anyone into model rockets or RC Airplanes?

i've never played around with either one, but would like to get one or both to fly with my son. Where to go, what to buy? my son is 4, so i'll likely be doing all the flying, but something durable might be in order...Any recommendations?

Wanna stick to electric and not the super fancy gas powered ones...




yet.

i've never played around with either one, but would like to get one or both to fly with my son. Where to go, what to buy? my son is 4, so i'll likely be doing all the flying, but something durable might be in order...Any recommendations?

Wanna stick to electric and not the super fancy gas powered ones...

yet.

Had friends into this in HS, but never floated my geek-boat.
Not much online for AZ unfortunately, found some links here tho.
Might be the sort of thing you just need to skulk around in the hobby shops for tho.

i used to do rockets in high school. they are pretty cheap if you stick to the estes rockets which are available at pretty much all hobby shops and some craft stores. to start you will just need a launch pad with an electric igniter switch ($10-20), choose a rocket or two ($5-??), and the engines for each rocket (4 for $10). if you choose rockets that use the same size engine, you can save some cost. you can launch these in most open spaces. stay away from airports as the rockets can fly pretty high. pretty much everything is re-usable except for the engines. you can also just buy supplies and build your own models from scratch if you want.

if you are interested in bigger rockets, i would suggest contacting the ASU rocket guys. they are usually pretty helpful and they should be able to give you information about launches in AZ. i know they used to go out to rainbow valley (west of phx) to launch with an amateur rocket club. they build really big guys and use home made motors and stuff like that.

as for r/c planes, i got involved with some of this at ASU. this is a much more expensive hobby. an airplane with an engine is probably going to cost you $100. and as you are learning, you will have to pay to fix any thing that breaks during crashes. this probably doesn't include the receiver/transmitter either. the other difficult thing is finding a spot to fly. most r/c runways require you to be a member of their club to use the runway. you can probably start with a smaller electric plane and get away with flying around a park or something. but some of the bigger planes and receiver/transmitters require a special location to fly due to FCC laws. any hobby shop would have the information about clubs and FCC guidelines.

my grandpa, circa 1985.

we went to Fry Electronics last night and got an RC helicopter. It flew two or three flights and now doesn't steer correctly anymore. It was $40 or so and i'm taking it back tonite. Bummer. It's only about 8 inches long and is really hard to control, especially for a little dude. I think the bigger ones might be easier to control...gonna try for one of those. They have gyroscopes in them now and are pretty stable. radical.