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RC Basics Guides Radio Control Modelers
If you put it all together Radio Control, R/C is the largest single segment of scale modeling worldwide and is booming in the U.S. and Canada. Covering every mode of transportation, land, sea and in the air. Logically, that’s the order you’d think that radio control of models came about. Try reverse.
Walter A. Good, considered the father of RC model airplanes and his twin brother designed and build their first RC aircraft, the Big Guff, and their own radio equipment in 1937. Small, nitromethane-powered engines originally entered the market in the 1940s. At the time, there was insufficient technology to control an engine-powered model car other than on a tether. "Tether cars", or "spin dizzies", were capable of speeds upwards of 70 mph. But to truly get back to the origins, you must look at radio. Before 1900 tinkerers were looking at what they could do with this new radio invention and remote control was born. The first public use of radio to control a boat was in 1898 at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden Nikola Tesla demonstrated a small boat which could apparently obey commands from the audience but was in fact controlled by Tesla interpreting the verbal requests and sending appropriate frequencies to tuned circuits in the boat. He was granted a US patent on this invention on November 8th, 1898.
True, Nikola wasn’t working with a model but the concept was there.A hundred years later, radio control, or RC means commanding your own fleet of ships or boats, piloting your own squadron of model planes and helicopters or putting the pedal to the metal (figuratively speaking) with one of literally 1,000s of different model cars or trucks. R/C Cars and Trucks Most scale modelers get there R/C start with a car or truck. That tends to be good thinking, Getting the hang of a model that stays on the ground — most of the time! — is a little easier than controlling one that also challenges you to beat the law of gravity.
R/C cars are easier to control than their flying counterparts, but some are still high-performance machines that are loaded with powerful, sophisticated engineering. That brings up one of the most exciting things to do with R/C cars — race them! Proponents of R/C vehicles get further splintered into Off Road and On road factions, Electric vs Nitro and origination as a kit, pre-built or Ready-To-Run.
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