Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.

Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.

  • slembcke
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    1 year ago

    RC stuff, but only kinda? My dad got me into micro helicopters about a decade ago. I now have several dozen planes, drones, helis, etc. Not to mention multiple RC radios, batteries, chargers, and FPV goggles. Absolutely love it, though. To be fair, it’s been a few thousand dollars over a decade. It ads up sure… but quite a bit less than I spend on video games, and more satisfying. :)

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Out of curiosity, have the battery lives improved from older RC vehicles? I’ve looked at some current models and it still seems like they run only a short time, but I’ve not followed RC stuff closely enough to know if they’ve really gotten much better and I’m lacking the context.

      • slembcke
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        1 year ago

        Depends on what you want to get and how you use them. I have racing drones with batteries that only last 4 minutes, and a few planes that last 30-60 minutes. Lipos haven’t improved radically in the last decade, but they are a lot better than nickel batteries from a few decades ago though.

      • June@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I race electric on-road and we have a couple endurance races we run every year. We’re able to get upwards of 45+ minutes of run time without losing performance from some of our high capacity (8000mah+) batteries.

        But we also run high turn (21.5t or 25.5t), and sometimes fixed timing, motors, so draw isn’t that significant.

        My Losi Baja Rey running a 3600kv (beefy, high draw) motor gets 15-20 minutes of run time from my 5000mah battery depending on how hard I run it.

        Run time really comes down to how high draw the motor is, lipo battery technology is significantly improved over the old nicad and nimh chemistries of the past.

        • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Thanks for the reply and insight! I suspect some of the models I was looking at may have had some lower capacity batteries to try to balance out the costs, and I was overlooking that.

    • June@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve been racing RC cars for about 7 years. The last time I tallied it up, I estimated that I’ve spent about $15k all-in on the hobby.

      Between cars, tools, bodies, paints, tires, racing fees, program setup like hauler bags, batteries, oils, springs, hop ups, and a dozen other things the costs can get out of hand quick lol. I’ve had to pull back my budget a LOT since getting a divorce and it’s getting cheap, but that’s only possible because of how much I’ve already spent on my program, and my cars are getting old. I’ll need to find a few hundred dollars in the next year at least.

      • slembcke
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        1 year ago

        Ah racing yeah. I had a friend that was into that, and it seems to get pretty spendy. I do a lot of scratch built planes, so it’s quite a bit cheaper I think. Even a “spendy” store bought plane tends to only be $200 - $300. Racing drones cost about as much, but I don’t really race them, and rarely break them anymore.

        • June@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yea, I spent $400 on my radio, and that’s a mid grade Sanwa. But I won’t replace it for a long time.

          On a budget you need to spend around $500 to have everything you need to put a car down and race, which includes some basic tools. So yea, it gets expensive fast.