Part one of the a build log for my latest project, the RCPowers Mig 29 v2, is up over on my other blog.
http://greysaerobuildlogs.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/rcpowers-mig-29-v2-build.html
Regards,
Grey
Saturday, 16 June 2012
Thursday, 14 June 2012
I'm a fanboy.
Recently on Flight Test's Youtube channel they reviewed a scratchbuilt F-22 foamy. Looking at the comments section it became clear that the review got lost and it's become a pissing match on who is the best plane designer and whatnot.
I find myself wondering how Josh and Josh feel that their video is now somewhat redundant because of the replies. That, despite their positive intent to bring a bit of fun and happy into the world it's been railroaded into a stream of back and forth rubbish from "fanboys" and "haters".
So you know what? Here's my spin on things.
I'm an RCPowers Fanboy and I'm definately not scared to admit it. My youtube channel being full of videos of the RCP F-22 V1 is probably a dead giveaway anywho. I have about 5 of their planes and I enjoy most of them regularly.
What I really don't understand is when Fanboy crosses the line into OCD. When RCP, RCFF, 6mmFlyRC etc becomes the only thing worth looking at. They all have planes worth looking at IMO, even though I'm an RCPowers fanboy.
I mean, seriously speaking, what is the point of letting your like for a certain designer or website get in the way of looking at others where you might find a plane that you are going to like just as much?
I look at RCFoamFighters a fair bit. I'm not really into the speed planes they seem to specialise in, so the majority of it I'll never build, but it's still interesting to go and read. On the planes, the Nova is wicked fast but just doesn't interest me, sure. The Aurora though? Now that's a nice looking plane I could get behind. It's by a different designer so it's not going to have the performance characteristics that I love in the RCP designs but... It's sweet looking plane, slick and fast and it's something I'm not going to get from RCPowers.
So... What's the point of not considering it? It's not like I need to show some solidarity for starving kids in Africa, people suffering under oppressive military regiemes or trying to save the amazon rainforest.
It's an RC plane built out of a sheet of foam with some electronics stuck onto to it. It's just a couple hours of fun with the lads. So if I get a couple hours of fun with the lads out of it... Why should who designed it really matter?
Do I tell people looking at getting into Scratchbuilt RC planes to go to RCPowers? Sure I do. If they are beginners that's about all I tell them because RCP specialises in beginner friendly planes. But if they are looking for a speed plane? I mention the RCP T-50 V1 but also send them to RCFoamFighters too. Thats' what RCFF are good at so what reason is there not to? If they are an SR-71 plan? I'll send them links to popular SR-71's with good reports from people who built them regardless of the source.
I really, truly, think that a lot of people are cutting off their nose to spite their face. There's a lot of good stuff out there, don't let your fanboyhood get in the way of you finding it.
Regards,
Grey.
I find myself wondering how Josh and Josh feel that their video is now somewhat redundant because of the replies. That, despite their positive intent to bring a bit of fun and happy into the world it's been railroaded into a stream of back and forth rubbish from "fanboys" and "haters".
So you know what? Here's my spin on things.
I'm an RCPowers Fanboy and I'm definately not scared to admit it. My youtube channel being full of videos of the RCP F-22 V1 is probably a dead giveaway anywho. I have about 5 of their planes and I enjoy most of them regularly.
What I really don't understand is when Fanboy crosses the line into OCD. When RCP, RCFF, 6mmFlyRC etc becomes the only thing worth looking at. They all have planes worth looking at IMO, even though I'm an RCPowers fanboy.
I mean, seriously speaking, what is the point of letting your like for a certain designer or website get in the way of looking at others where you might find a plane that you are going to like just as much?
I look at RCFoamFighters a fair bit. I'm not really into the speed planes they seem to specialise in, so the majority of it I'll never build, but it's still interesting to go and read. On the planes, the Nova is wicked fast but just doesn't interest me, sure. The Aurora though? Now that's a nice looking plane I could get behind. It's by a different designer so it's not going to have the performance characteristics that I love in the RCP designs but... It's sweet looking plane, slick and fast and it's something I'm not going to get from RCPowers.
So... What's the point of not considering it? It's not like I need to show some solidarity for starving kids in Africa, people suffering under oppressive military regiemes or trying to save the amazon rainforest.
It's an RC plane built out of a sheet of foam with some electronics stuck onto to it. It's just a couple hours of fun with the lads. So if I get a couple hours of fun with the lads out of it... Why should who designed it really matter?
