How sophisticated are today's R/C scale-model airplanes and helicopters?

I knew a couple of guys who mounted video cameras in their RC planes.  This was about 40 years ago, when video cameras were much larger and heavier than now.  One of them also built a sort of cockpit- a chair and with a stick, rudder pedals and throttle wired into the transmitter.  It did not broadcast live video, so you had to maintain visual connection with the model, and wait till it landed to view the tape.  This was the same club that included the guy who designed and built the original RC Snoopy's doghouse.

I can imagine with micro technology of today's cheap drones on the market today, fine-scale model RC aircraft has potential to get a lot of fancy "avionics" on board. It would be cool to be able to pilot a model plane or heli while getting the pilot's live view from the cockpit just you do while in a PC flight sim game. Flight sims generally don't mimic piloting model R/C planes, however. The Microsoft flight sim is great for mastering basic aircraft flying principles. You, for example, use your ailerons heavily to bank around turns and very little rudder input if at all for aircraft steering in the sky. It is much easier to control a plane while getting a cockpit view because you can feel what the airplane is actually doing. I tried piloting a heli in MS FSX with an external camera view and that is next to impossible. A fixed-wing plane is not quite as hard in this fashion. A PC-like/gaming-like joystick controller might even be great fo an R/C pilot especially one with sim flight experience. 

An advanced HUD (heads-up display) for an R/C pilot should also in theory provide a stall warning as well. One might have a VR monocle goggle as a dispaly for an R/C pilot. The R/C pilot could keep one naked eye directly on the aircraft and his controls while the other eye gets a cockpit view with a HUD instruments overlay. Virtually Reality (VR) visuals might someday be incorporated into RC models. 

Join the Air Force 

Jon , I am not totaly up to date with rc aircrafts but you should check out a local club where you are at. They most likely would have the answers that you are looking for. I do know that in the last 10 years or so that there has been alot of advances in technology in the rc field mostly in the aviation field. You may have a hobby shop in your area that specializes in rc aircraft you may want to check out as well. Hope this helps you in what you are looking for.

Actually, I took my thread content here over to an R/C model specialty website to see what people say there. 

Thats a great idea. Keep us informed on what they post. Which site was that? I am currious also.

RC Universe under RC Scale Aircraft

One of my sifdeline jobs is to supply RC airframes to an internationla model supplier.

All of our stuff is around the 1/5 odd scale, I have made the tooling for a 88" span P-51d, and now woirking on a cessna 210.

As for "modelr" yes things have come a very long way from when I started out in 1987, when we built wood and plastic coverd planes . the engines were all methanol powered as electric was way to heavy and not very good.

Now my airframes all are of stressed skin composite sandwich construction. The motors now are mostly electric running of 45 volt lipo batteries giving the same power as a 50cc gas burning engine.

The undercart are all of electric retractable tipe with full function oleos and elecrtic brakes to boot.

So yes the modern stuff is quite advanced with most of the larger jets and scale models having flight stabilazation gyros to smooth out the flying.

Theuns

That sounds interesting. In the last 10 to 15 years jets has gotten to be big thing. I dont do airplanes yet but plan to do that . I live on a lake so want to try a float plane. Or maybe a helo with floats. 

I get the notion for advanced electronics, live camera on-board views, instrumentation and on-screen displays in scale-model planes and helis just by looking at these aerial observation drones. It makes me think the technology is possible but the market might not be there yet. It's possible but is it feasible? I would in theory like to know my ground speed, bank angle, pitch angle, flaps setting and absolute altitude while piloting a model aircraft as well as battery charge level and fuel level (if applicable). Gyros should keep a bird steady. A certain degree of auto-pilot controls is nice too. Altitude hold so the airplane stays at a steady altitude in turns. I don't think we need radio vectors and GPS navigation for flying models since they aren't generally flown out of the range of our naked eyes. Look how dinky and fancy these drones are. Technically speaking, a scale R/C plane or heli is a "drone". 

At RC Groups, in the Electric Warbird section, there are a number of guys who are flying their scale RC models by FPV (First Person Video).  The camera is mounted in the cockpit and the pilot can pan and tilt it to meet whatever view he needs.  They also have telemetery on board that gives the pilot his position, heading, airspeed, and altitude.  Pretty neat and fun stuff happening in that hobby.  

Thank you for you input. It now seems like piloting an R/C plane can be pretty realistic provided money is no object. In tried two lower-end r/c non-scale airplanes, a Futaba 3 channel model and followed by a 4-channel model, back in 1992 and that short-lived kick failed miserably. Back to back crashes in short order. Messy glo-plug engines. I then went on to a 2-channel model sailboat and had much better success with it. If I crash a virtual aircraft in Microsoft FSX airplane sim, no costly damage done.