Forewords
As a boy, I used to dream of piloting a jetfighter and had good conversations with my Dad about it. We both loved RC planes as well. But, as it was very expensive hobby, we're just having conversations or going to some airshows and keep the dreams as memories. Until I found RCPOWERS.com few years back. It taught me well on how RC scratchbuilt planes should be. It should be:
- Affordable
- Cranking our creativity up
- Teaching us on things that grow our knowledge
- Easy to be constructed and repaired
- Bring joy to ourselves, and others
The site is being owned and managed by an awesome guy, Dave Powers. A great guy that has been in the RC planes world in a very long time and set the score-and-fold scratchbuilding standard in the world. So, I began to learn about RC planes scratchbuilding in mid 2014. Not much of a knowledge to begin with but with the hope that I could learn something new and bring joy to my self, my families and others. Along the starting grid, I was also in touch with FRC Foamies guys, Jay Rothwell and Greg Strysky. Both have been in the RC planes world for years.
Then I met a great guy having engineering background from UK in the forum, Ian Bott. He has insights and visions of his own that aligned to mine. He started to give his finest support to grow my knowledge in learning scratchbuilding design and on top of it, I had the intention of sharing my knowledge to less fortunate families with hope, that who knows in the future, it could help them making their own living from it.
With some knowledge gained in time, I started to share some knowledge to some underprivileged kids in town, as well as voluntarily teach science club in an elementary school to spread the knowledge and experience while continuing to learn deeper on scratchbuilding and how to design a parkjet. Aside from having support from Dave himself which allows me to use his design to teach those kids, me and Ian started to come up with our own parkjet design. So fortunate we received more great support from Scott Challender, a former Royal Canadian Airforce Officer. His knowledge brought me to take few leaps ahead. He and his colleagues are also extending his knowledge through a remarkable website at MIGSRUS.COM.
Update on Jan 2018: www.migsrus.com website is no longer available as NAMC closed the website officially by the end of 2017.
Down the road, me and Ian were in touch with another great guy, Jeff Reimer from Canada, a former brilliant car racer and huge RC enthusiast. Three of us then formed a non-commercial group, Parkflyers International or shortly well known as PI. This collaboration surely brought us over the edge and thoughts of new challenges that haven't been cracked in the parkjets design. We try to go for ultimate parkjet design, that flies the way we want a parkjet to fly. At least our own ultimate parkjet version.
We have gone through lots of brilliant discussions with lots of people and received much greater support from people, friends and communities around the world.
So, we now have come to some great designs, techniques as well as a new level of excitements in designing, building and flying scratchbuilt parkjets. All parkjet designs are targeted to be able to go for mass production so it will allow less fortunate people I teach in my hometown, to quickly build it themselves, sell it and make money out of their own work and turn flying RC planes to become affordable hobby for other people. And another great thing about scratchbuilding for everyone is, it's repairable and can be done by anyone. But whenever there is a total loss after crashes, building a new parkjet wouldn't cost as much as buying a store-bought RC plane, and can be completed within hours, not weeks.
By the end of 2017, PI received a great deal of support from 2 RCP forum members, Jim Soyak and Peter Holmgren. They had been delivering fearsome support to some projects, making some of our dreams to become realities, then it was a great honor for PI to officially have them as new joining members in January 2018 to share and exploit some crazy ideas in parkjet scratchbuilding.
In April 2018, Senior PI member Ian Bott and newly boarding member Peter Holmgren were starting to chase their own course and it was a huge loss to PI. However, Bimo, Jeff and Jim are still sharing the same passion in designing parkjets so the hobby continues.
Members (in alphabetical orders)
Bimo Adi Prakoso (Indonesia)
An RC plane and technology enthusiast, which posseses strong engineering and multimedia background. Starting to get involved in the hobby in mid 2015 and get dragged into it quickly and deeply.
Jeff Reimer (Canada)
Former and retired car racer. An unstoppable adrenaline junky that keeps significantly improving his RC knowledge and skill. Nothing would please him when it's not related to speed.
Jim Soyak (United States)
As veteran in rc hobbies of water, land and air, Jim has unbelievable magic hands on his scratchbuilt finish. Everyone is always mesmerised to look at his scratchbuilts.