Do I tell people looking at getting into Scratchbuilt RC planes to go to RCPowers? Sure I do. If they are beginners that's about all I tell them because RCP specialises in beginner friendly planes. But if they are looking for a speed plane? I mention the RCP T-50 V1 but also send them to RCFoamFighters too. Thats' what RCFF are good at so what reason is there not to? If they are an SR-71 plan? I'll send them links to popular SR-71's with good reports from people who built them regardless of the source.
I really, truly, think that a lot of people are cutting off their nose to spite their face. There's a lot of good stuff out there, don't let your fanboyhood get in the way of you finding it.
Regards,
Grey.
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
New blog page
Later today I'll be adding a new page! I'm putting the finishing touches on my first "how to" video as one of the first upgrades to the blog to make it a source of info as well as someplace where you can see what I'm doing.
I apologise in advance because I really need to buy a better microphone!
Regards,
Grey.
I apologise in advance because I really need to buy a better microphone!
Regards,
Grey.
Saturday, 9 June 2012
Blog updates;
Still havn't managed to fix the "Followers" gadget :P. The same fix that worked for the last template doesn't work with this new one. It works in both Firefox and Chrome but I just can't seem to get ti working in IE...
Updated the RCPowers eCourse page to reflect the new "Ultimate Parkjet System" name, I'll fix the link for it tomorrow.
Have done some work to gadgets so I can get video working well in the sidebar (for future updates).
Well, it's 2am and the house is getting cold, winter is almost here. I'm shuffling off to a warm bed for some well-earned sleep. Nighty night ;).
Regards,
Grey.
Updated the RCPowers eCourse page to reflect the new "Ultimate Parkjet System" name, I'll fix the link for it tomorrow.
Have done some work to gadgets so I can get video working well in the sidebar (for future updates).
Well, it's 2am and the house is getting cold, winter is almost here. I'm shuffling off to a warm bed for some well-earned sleep. Nighty night ;).
Regards,
Grey.
Friday, 8 June 2012
An evening flying
I managed to make it out flying the other evening!
The result is 2 new videos. As usual, both are available in up to 720p. The first needs fullscreen because of the video of the Funfighter Corsair from Hobbyking. Those funfighters are quite small (600mm-ish wingspan) and wicked fast so the mrs has a hard time keeping the video camera pointed at it!
The result is 2 new videos. As usual, both are available in up to 720p. The first needs fullscreen because of the video of the Funfighter Corsair from Hobbyking. Those funfighters are quite small (600mm-ish wingspan) and wicked fast so the mrs has a hard time keeping the video camera pointed at it!
The music is the same because I was originally only going to make 1 video. They both turned out OK (although they both have a couple issues with Image stabilization, one has a spelling mistake and the other is missing a transition :P).
Hopefully today will see me out again. Batteries are charged and waiting, all I'm doing is waiting for it to warm up a bit!
Regards,
Grey.
Whare is this blog going and why hasn't much been happening to it?
So I changed the blog around a bit. I've had some complaints about the old black format so I moved to something a little more colourful and cheerie (as well as easier to read!).
I've been toying with it off and on, between spending far more time on my wife's blog,. Her blog has given me a chance to add and shuffle features to try them out and see what works and what doesn't. I'm far more ready to begin some serious work on my own now.
I've got plans for some upgrades to the blog with more constant and more informative posts about my spin on the Scratchbuilt Foamy portion of the RC plane hobby. It will take a while though, it's a lot of fact checking to try to avoid spreading bad information! It also involves some Multimedia stuff which will take some time to produce.
My Youtube channel is also going to get more than just flight videos soon. I plan on doing a few instructional videos and some opinion-based vids too. Hopefully it all works out in the end!
Tax time is almost here too so I'll have a new case of Depron! Australia is a bit of a bumer for Depron or other foams with a single sheet costing you about $25 after shipping :P. The new case should see my Build Logs blog start to populate itself around late july or early august some time!
There should be a few RCPowers planes, I'm going to do some Tom Hellberg planes and there's a couple designed by the guys in the RCPowers and RCGroups forums I'd like to make too. This should see my Youtube channel get populated with larger variety of planes than the RCPowers F-22. Of course, being one of my favourite planes, it will still make appearances!
Regards,
Grey.
I've been toying with it off and on, between spending far more time on my wife's blog,. Her blog has given me a chance to add and shuffle features to try them out and see what works and what doesn't. I'm far more ready to begin some serious work on my own now.
