RC Hobbies is a popular hobby that involves driving, racing or flying radio controlled (RC) products. These can be products such as RC cars, RC trucks, RC boats, RC Quadcopters / drones, etc. RC hobbyists are attracted to this hobby for some of the following reasons:
The goal of this guide is to help you make an informed decision as to what kind of hobby-class RC product may best fit your needs and budget. It will also assist you if you are purchasing a RC product for someone special in your life.
The first thing you need to do (if you have not done so already) is to determine what category of RC products you are interested in. Radio Control Hobbies now encompasses a wide range of different products and categories. The main categories of RC products include:
The first four categories of products above are usually the best choice for your first RC product, unless you or the person you are buying for has a strong interest in one of the other categories. They have the advantage of being easy to learn, and being a product you can use almost anywhere.
While each category of RC products will provide plenty of challenge and opportunity to refine your skills, some categories are easier to learn that others. If we rank the RC product categories from easiest to learn to most difficult, they would roughly be as follows:
One of the other important aspects to understand is size . Sizes are most often refered to as scale, which is a rough approximation of what fraction of a real size vehicle it represents -- so a 1/10 scale car is roughly 1/10 the size of a real car. Scales generally range from 1/24 ( quite small) to 1/5 scale ( fairly large). some examples of actual RC vehicle dimensions are:
The most popular size is 1/10 scale, followed by 1/8 scale
Once you have decided what category of RC Hobbies you are interested in, then you will also need to consider some of the following factors:
We will provide additional information on some of the above question in other sections of this guide.
When purchasing an RC product or comparing RC products, it is important to understand if the product is RTR ( ready-to-run), and what else you may need to be able to use the product. Some products may be sold without the radio gear, or without the main battery, which makes them appear less expensive, however you will need these components to be able to use the product and therefore it is important that you look at the total cost when comparing prices.
More detailed Information can be found in the following sections of this guide
What makes RC Hobby-class products different than RC toys?
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