#KeepRCHelisAlive

[OnTheSnap]

Originally Posted by dr_boom

I think he just meant considering the low margins and at this stage in the game heli companies should continue to focus on helis.

You'd have to be sitting on a lucrative game changing idea to make it worthwhile.

***edit*** a hair too late with my response

Agree. If you are a company that's making an ultra light ultra cheap 3D GPU enabled HD video system with AR goggles that are 4K capable - then you are on the right road to making big profits in the FPV market. But this is true R&D requiring millions of capital and a large multi-functional engineering staff (look what it took to get Oculus off the ground).

If you are a company trying to make a cute frame, or just another 2 CF slabs, it's a waste of resources. The cute frame - no one wants it. The 2 slabs - no margins, anyone can copy it if you do the slightest thing innovative.

Anyway - for the guys already in the heli industry this is old news. Really it's just an observation of the reality of it. The FPV gold rush is years old already and most have tried the path.

[corywrx]

I don't think RC helicopters are dying at all.

I have a hard time believing that we have less people flying them now than in the 80's.

Stop focusing on the giant bubble from a few years ago and look at the big picture. Yes there was a bubble (the popularity boom) and eventually the bubble pops and the market will normalize.

Quite frankly the doom and gloom is getting old.

[Bert Kammerer]

Wow, lots of comments on this thread, I just came across it.

First of all, those who say that helis are not down are out of their mind, they ARE DOWN! This has nothing to do with businesses still being successful, thank God our business itself is still doing very well. However, nobody can deny the fact that things have declined, IRCHA for example had a MUCH lower attendance than last year, events like Birmingham, Huntsville and others that used to be huge are much smaller, OHB, second largest to IRCHA was 20% down last year, heli guys have quit clubs, our own TORCHS field, one of the biggest in the country has less active heli pilots than ever, the list goes on and on. So if you think helis have not gown down, you live in a different planet or perhaps you live in a country where helis are still strong (many countries overseas still have a strong heli presence!).

With all this being said, I just started this tag to create a movement for people to promote helis. I have received some random criticism about the tag being negative, it is not negative, I haven't said that helis have died, I have just noticed that helis have declined, so the tag is very positive, it just promotes and encourages promotion to our hobby to "keep them alive". Drones and quads are in part responsible for what is happening indeed. However, even though FPV racing is a lot of fun, it gets boring after a while, in fact, I tried it and enjoyed it for a while and realized that after a while the challenge is gone and unless you do it with friends it is boring as hell!

In my opinion, another factor that has contributed to the decline of helis is manufacturers, as many of you said, manufacturers are in part at fault for many reasons, one of them being prices, other reasons have to do with too many releases on the part of some manufacturers and even lack of innovation considering the fact that our hobby has seen incredible advancements and innovations in the last few years, but has become kind of "stagnant" in the last few months.

So with a all this being said, the tag is nothing more than a way to create a movement to have people more active in promoting our hobby. I have been involved in RC myself since I was a kid and I couldn't just sit still while seeing this decline take place.

Let's all get together and productively promote the best we can. Regardless of what brand people fly, the important thing is to get people flying :-)

[BELL SKY]

The for posting BK

[MariaFan]

Originally Posted by Bert Kammerer

snip...

Let's all get together and productively promote the best we can. Regardless of what brand people fly, the important thing is to get people flying :-)

I wish we had a "Like" button at this place.

[Thestructured]

Originally Posted by Bert Kammerer

Let's all get together and productively promote the best we can. Regardless of what brand people fly, the important thing is to get people flying :-)

I plan on doing what I can to help promote over the winter and next season. I'll be bringing photo and video gear to the FARCC spring fling and have a set up for pilot photos and hopefully will be able to put together some promotional footage.

[Bert Kammerer]

Awesome!

[MS60]

try to get a cable segment like x games format where u just get a half dozen pilots thow down for contest with hot judges or celeb judges, most people have never seen this shit.

