Radio Control Blog
The year was 1988, I was 11 years old. The Minnesota Twins were fresh off a World Series win. After taking my Sears Lobo II to it’s limits (whatever that means to an 11 y/o), it was time for an upgrade.
I had purchased a copy of Radio Control Car Action magazine from the local hobby shop – Jolly’s Toys and Hobby in Apache Plaza. Inside, I found this article with all of its 80s flair:
Now that I got my ham license and some FPV equipment, I needed a way to set it up so that it’s usable at the flying field. Also, don’t let the title fool you – most of the money ($75) was spent on the FPV system itself, (including camera!). Other parts I was able to borrow or steal…
I started with the two-monitor portable DVD system that my kids use to watch movies on road trips. The 1st monitor is the “brain” that has the DVD player. The 2nd monitor simply accepts power and an A/V signal from the 1st. I stole this monitor for use with my ground station. I tested it by powering it on through the cigarette lighter jack and then hooking it up to the FPV receiver. With the FPV transmitter off I saw static instead of the dreaded “blue screen” – which is good!
While this isn’t about anything R/C, it’s somewhat related… I recently converted a lead-acid battery powered mower to lithium-ion batteries. Anyone that is in R/C and has a lawn to mow should follow this course.
For the record, I hate mowing the lawn. It’s a useless pursuit. We’ve all got better things to do with both our time and our resources like water and land. This Washington Post article “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them” pretty much sums up my opinion.
The purpose of upgrading to an electric mower is to get the job done faster, and without smelling like a snowblower repairman when I’m done.
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If you haven’t yet purchased a Turnigy 9x, you might want to instead consider the Taranis X7 which has even more features plus telemetry.
But if you already have a Turnigy 9x or got one on the cheap, here are a few things you should do to it right away as they’re all free or very inexpensive and will make your 9x experience much better.
My first radio control car that was of any significance was a Sears Lobo. I don’t recall if it was a Lobo, Lobo II, or a Super Lobo, but I found this old eBay listing that looks spot-on:
I had other cars before it, some that had wires – “remote control” as they were called. Another early radio controlled car had a single button on the controller. The car would go forward with no input from the controller. When you pressed the button, it would go backwards and turn at the same time – effectively giving you an option to point it in a new direction. The Lobo put all those others to bed.
Jules joined cub scouts this year and as part of joining, he was given a cub-scout branded Estes rocket to build and launch at the Rocket Into Scouting event to jump start his membership.
