Seems like forever ago...
(early 70's for me)
We handbuilt the models from scratch or bought a balsa wood or fiberglass kit if we wanted something to fly with the
RC radios just beginning to get popular. RC magazines covered the offerings well as well as finished projects over the years.
For me, I had to build my own as those kits were expensive as well as the covering, accessories, etc. We flew everything with mostly Nitro motors that were messy and sometimes tempermental, but we had a lotta fun....until a radio failure (first ones were on CB channels and got 'hit' often) and many times ended up in the field 'burn barrel'...
yeah...real expensive in terms of money and time to 'recreate'. Fuel was expensive, bulky and like an addictive drug, you had to 'have it'.
As a hobbyist,I have a LOT of history in RC models and have enjoyed the hobby since the early 70’s. Never forgetting all the fun (and anguish from crashes) the hobby brought me over the many years.
Over the years, due to high cost of ‘bought’ kits, I simply enjoyed just designing my own. It was not until the mid-80’s that ARF’s began to show up on the market. They were also expensive ,taking forever to arrive if you dorked it and had to replace it. Fortunately we learned we could repair them and did so often….but radios were getting better so they lasted somewhat ‘longer’
For the next 20 years it was just ‘bigger, better and faster’. Then along came lighter, more manueverable planes which were getting pretty good, but many times still could not finish that ‘last manuever’…
Yep, chalk up another one and here we go building again for the next few weeks. Around the turn of the century, ARF’s and foamies began to flood the market. They too were a blast…but expensive if you got a bit too ‘brave’ .
Radios were getting quite small and reliable costing much less in terms of ‘real’ Dollars due to mass production. My first 6 channel one in 1971 was used and cost me $200 (in todays dollars would be $500-$600). Now we can buy MUCH better ones for a little as $50 with 4 servos.
Early 2000’s brought electrics and Lipo’s. Powerful light ESC’s and cheap higher perfromance motors made for some serious RC fun….. but there still came those pesky crashes..annhilating a plane and then we have to start a week of building again.
About that time, a few builders noticed we could build with EPP and other foams and end up with unbelievably lightweight xtreme performance planes which were a blast to fly. ‘Leadfeather’ was an innovator in EPP and created the popular Pizza Box Flier.
Some (including Flite Test) noticed one could build some really cool airframes from simple Dollar Tree Foam artboard…Flite Test has grown to massive proprotions and is responsible of what could be a highest percentage of current RC modelers as that is where they got their start.
Our own local club president attended most all of the Flite Test events.
The ‘kits’ were a bit pricey for what was included, but please understand its not cheap to ship nowdays…however, those kits were WAY less than a typical balsa kit, ARF or RTF plane. RTF and ARF Foamies were also getting popular and began to look nice.
But
If you just like flying high-performance planes (or are learning or just getting started ) and dont wish to worry every flight how your gonna afford the next one if you destroy it.
These airframes can be built for typically less than $5 per airframe and duplicated in only a few hours so in reality, you can ‘Fly it like you Stole it‘.
Most insane ‘dorkings’ are field repairable in only a few minutes…and if you really mangle it , you can print another and build it in only a few hours. You NEVER have to wait on another airframe to be delivered as you will still have the low-price print file on your PC to make ever how many you desire.
We have a great hobby now due to innovation and material advancements of many,but sadly it was still expensive to either buy or build a high performance airframe or build a rather mundane looking one out of Dollar Tree foam. Yeah, you can paint em, but it added a lot of weight, time to paint and reduced the performance somewhat.
I personally created over 100 high performance airframes from foam since 2010 when I invented the CrazyBall. Sadly, cost of shipping foam stiffled the sales of the CrazyBall so I halted kit production.
Just before the pandemic I began experimenting with graphics printed on a standard InkJet printer in poster print as a PDF and applying the posters to Dollar Tree foam for some interesting designs. Later as graphics were improved, I began to use artists all over the planet to create some really fantastic airframe templates that were vivid and fast to build. They were extreme performance, tuff, quickly field repairable or quickly reproduceable and provided work for many super cool artists all over the planet.
I did a load of research on the internet and found no one offering this ‘common sense’ approach to RC planes. Sure if you want to pay the money for expensive planes (and can afford it) there are millions of those already out there if you want to pay the premium
Enter the downloadable, printable airframes with crazy wild graphics
…that would out-perform most planes at the field on a given day which were hard to destroy, but if needed could be duplicated in only a few hours for a completely new , fresh airframe ready for a whole lot of fun!.
That is the goal at Ink Jet AirForce
… to provide a cheap, quickly downloadable template and graphics file that you can build cheaply and quickly over-and-over as you wish.
If you get bored with the old graphics, just download a different one for the same airframe creating a totally new unique look.
Going forward, we will offer many more airframe design templates and assorted graphics files to give them ‘unique’ characters so bookmark the site, return and look for new designs and graphics.