[Fauropitotto]

Originally Posted by MS60

try to get a cable segment like x games format where u just get a half dozen pilots thow down for contest with hot judges or celeb judges, most people have never seen this shit.

Ahem...

Mirko Cesena in Italienischer Talentshow (4 min 20 sec)

[FlatCrank]

I see a pretty major shift in American society which, I believe, is probably the single largest factor for the decline in RC helicopter interest. There are fewer and fewer “Do It Yourself” type people amongst us. This DIY mentality is a fundamental part of tinkering, finding out how something works, and most of all, possessing a tremendous amount of perseverance to work through problems and issues. Helicopters are extremely challenging both in flying and setting up. Most multirotors/drones are not.

Mike Rowe, from the show Dirty Jobs, will attest to all this. I don’t want to get too off topic but basically, at this moment in time, we are a dying breed. People want fast and quick gratification. Helicopters are not. This is what makes all of us special, in my opinion. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and try to find those few souls out there that truly want a challenge and are willing to take it on.

I love the never-ending challenges of working on and flying RC Helicopters. As far as I am concerned, helicopters are the epitome in the RC world. Market that! Challenge those that wish to be challenged! Make it special!

[Vinger]

RC modelling goes through phases of one discipline being more popular than others at a certain time in history. We have seen this with large scale aircraft and now jets are the most popular. It goes in cycles and only the diehard hobbyist will stick to what they enjoy.

FPV racing is currently the craze, with HUGE prize money and every manufacturer releasing new stuff every day. It will blow over and only the real enthusiast will stay in it. We can never expect the helicopter discipline to get back to where it was, it will stay constant or maybe a small growth over the next few years. Manufacturers and dealers should stop chasing the dollar and give back more to the community and they will get a return albeit over a longer period.

It is like this with all hobbies, from skateboards to car racing.

[Thoemse]

Originally Posted by Bert Kammerer

Drones and quads are in part responsible for what is happening indeed. However, even though FPV racing is a lot of fun, it gets boring after a while, in fact, I tried it and enjoyed it for a while and realized that after a while the challenge is gone and unless you do it with friends it is boring as hell!

I can second this sentiment. I got into the RC flying hobby via racing quads. I built them with passion. I think they are fun to fly and the FPV aspect is something special. They are however not as much fun to fly as a helicopter!

I ended up with helis because i joined a club so people stop aksing stupid questions or let their dogs off the leash while i try to land my racer with not much left in the lipo. There i saw a heli flying and that was it.

Yes racing quads may steal away some potential heli pilots, they might end up comming back though. Racing is only fun with friends. That is something not everyone can do. I am a family man and I mostly go flying in my midday break for example.

We don't have to fear loosing more heli manufacturers moving to drones though. The drone market is incredibly hard to get into now. Quad parts are cloned to hell and back. You get everything from china for low prices. Unless you manage to sell HD digital low latency video for a low price you will not have any chance to enter this market.
The ready to go cameraship market is held my DJI and Yunnec. Even companies like Gopro are failing horribly trying to enter that market. Good luck with that. You'd have to catch up on years of R&D, overtake them and then sell that for a low price while competing with a chinese company that produces very cheap.

We have to promote our hobby for sure. I do believe that some of the quad guys will end up flying a heli sooner or later though. The real quad racers don't fly self leveled drones, they want the challenge.

@flatcrank: Cameraship pilots wont come over and they buy the thing in a package. Racing drones however, are a different thing. They require a lot more tinkering than you would believe. Building a heli is easy compared to that. It is simply following a manual and using loctite. Building racing drones means soldering the whole thing from ground up. There are RTF ones out now but that will last one day, then you'll be repairing and soldering.
It's a lot of tinkering too because all there is to it are youtube manuals from other guys who did it. If you buy an OSD you get a tiny chip. Time to find out what device you need to flash software on it, where to get that software and how to solder that chip onto your camera, VTX and Power distribution. It is tinkering at it's best.

