World's biggest RC A380 [video] (opens in new tab)

Yeah, I think I lean toward simplicity as well. I would be way too anxious trying to fly that work of art the guy built. I am glad someone out there does it though—it's a joy to watch.

On the other end of the spectrum is probably this guy's slope soaring videos: https://www.youtube.com/@SlopeRCGliders

I built a glider and flew it exactly once because I was too scared of crashing it after all the time that went into built it. The whole RC industry has made massive leaps, the first time I saw a modern radio I thought I'd received an empty bag...

When do they start passenger service?

A bunch of mice to simulate passengers.

First of all you need a house with a runway…

Definitely falls into the "if you have to ask" category

I wouldn't want to imagine, but it's funded by a billionaire, Tyler Perry, so I'm guessing the cost wasn't an issue.

Apparently the real big ones are like $100k.

Tyler Perry owns the airplane and the property. He has said that he does not fly turbines due to the fire risk in a crash. His property is surrounded by forest. If he were to cause a forest fire, the negative publicity could have a major impact on his career.

RC-scale tiny turbines are sort of a boondoggle. They are loud, dangerous, and quite frankly reliability disasters. Expected component lifetimes are in the hundreds of hours, most folks overhaul them every 20-50 hours of use, and they fail in the air with shocking regularity (just check youtube).

It's one of those "impressive that it works at all" kind of things. If that's what you want to see in the air, then do it. If you want to watch your one-off custom plane that represents hundreds or thousands of hours of labor fly, you push it with a fan.

If it had been gas-powered motors, I would have agreed with you. The electrics sound close enough to my ear like actual jet engines though.

AFAIK the only existing small jet engines for RC planes are much too small for this one.

He also learned to fly as in obtaining an actual pilots license to over come the fear of flying.

It essentially already has one. Probably only self-levelling, but has some extra programming like delayed flaps, wheel-up sequence (first up the wheels, then close the doors), blackbox feature, etc. Likely using a version of Ardupilot [1] that's already in use by everyone. Maybe INav [2], but I'd wager on the former. There's more than one computer in there, too. The receiver is likely double-redundant (2 receivers, each with 2 separate receiver circuits, one 900MHz, the other 2.4GHz). I have planes costing 400 EUR that have dual-bandwidth redundant receivers (costs 40 EUR, a joke).

ELRS (radio), Ardupilot (Flight Controller), EdgeTX (Radio OS), and Mission Control (Ground Station SW) are serious tools used by many in the hobby. Them being open means there's a lot of competition and a lot of features. But also not amazing UX :)

[1] https://ardupilot.org/ [2] https://inavflight.github.io/

I assumed this was a case of name collision but no, this really does seem to be the same Tyler Perry who created the Madea movies.

Since it's got autopilot, and AutoLand, I don't see a problem with that. In fact, there have been remote controlled full scale airplanes since WW2[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aphrodite

Range?

The large ones dust crops out here where I live. Pick a field, ha ha.