this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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RC stuff, but only kinda? My dad got me into micro helicopters about a decade ago. I now have several dozen planes, drones, helis, etc. Not to mention multiple RC radios, batteries, chargers, and FPV goggles. Absolutely love it, though. To be fair, it's been a few thousand dollars over a decade. It ads up sure... but quite a bit less than I spend on video games, and more satisfying. :)
Out of curiosity, have the battery lives improved from older RC vehicles? I've looked at some current models and it still seems like they run only a short time, but I've not followed RC stuff closely enough to know if they've really gotten much better and I'm lacking the context.
Depends on what you want to get and how you use them. I have racing drones with batteries that only last 4 minutes, and a few planes that last 30-60 minutes. Lipos haven't improved radically in the last decade, but they are a lot better than nickel batteries from a few decades ago though.
I race electric on-road and we have a couple endurance races we run every year. We’re able to get upwards of 45+ minutes of run time without losing performance from some of our high capacity (8000mah+) batteries.
But we also run high turn (21.5t or 25.5t), and sometimes fixed timing, motors, so draw isn’t that significant.
My Losi Baja Rey running a 3600kv (beefy, high draw) motor gets 15-20 minutes of run time from my 5000mah battery depending on how hard I run it.
Run time really comes down to how high draw the motor is, lipo battery technology is significantly improved over the old nicad and nimh chemistries of the past.
Thanks for the reply and insight! I suspect some of the models I was looking at may have had some lower capacity batteries to try to balance out the costs, and I was overlooking that.
I’ve been racing RC cars for about 7 years. The last time I tallied it up, I estimated that I’ve spent about $15k all-in on the hobby.
Between cars, tools, bodies, paints, tires, racing fees, program setup like hauler bags, batteries, oils, springs, hop ups, and a dozen other things the costs can get out of hand quick lol. I’ve had to pull back my budget a LOT since getting a divorce and it’s getting cheap, but that’s only possible because of how much I’ve already spent on my program, and my cars are getting old. I’ll need to find a few hundred dollars in the next year at least.
Ah racing yeah. I had a friend that was into that, and it seems to get pretty spendy. I do a lot of scratch built planes, so it's quite a bit cheaper I think. Even a "spendy" store bought plane tends to only be $200 - $300. Racing drones cost about as much, but I don't really race them, and rarely break them anymore.
Yea, I spent $400 on my radio, and that’s a mid grade Sanwa. But I won’t replace it for a long time.
On a budget you need to spend around $500 to have everything you need to put a car down and race, which includes some basic tools. So yea, it gets expensive fast.