Tag Archives: ARF plane

Easy Star RC Plane – Easy to Fly Electric RC Plane

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Easy Star RTF from Amazon.com (Amazon.com)

Easy Star RTF from Amazon.com

Easy Star RC Plane is easy to fly, very durable and perfect RC aeroplane for beginners.

What makes the Multiplex Easy Star one of the most popular RC Planes?

Why even the most experienced RC hobbyists love this “beginner plane”?

Read on to find out…

Easy Star RC Plane Is Easy to Fly

When an experienced RC hobbyist is asked what is the best RC plane for a beginner, there’s a great chance that Easy Star will be mentioned — and for a good reason.

Easy Star is a great park flyer. It is designed with beginners in mind, so it’s very easy to build and and even easier to fly. It’s considered as one of the top beginner planes and many RC hobbyists have started with this plane.

Easy Star is flown with elevator/rudder and throttle control. It is specifically designed for beginner learning to fly RC aeroplanes. It can handle little more wind than most beginner planes and it also has good gliding ability.

With the gliding abilities, in the right conditions you can find yourself thermal or slope soaring with this one. This in addition to the flying times with a 6-7 cell battery pack gives Easy Star 2-3 hours of flight time.

And what makes Easy Star even more special, is that it’s a plane that many keep on flying for years — so it’s definitely not just a plane for beginners.

Unlike many other beginner, or RTF planes in general, Easy Star is modifiable and more experienced flyers like the fact you can for example put a brushless motor on it and change the other parts too.

Easy Star Is Available as Both RTF and ARF Kit Versions

Easy Star RC Plane can be bought as an RTF version, which is perfect for beginners. The plane is ready to fly in couple of hours (just charge the batteries, attach the wings and you’re ready to go).

The RC transmitter on the RTF version is a lot better than on many other RTF planes as are the parts that come with the plane. The radio in the RTF package can be used to fly other planes too (rare in the cheap RTF packages).

If one is looking to modify the plane from the start or add your own radio gear, it’s great to have the ARF option available. This way you can this great flyer just the way you like it. No painting is required on either the RTF or the ARF version, so the prefabricated and colorful parts is the only thing you need.

The standard motor can’t take 3 cell LiPo, but switching to a 2 cell LiPo battery can be done, which is what many do when putting a brushless motor in (then even a 3-celler might work, depending on the motor, but 2-cell LiPo if often enough).

Common Easy Star modification is to place a brushless motor on it, change the propeller (for example thin 6×4 fits without cutting, larger requires a bit of modification and cutting the frame, but that can be done too).

There has even been Easy Star brushless versions available from some sellers, so there’s a chance you might find an Easy Star with Brushless motor in a RTF package too.

Easy Star Is Built to Last

Easy Star’s motor is placed above the wings! This is perfect for safety and makes the plane a lot more durable than many other beginner planes.

If you hit the ground nose down (which is more likely to happen for a beginner than not), on a standard design there’s a great chance that the motor or the propeller will break on the crash.

With Easy Star, built from long-lasting and durable ELAPOR foam, the motor is safe from such incidents. The clever motor placement and durable design make Easy Star one of the hardest planes to break.

It’s by no means indestructible, but breaking it beyond repair or causing damage that requires purchasing spare parts is a lot harder than with most other planes. ELAPOR foam as a material is easy to repair and get back in the air if something does happen.

Easy Star can be dismantled easily for transportation as the wings come off without special tools (and the box it comes with can be used to keep it with you, if you don’t have a special travel box around).

As the wings are not permanently attached, this also increases the durability as the wings are not hard-mounted, but can give in a bit on impact which reduced the risk of damaging the plane even further.

Easy Star Has a Large Community of Fans

Check out these amazing resources to find out more about the Easy Star RC plane, learn to fly it, see how others have modified it and much more!

Join The FUN and Get Your Own Easy Star RC Plane!

Multiplex, the manufacturer, is based on the US, but being such a popular plane, Easy Star is being sold all around the world.

Easy Star RC plane is one of the most popular beginner planes, together with the Super Cub RTF, and as said – many advanced pilots like it too, so you should be able to find Easy Star from your local shop. Also, Easy Star is available from many online sellers, so you can order the plane quickly and get it delivered to your doorsteps…

To buy your Easy Star RC Plane online, check out these trusted vendors…

Are You Ready To Build an ARF Plane and Buy an ARF Kit?

