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If someone walks up to you and says: “I’ve found the charger that solves all your problems” — turn around, walk away, and don’t look back. Everyone has different requirements. Different batteries, different cells, different charging speeds, different levels of patience at the flying field. There’s no universal answer to that. What I can tell you, however, is that I stumbled across something that covers a surprisingly wide range of those requirements — and it fits in the palm of your hand. ...

So here’s a thing that started as “I’ll just grab some weather data and display it” and turned into a proper little project with caching, containerisation, and a surprisingly interesting detour into numerical weather models. The result is a small embeddable weather widget that you can see on the Modellfluggruppe Haueneberstein website. It shows the next three days of weather for a flying field, with time slots from 08:00 to 20:00, updated once per hour. Wind speed, wind gusts, temperature, and a weather icon for a quick visual read. With mouse-over, you’ll see additional data such as CAPE and Strength to indicate the intensity. ...

So, this is one of my favourite charging devices for the LiPo batteries I use in RC flying. It’s the SkyRC B6neo+. I mostly fly gliders, which require relatively modest battery capacities. The whole idea is to get the aircraft up with a bit of motor power, then trust the thermals — finding what we call a “bubble”, a column of rising air — start circling and just let yourself be carried. That’s been working reliably for many years, and I don’t see any reason from a physics standpoint why that should change anytime soon. So I don’t need to charge enormous batteries, which means I don’t need an oversized charger either. ...

The fiddly threading of the aileron Y-cable on the Sky Surfer X8 gets old fast. Self-designed and 3D-printed cable holders solve this problem simply and permanently. I fly my Sky Surfer X8 with great enthusiasm – simply because it was cheap, I can repair and learn a lot from it, and it’s an all-round fantastic package. If something breaks → glue it. Got a crazy idea → try it. Even a total write-off from a crash that completely destroys the model would be absolutely manageable. If you can still salvage the servos, motor, receiver and ESC, there’s not much standing in the way of the next Sky Surfer. ...

I got into RC aviation in my mid‑20s. It was a lot of fun — but also filled with frustration and countless hours spent repairing airplanes I had crashed somewhere. About 30 years later, I decided to pick up the hobby again. This time I started with FPV drones. I bought a PNP version of a 3-inch drone (DarwinFPV Baby Ape II 4S). After some learning time, I decided to build my next drone from scratch, carefully selecting the parts and assembling everything myself (iFlight AOS 3v5). ...