Building the racers was the part that was most fun to me before i switched over to helis. I will be flying a raceingdrone every now and then too. Why not do both?

[TJ]

Berts not trying to get a fight over if there is a decline in rc helis or if we should be anti drones. He's trying to get you or your club to do similar things to help bring the hobby that you love to people who may not have ever seen it.

As an example as part of the St. Louis WhirlyBirds club we have and continue to do a lot of community outreach programs.1-2 times a year we usually put on demos for Boy Scout summer camps. We have done several fairs setting up booths and doing demo flights. Also for the second year in a row we were invited back to do demos at a balloon glow festival where the community is trying to show off their new air port. They had several full scale helis, planes, hot air balloons, and heli rides all day. We flew on the main runway. These are just a few examples.

Guys you don't have to be a top 3D pilot to do this. A couple of our guys that fly scale get a lot of interest and so do the guys that can just flips it a couple of times while flying a circuit. We do have our better pilots also but everyone is there to share the passion for Rc Helicopters and answer any questions people have. Remember most of these people have only seen Rc Helis at the mall level and have no ideal of what they can really do.

[Thestructured]

Hah, they should have field trips to RC flying fields for kids for science or physics classes ;]

Yeah right, schools wouldn't let them near these things.

[TJ]

Really you could bring it to the schools as most have a foot ball fields. Students on the beacher, pilot on the track, and the heli flight box would be in the center of the field. This would give plenty of space between students and flight demonstration. The biggest hump would be getting coverage from the AMA and the paper work involved if you chose to get coverage which i imagine the schools would want.

Six Flags up here hold a science day where typically the kids in higher level science classes get bussed in by various school districts to do science experments while riding the rides. So having an event to go over the physics of flight and how our helis can break the tradition thought of what is possible with a heli might not be to impossibe. Its just a matter of knowing the right people to make it happen.

[BrokeDad]

Started back in this January .. got two heli pilots in training now

[im4711]

Originally Posted by Thestructured

Hah, they should have field trips to RC flying fields for kids for science or physics classes ;]

Yeah right, schools wouldn't let them near these things.

.... you do not have to actually go to the school and fly there. No need. Invite them to the field as a field trip and see how happy they would be. There are many ways to actually promote the hobby

[Shogun71]

Hey, I have to agree and disagree with a number of comments.

From my perspective the hobby involves a few things:
- Hands on building.
- Learning computer systems and interactions.
- Learning basics.
- Flying.

Helis and Quads fill the void.

I much prefer helis but.....

I can't fly my 700 in my brother in laws house. I was able to fly my tiny whoop all over his house and have a lot of fun while avoiding the inlaws for 12 batteries of time...

Our indoor venue in the winter has limited space. It is hard to find a really good little heli for our space. My Oxy 3 is too big for where we fly.

A little 130 sized quad with a 450 3s pack can be a lot of fun!!!

The heli market was too big and not supportable in the long term through all the variances in the economies.

FPV is fun in certain instances and is cheaper.

It's all good. Let's just say positive and become like the cranky old plankers that shun everyone who does not have wings on their model.

[toadiscoil]

Although we heli pilots tend to give a negative connotation to plankers (some of them are just plain mean but there are super cool plane pilots out there) and drone pilots (because we feel the dollars are shifting that way and killing our hobby) I don't think we don't appreciate the other portions of the hobby.

I think the point is to help grow the heli aspect of the hobby and make people understand how cool it is. I have a Blade Inductrix myself and I enjoy flying it around the house and although I have seen Align's 150X demos doing cool 3D on a living room my skills are far from being able to achieve that but with the little drone it is just plain relaxing fun. However to me it is just that: a relaxing flying toy. My helis are for REAL flying and progressing.

Also FPV sounds like a very cool concept but like Bert said, unless you have a group to go out race with it turns pretty boring pretty fast.