I've got plans for some upgrades to the blog with more constant and more informative posts about my spin on the Scratchbuilt Foamy portion of the RC plane hobby. It will take a while though, it's a lot of fact checking to try to avoid spreading bad information! It also involves some Multimedia stuff which will take some time to produce.
My Youtube channel is also going to get more than just flight videos soon. I plan on doing a few instructional videos and some opinion-based vids too. Hopefully it all works out in the end!
Tax time is almost here too so I'll have a new case of Depron! Australia is a bit of a bumer for Depron or other foams with a single sheet costing you about $25 after shipping :P. The new case should see my Build Logs blog start to populate itself around late july or early august some time!
There should be a few RCPowers planes, I'm going to do some Tom Hellberg planes and there's a couple designed by the guys in the RCPowers and RCGroups forums I'd like to make too. This should see my Youtube channel get populated with larger variety of planes than the RCPowers F-22. Of course, being one of my favourite planes, it will still make appearances!
Regards,
Grey.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Video Editor Comparison Time.
We all tend to look through things with rose-coloured glasses sometimes. I'm going to make some recommendations BUT if you have a program you already use and like then STICK WITH IT. There's no point in spending extra money for a "better editing program" if what you have keeps you happy.
Scenario 1; The Budget is tight.
Lets face it, when thinking about RC plane videos, video editing is a side pursuit to flying. Every dollar you spend on a video editor and a computer to do it is a dollar less than you can spend on your planes.
Windows Live Movie Maker is the clear winner being free and working fine on any windows-based system. Vegas is a good runner-up though. It's got a nice and rounded set of features that allows you to take things a step further and make your videos look different to so many others using WLMM for their Youtube videos.
Scenario 2; Throw together a Video and get it up on Youtube.
The 2 clear-cut winners here are Windows Live Movie Maker and Cyberlink PowerDirector. Both are exceptionally easy to use for the basics of cutting together your video, adding a title, throwing in some transitions, adding some music and uploading it onto youtube. Powerdirector offers a much wider variety of titles and transitions if you shoose to make your own but both offer to quickly and easily add a theme to your movie that adds titles and transitions on your behalf with only the text to be filled in.
Scenario 3; Add a little flair to your videos
Powerdirector, Vegas and Premiere Elements all allow you to do this, just to differing degrees of personal skill level and computer specs. Powerdirector is probably the best "all round" but each of the others also have their advantages to make them desirable. All will zoom and stabilize, have a variety of titles and transitions and a healthy range of effects to choose from.
Scenario 4; The family will want to use it too.
The results are just a backup of scenario 2. Both WLMM and PowerDirector are easy enough to use that the whole family can get in on the action to varying degrees. Not only will both do your plane videos they will also do the vacation videos, easily create slideshows from digital stills, etc. The main difference in this area is that Powerdirector has event-specific titles on offer, lighting correction to help you spiff up those videos that came out a little dark and more in the way of effects that the kids will want to play with.
Scenario 5; You are looking to build video making into a hobby of it's own rather than just a sideline to your RC.
Adobe Premiere Elements is the winner here IF you can afford a computer to run it well. The range of options and features is just far superior to the other 3 offerings.
PowerDirector and Vegas are both close runner-ups but I'd go with a better version of vegas than the stock. Each has it's own advantages but the main one they have in common is the ability to run on lower-end computers. Both of these run well on my setup which isnt' really designed around video editing.
To bring my computer up to spec to run Premiere Elements well I'm looking at a better CPU, more ram and cleaning up my hard drives. Overall I'm looking at about $350 for this upgrade to do "ok". The only upgrade most people would need to run PowerDirector or Vegas on the average desktop computer is a video card with hardware video encoding to speed up the process. You dont[' need anything flash and there's offerings from both nVidia (gForce) and AMD (Radeon) that will do the job admirably for $140-$160 easy enough.
My opinion?
Based on making RC plane videos quickly and easily so you can show off via the internet?
Free; Windows Live Movie Maker. Honestly speaking? For a good 95% of people this is all you are going to need in order to cut out the bits you don't want, put together the bits you do want and get your video online.
Paid; Look, I would LOVE to recommend PowerDirector, I really would. At $20 more than Vegas it's worth it just for being so easy to use. There's nothing "wrong" with Vegas at all it's just that PowerDirector is by FAR easier to use for 95% of everything you will likely find yourself doing with it. The issue of it not wanting to work with multiple high-def files just makes it so I can't. Sony Vegas therefore wins that race.
