” American husband and wife team who enjoys reviewing radio-controlled model products of all kinds. Honestly, I don’t know how they can afford all the stuff they review, but they do it anyway, and I trust their reviews as they do not appear to be shills for the companies whose products they test on video, even though they admit they get sent some stuff for review but they usually buy the products themselves. To their credit, if a product underperforms, they tell all and do not hide defects. If a product is crap, they openly say so. Thus, I gave it a shot. I wanted something fun to fly after all these years and was not previously satisfied by the “cheap stuff” that had been offered years before and were definitely not scale models. The RC Saylors (among many others) praised this model and showed me something I wanted... a reasonably accurate scale model of a flying machine that I could operate in my backyard (don’t have to go to an “approved” flying field) and was really affordable.

Enter the “Eachine” brand E-120 helicopter, shown below with the included radio. The rotor blades are hinged and can collapse for storage in its shipping box. This photo shows the “toy” brand markings removed.

These models are most remarkable in that they do not use non-scale “flybars” for gyroscopic stability as was necessary on older RC models (including miniatures used in older films as mentioned above) that were radio-controlled but instead use electronic gyroscopic stabilization allowing for a full-blown flybarless configuration that looks completely realistic, even surpassing the realism of visual effects models in movies from years ago.

Below is a screen grab from the film “A View To A Kill” which shows the radio-controlled miniature Russian helicopter in its impending crash sequence. This model was likely about 3-4 feet long. Note the “flybar” that looks like a small rotor blade above the main rotors. These flybars were needed in early RC helicopter models to maintain stability. Modern RC models now use electronic gyroscopes to do the work of the flybar, eliminating the need for them and thus allowing the model to look more realistic. The presence of the flybar is the quickest way to recognize radio-controlled miniatures in older films when used by VFX artists.

The other remarkable thing is that these tiny and very competent scale models come in at just around $100 USD which these days is very reasonable for a fully maneuverable radio-controlled scale model helicopter that, once you get skilled, you could fly around inside your house, a feat unthinkable in the past!

The Eachine model is a reasonably accurate (but not perfect) scale miniature of the Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm BO-105 full-scale helicopter made famous as one of the first helicopters to actually do major aerobatics once considered impossible by a chopper, such as loops and rolls. I think that for this reason it was chosen to be used in two of the James Bond films, in the opening sequence of “A View To A Kill”. This is a shot of the full-scale helicopter. Note the lack of the flybar.

…and the more recent “Spectre”…

I liked those films and decided I’d like to decorate mine as seen therein. The Eachine model was already painted in gray, so all I had to do was scrape off the factory “toy” brand printing on the sides and it would immediately match the ”Spectre” version which was completely unmarked. The second one, from the “RC ERA” brand, was painted orange already so it only needed to have the bottom painted white and some decals added after I had likewise scraped off the “toy” brand markings. Below are the models as delivered before my very slight decorative modifications.

Both models are identical except for colour and markings and, for some reason, the feature of “optical flow stabilization”, seen as a tiny camera (it looks at the ground underneath the copter to help counter lateral drift caused by wind) on the belly of the gray Eachine version was completely omitted on the RC ERA (orange) version which had a “quality control” sticker covering the empty hole (shown removed in the following photo). Obviously there are a few companies sharing the same tooling but choosing to omit some features from the original Eachine brand. Well, I don’t think copyright laws or that kind of thing are enforced in China too much. So if you don’t care about the colour and you want the better model, choose the Eachine brand with the optical flow camera. It helps to counter any breeze in your backyard. (Note: The big rectangular hole under the nose is where the battery goes!)

Over the years, micro-miniature technology has improved a great deal. In the few decades previous, radio-controlled model helicopters had to be large and very expensive, often costing thousands of dollars. They were also very difficult to fly and it often cost you hundreds of dollars in repairs after crashing as you learned to finally get the hang of flying them. That has all changed. But as previously stated, idiots will be idiots and both YouTubers of various stripes and “Amazon” reviews will document many negatives, often by people who can’t be bothered to take the models seriously because they cannot grasp the scope of the skills needed to fly and maintain these “toys”. Nevertheless, I am exceptionally impressed by just how good these products can be to the individual who will take the time to learn and understand how to fly these little machines.

These particular models are as good as it gets for a beginner who wants to lean on his own. HOWEVER, it still takes some time to learn. You will NOT fly it like a pro right out of the box. If you decide to buy one, do yourself a big favour and study the flight controls like hell before charging the battery and watch a bunch of YouTube videos that show you how it works. Fly it in an open outdoor space clear from any obstacles on a day with ZERO WIND over a closely mowed lawn that will absorb crash landings (use a piece of plywood or flat cardboard that is perfectly level for a take-off point). Although the model will resist light crashes, it can be easily destroyed by careless flying like ramming it into a tree or whatever hard stuff you might have sticking up in your garden.

Anyway, I just decided to make these models look a bit more like their filmed Bond counterparts. The Eachine one was already gray, so I just had to carefully scrape the toylike markings off of it and it was good to go. The orange RC ERA version needed more work to make it match the filmed version. I used screencaps to make some marking replicas in Adobe Illustrator and sent those files off to V1 Decals in British Columbia to have them printed, as I cannot print white markings on my Bubblejet printer. Ben at V1 has a special laser printer that can actually print opaque colours and white graphics that were previously only accomplished with an obsolete “ALPS” printer.

I masked off the top 3/4 of the orange model after carefully scraping off the “branding” markings with an exacto knife, trying like hell not to scrape off the underlying paint) and sprayed the bottom white using an airbrush. After that was done, I applied the decals provided by V1. That’s all there was to it to make a good-looking replica as seen on screen from the few shots edited into the Bond film.

So, you see? It’s possible not only to have a model of an interesting subject with very little work and money but an actually functional one if you think you have the skill needed to fly one of these babies. But a warning: It does take patience to learn to fly. I am very familiar with flying conventional RC fixed-wing airplanes, but I admit to having to learn all over again when it comes to flying a helicopter… even one that is “beginner friendly”!

But with patience, and thanks to modern electronic technology and cheap Chinese labour (eye-roll), you can have that simulated realism happen in real-time right in front of your face with these very affordable scale models. It’s about as good as you can get right now for the price at the time of this writing, mid-October 2023.

Enjoy!