Talk:Radio-controlled aircraft

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"Channel" seems to have two different meanings in this article. Perhaps someone more knowledgable can sort this out?

A discussion about channels and frequency has been added to hopefully clarify this. Bgrayless

Contents 1 Merge Aircraft Pages 2 Article Size 3 Howto: building RC airplanes 4 legality 5 External Links

[edit] Merge Aircraft Pages

There is another page, Model_aircraft, that has a lot of redundant RC plane related information and some additional information that doesn't seem to be appropriate for a "Model Aircraft" page. Model doesn't necessarily mean RC and seeing how modeling aircraft and actually flying RC aircraft are very different hobbies, I think it would make sense to merge all the relevant RC information from "Model Aircraft" over to this page and then link to this page. - Bgrayless

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Anyone want to help?

Well they are obviously related, since some peopl build their models to fly, so that article should cover at least a little bit about flying them and RC specifically, but I agree it has too much. Take it up with people on that talk page and see what you can do. Each article should be comprehensive about their topic, but not go into too much detail about specific areas and exclude other important ones. This article should be the detailed RC one, that article should summarize the RC facet. - Taxman ^Talk 12:01, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and moved the RC related info over to this page. There were some comments on "Model_aircraft" that mentioned doing the same thing, so I took care of it. Both pages could use a little bit of cleanup for consistency though. - Bgrayless 12:52, August 30, 2005

That's generally good, but don't take everything out of that article. Have a look at Wikipedia:Summary style. It shows a way to organize related material so no one article gets too detailed and loses focus, but each also covers an overview of what they should. Hopefully that guideline is clear enough. What should happen in this case is Model aircraft should carry a summary of RC info (basically a summary 1 or 2 paragraphs of what this article should ideally cover), and this article should be listed as the main article of the RC section of Model aircraft. Then this article should have a summary discussion of model aircraft and link to that article. After that it's just a lot of style and formatting work that this article needs, so try to review the manual of style guidelines when you can. - Taxman ^Talk 19:09, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe there should be a notice on the Model_airplanes page letting editors know that this page exists. I put an image on the Model_airplanes page without knowing about this page. When I later found this page, which I thought was the same because much of the content is very similar, I wondered why my image had been removed. I would like to help merging the pages or making a wikibook. - The_Ball 22:03, November 15, 2005

[edit] Article Size

Does anyone have any problems with the size of this article? I'm curious because I have been adding a lot to it(using mostly other peoples great expertise) over the past month or so. The reason I have been adding so much is because I personally had a very difficult time finding good information to get started with RC planes. I understand that this article may not be the best place for a full "RC Plane Guide", but there is so much factual information in regards to the RC plane hobby that it seems you can only find through experience or working with a mentor, that I wanted to define and create great definitive information on RC planes for others to use. Eventually, I would like to add information on RC plane history (which would probably be broken out into its own article) and more photos that visually describe some of the terms and concepts that are so confusing to newbees. Any feedback???

Hmm, I don't get it. That is exactly what my comment above was designed to help with. Summary style is the way to avoid having an article be too long, but still cover all the most important information appropriately. Also try to avoid original research. - Taxman ^Talk 17:31, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

I looked at the summary information after you recommended it. I did modify the first part of the article to more of a generic RC plane summary and moved the specific info about frequencies and channels down to the proper area of the article. Do you have any recommendations as to what parts, if any, would be good candidates for their own article? I was thinking that "Radio controlled airplane (flight)" could be it's own since it could get technical and detailed, but is still crucial. Perhaps "Radio controlled airplane (construction)" could be it's own as well, seeing how many hobbyists don't build, they only buy assembled planes, so the information wouldn't be crucial to a "buyer". If the technical specifics of model aeronatics and calculations gets too deep for this article, it could become its own topic as well. I am trying to avoid original research. Much of the stuff in the article is stuff that was already on the Wiki site, just reorganized or transferred to this page as appropriate. Other info has been extracted from several experienced hobbyists either in person or in research (much of which can be tweaked as required) but not easily available to a new researcher. - Brian Grayless

Well I don't know enough about the topic to really know what is important, but what you've outlined above seems like a good start to me. You'll just have to outline it on paper maybe and prioritize what is the most important, top level, overview information, and move down from there. Take a look at examples of featured articles to see how the articles the community considers its best are organized. Another general comment is there is too much advice type writing, like "Getting Started", "Selecting a plane", etc. Instead, it should be something like:

Types of planes

Kits, building, etc

RTF

etc

Plane characteristics

Size

Wing location

etc

Don't take it all the wrong way, because the article is coming along nicely, but of course needs work like other articles. Generally the recommendation on size is to try to stay at or a bit below 32kb because that is a good size to avoid overwhelming the reader, and they can still read the subarticles for details. Keep up the good work. - Taxman ^Talk 21:34, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Howto: building RC airplanes

I really appreciate all the information people have added to this article. When this article gets trimmed back to a short encyclopedia article on what is a radio controlled airplane, I think it would be good to move the trimmings over to a wikibook focused more on how to build RC planes, like other how-to wikibooks such as Wikibooks:Becoming a Private Pilot, Wikibooks:Jet Propulsion, Wikibooks:How To Build A Computer, etc. Would Wikibooks:RC Airplane be a good name, or would you prefer something else? --DavidCary 23:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll see if I can do this. --phatmonkey 09:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I've moved a huge amount to the wikibooks article and cleaned up this page. --phatmonkey 10:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a great improvement overall. Though some of that could be pulled back as short summaries if needed or to fill out sub articles on specific topics. Also, please use useful Wikipedia:Edit summaries so people know you're chopping out large amounts of material. - Taxman ^Talk 14:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] legality

where can people fly these rc airplanes? I see people flying them in parks, but is it really legal to fly them over cities? What kinds of limitations are there?

There are park fliers that can be flown pretty much anywhere, they are generally relatively small in size. If it is gas powered model, most pilots are associated to an RC hobby club. These clubs have very strict rules and safety procedures for flying model aircraft. Most clubs belong to either AMA (USA) or MAAC (Canada) organizations. These organizations are legal entities that provide insurance coverage to persons and property damage in the event of an accident. They also ensure that clubs enforce their safety guidelines on club members, etc.

Gdavidp1 07:16, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm new to RC flying and as such do not have the knowlege of others in here, but I have found out that some cities do have specific rules / legalities for flying any type of RC aircraft. Here in Jacksonville Beach you are required to keep all electric powered RC aircraft at least 30 feet away from people and buildings, and aircraft with glow engines must maintain a distance of at least 100 feet. Also, you are not permitted to fly on the beach here if the winds exceed a certain speed at or below 300 feet AGL.

[edit] External Links

I have removed external links to discussion forums as they are a violation of WP:EL. -- MakeChooChooGoNow 09:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)