It's more fiddly to use but it's still a powerful piece of kit that allows you to get your video onto youtube with the minimal of fuss.
Do NOT buy Peemiere Elements unless you intend to get much deeper into video editing and have the money to splash out on a computer to run it. Just because your computer runs games blisteringly fast it doesn't necessarily mean it will push Premiere Elements either. If Adobe could wrap their heads around using video cards more effectively I would have little trouble recommending this over Vegas. As it stands though, Vegas is far better for the average user if you want to take your first steps into a more professional-type setup for video editing.
Scenario 1; The Budget is tight.
Lets face it, when thinking about RC plane videos, video editing is a side pursuit to flying. Every dollar you spend on a video editor and a computer to do it is a dollar less than you can spend on your planes.
Windows Live Movie Maker is the clear winner being free and working fine on any windows-based system. Vegas is a good runner-up though. It's got a nice and rounded set of features that allows you to take things a step further and make your videos look different to so many others using WLMM for their Youtube videos.
Scenario 2; Throw together a Video and get it up on Youtube.
The 2 clear-cut winners here are Windows Live Movie Maker and Cyberlink PowerDirector. Both are exceptionally easy to use for the basics of cutting together your video, adding a title, throwing in some transitions, adding some music and uploading it onto youtube. Powerdirector offers a much wider variety of titles and transitions if you shoose to make your own but both offer to quickly and easily add a theme to your movie that adds titles and transitions on your behalf with only the text to be filled in.
Scenario 3; Add a little flair to your videos
Powerdirector, Vegas and Premiere Elements all allow you to do this, just to differing degrees of personal skill level and computer specs. Powerdirector is probably the best "all round" but each of the others also have their advantages to make them desirable. All will zoom and stabilize, have a variety of titles and transitions and a healthy range of effects to choose from.
Scenario 4; The family will want to use it too.
The results are just a backup of scenario 2. Both WLMM and PowerDirector are easy enough to use that the whole family can get in on the action to varying degrees. Not only will both do your plane videos they will also do the vacation videos, easily create slideshows from digital stills, etc. The main difference in this area is that Powerdirector has event-specific titles on offer, lighting correction to help you spiff up those videos that came out a little dark and more in the way of effects that the kids will want to play with.
Scenario 5; You are looking to build video making into a hobby of it's own rather than just a sideline to your RC.
Adobe Premiere Elements is the winner here IF you can afford a computer to run it well. The range of options and features is just far superior to the other 3 offerings.
PowerDirector and Vegas are both close runner-ups but I'd go with a better version of vegas than the stock. Each has it's own advantages but the main one they have in common is the ability to run on lower-end computers. Both of these run well on my setup which isnt' really designed around video editing.
To bring my computer up to spec to run Premiere Elements well I'm looking at a better CPU, more ram and cleaning up my hard drives. Overall I'm looking at about $350 for this upgrade to do "ok". The only upgrade most people would need to run PowerDirector or Vegas on the average desktop computer is a video card with hardware video encoding to speed up the process. You dont[' need anything flash and there's offerings from both nVidia (gForce) and AMD (Radeon) that will do the job admirably for $140-$160 easy enough.
My opinion?
Based on making RC plane videos quickly and easily so you can show off via the internet?
Free; Windows Live Movie Maker. Honestly speaking? For a good 95% of people this is all you are going to need in order to cut out the bits you don't want, put together the bits you do want and get your video online.
Paid; Look, I would LOVE to recommend PowerDirector, I really would. At $20 more than Vegas it's worth it just for being so easy to use. There's nothing "wrong" with Vegas at all it's just that PowerDirector is by FAR easier to use for 95% of everything you will likely find yourself doing with it. The issue of it not wanting to work with multiple high-def files just makes it so I can't. Sony Vegas therefore wins that race.
It's more fiddly to use but it's still a powerful piece of kit that allows you to get your video onto youtube with the minimal of fuss.
Do NOT buy Peemiere Elements unless you intend to get much deeper into video editing and have the money to splash out on a computer to run it. Just because your computer runs games blisteringly fast it doesn't necessarily mean it will push Premiere Elements either. If Adobe could wrap their heads around using video cards more effectively I would have little trouble recommending this over Vegas. As it stands though, Vegas is far better for the average user if you want to take your first steps into a more professional-type setup for video editing.
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