Hobby King's Nutball

If you're into scratch building little foam RC planes you know what a Nutball is. For the uninitiated the Nutball is arguably the most significant design to come out of our branch of the hobby. Goldguy knocked it out of the park with this design.

The support thread over at RC Groups is on page 834 and counting for good reason; this is the perfect first build. You don't have to worry about elevons, it has very few steps in its construction, and its polyhedral tips give it a huge amount of stability and thus make it easy to fly. Dial up the rates and you can do silly things with it. A pilot who is bored with Nutballs is a pilot who is bored with life. These things don't get old.

I first encountered the design at Flitetest:

I've made several. Some I've crashed because I wanted to see how far I could push them, and some just plain wore out. I've passed 3 of them along to newbie pilots to use as their first planes. Every one of them has flown great.

Say you're new to the hobby don't want to scratch build it? Getting the new plug and fly version from Hobby King might be a good option. Like scratch Nutballs all of the components are exposed; you can see how everything is put together and what everything does. Even if you didn't build it from scratch you still get some experience learning about what makes an RC plane work. Just glue on the tips, attach your receiver and you're in business. Also consider the fact that HK's version only weighs 100 grams ready to fly (3.5 ounces!) and it's made of EPP, which means it will be crash resistant.

$50. It doesn't get a whole lot cheaper than that, folks. I haven't bought it, so I can't review it, but I like it. I might have to get one for the sheer novelty of ordering an ARF Nutball. It's also smaller than the Nutballs I have known, having a span of just over 18 inches. The original design calls for 20, and that's the only size I've ever flown, but the way this one flies seems very familiar to me.

Here I am with my buddy Albert in some Nutball versus Pizza Box Flyer combat (my Nutball is squarish... I haven't found that the shape matters very much). With the rates up this thing is very agile; with the rates dialed down it's a sweetheart.

So build a Nutball, or buy one. Everybody should have one.