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Buying and building a RC plane from an almost-ready-to-fly, ARF kit require more building and often you’ll be also buying the parts you need separately. For beginner this might mean trouble or at least a lot more work, but for an experienced hobbyist this is exactly what to look for to get exactly the kind of plane you want.

The last post, What Everybody Ought to Know About RTF RC Planes, covered what one should know when buying a RTF RC plane and now it’s time to look into the RC plane kits, in their almost-ready-to-fly or ARF form. ARF planes offer a chance to get a better plane, with the kind of parts one wants, in a relatively easy-to-build form. Because of this many who have started with a RTF plane moved on to buy an ARF plane as their next plane…

What Is an Almost-Ready-To-Fly, ARF Plane?

When buying and building an ARF plane, it takes more time and knowledge to get into flying the plane, but you’ll get higher quality plane and parts and exactly the kind of plane you want. You’ll be investing more money into an ARF plane than you would for a RTF RC plane, but you get re-usable parts that you can use for your next plane or re-sell the parts if you need them anymore.

Building a ARF plane is usually relatively easy even for a beginner and the good kits come with great instructions and manuals about how to manage that and the biggest challenge, if you will, is most of the time getting the right parts and making sure everything works together as you want. With almost-ready-to-fly ARF kit, you’ll be getting either

  • the ARF plane and all the parts needed (in relatively easy to build form and parts), or
  • just the plane and you’ll be buying some or all the parts separately (e.g. battery, receiver, transmitter, servos, etc)

The best part about ARF kit is that you know exactly what you’re getting as you’ll be getting the motor and other parts you want and you can re-use the parts from your old plane if you want. Getting the right kind of receiver ensures you can use the radio RC transmitter you already have and there’s no need to buy another one (one of the reasons I wrote about getting a good RC transmitter right from the start instead of settling for the 2-3 channel one coming in your first RTF package).

Of course, all this requires a bit of knowledge from you or trusting the seller to know what you need in addition to the kit. Luckily, many good ARF kits come with recommendations about the parts and you can always get help from experts in your RC club (yet another reason to find and join one) or look for information from the RCGroups forums for example. But first, take a look at the pros and cons of the almost-ready-to fly kits you should know before getting one…

The Downsides of Getting a ARF Kit (-)

  • the total cost for all the parts for the ARF plane is usually bigger than a RTF one (-)
  • there’s a chance of buying incompatible parts (-)
  • the self-built ARF RC plane and the individual parts might not work together perfectly (-)
  • you might be forced to buy from different shops and locations (not a big problem online) (-)
  • if you don’t know exactly what you need, you have to trust a seller who wants to make profit (e.g. sell you parts you don’t absolutely need or sell you more advanced parts than your project requires) (-)
  • even that ARF kits are meant to be easy to build, building your own plane still requires model building skills and knowledge of RC model building (-)

The Good Things About the ARF Planes (+)

  • huge selection of planes to choose from (and even larger selection of parts to put into your plane) (-/+)
  • you get a lot better, re-usable and more versatile gear (+)
  • you’ll probably pay more at the beginning, but save even more in the long run as you can re-use the same gear and they last longer because of the higher quality (+)
  • you’ll know exactly what the plane is made of (+)
  • you’ll have easier time getting spare parts as you know what to look for (+)
  • you’ll be flying a radio controlled plane you built yourself, a RC plane like no other (in good and bad, depending on your skills and the end result) (+)

Why an ARF Plane Might Be a Great Choice For You? Getting yourself a ARF kit instead of RTF plane will be more involving, but more rewarding at the same time. The most, if not all, the parts you get can be re-used and you can replace them later if you want.

On the downside, you’ll be spending more money on ARF RC planes than you would when buying a ready package, but on the hand, you’ll get exactly what you want and get better quality plane that will last for a long time. All this takes some knowledge about what you’re doing, but the end result will be worth it.

Click Here To Find ARF Planes from eBay

This was the part 2 in the “RTF vs. ARF series”. The first part, What Everybody Ought to Know About RTF RC Planes, covered ready-to-fly RTF planes, what’s good in them and what caveats one should look for when getting one.

Now it’s your turn to comment and share your thoughts! Have you built an ARF plane yourself? Why did you go for an ARF kit instead of RTF plane and what were the biggest challenges you faced getting and building your ARF plane?