The problem is that drones are getting so much exposure that it's getting ridiculous. But it is because they are very accessible. They are cheaper than helis and far easier to fly. Some of them are probably even "crash until it works no more and go buy another". I am not talking about high end but you can get a pretty decent drone that will resist many crashes without fixing at a toy store while toy store helis are crap, crash fast and then gets expensive and difficult to repair, if at all.

I agree it takes a special guy to really progress into helis. However the point is the more we promote the heli aspect, the more probabilities we have to find those people. If they never know helis exist because everyone is doing drones, then helis will go on a downfall. That will translate into fewer numbers at events, higher prices due to lack of competition because OEM's drop out or move to drones, etc. Oh wait that's already happening

So for those who are really passionate about the hobby (helis) why not try to promote it to a wider audience (with the appropriate safety of course).

I know I will, already thinking of ways how to do it.

Originally Posted by Shogun71

Hey, I have to agree and disagree with a number of comments.

From my perspective the hobby involves a few things:
- Hands on building.
- Learning computer systems and interactions.
- Learning basics.
- Flying.

Helis and Quads fill the void.

I much prefer helis but.....

I can't fly my 700 in my brother in laws house. I was able to fly my tiny whoop all over his house and have a lot of fun while avoiding the inlaws for 12 batteries of time...

Our indoor venue in the winter has limited space. It is hard to find a really good little heli for our space. My Oxy 3 is too big for where we fly.

A little 130 sized quad with a 450 3s pack can be a lot of fun!!!

The heli market was too big and not supportable in the long term through all the variances in the economies.

FPV is fun in certain instances and is cheaper.

It's all good. Let's just say positive and become like the cranky old plankers that shun everyone who does not have wings on their model.

[toadiscoil]

I don't fully agree with it, even though it would make sense.

The reason is I see myself. I don't like tinkering with the helis at all. I love my Goblin 380 because all I had to do was to lower the main tail gain. Yes probably Bert would fly it and modify the whole PID loop to get it good but I am at 5% of his ability so I need 5% of tuning to make it feel right. I loved building it and I really appreciate how stupid easy it is to fix due to very smart engineering from SAB (comes with a price though so not looking forward to a crash) but not really looking forward to tinkering with it. Nor do I want to add DIY stuff to it.

Probably a reason why I don't appreciate the Oxy 3 as much as 90% of owners is because it requires a bit more tuning than my previous experience (Blade helis who required not much yes I was lucky to pick the good models, and the Goblin 380) so if I can't get it to fly right the first few flights I get a bit desperate. I know in time I will learn how to do this more efficiently but I enjoy the flying aspect of the hobby. To me an hour spent at the bench is an hour I could have spent flying or even simming.

So going back to previous comments on this thread if we have helis that are cheap and relatively accessible to approach we can get more people in and move into the more challenging aspects of the hobby (man flying inverted is HARD!). If we get people to know such things exist, the better the chance to have more pilot buddies.

I am very passionate about this hobby and I truly want to share that to more people and if they are willing to experience the joy of flight and the challenge of progression I am happier than just being one more pilot. Hence I spend lots of time on HF more than I should

Originally Posted by FlatCrank

I see a pretty major shift in American society which, I believe, is probably the single largest factor for the decline in RC helicopter interest. There are fewer and fewer “Do It Yourself” type people amongst us. This DIY mentality is a fundamental part of tinkering, finding out how something works, and most of all, possessing a tremendous amount of perseverance to work through problems and issues. Helicopters are extremely challenging both in flying and setting up. Most multirotors/drones are not.

Mike Rowe, from the show Dirty Jobs, will attest to all this. I don’t want to get too off topic but basically, at this moment in time, we are a dying breed. People want fast and quick gratification. Helicopters are not. This is what makes all of us special, in my opinion. Don’t fight it. Embrace it and try to find those few souls out there that truly want a challenge and are willing to take it on.

I love the never-ending challenges of working on and flying RC Helicopters. As far as I am concerned, helicopters are the epitome in the RC world. Market that! Challenge those that wish to be challenged! Make it special!