KC
Elite Veteran
Location: WA
| electric is the obvious future of this hobby.
Thats the last 'easy money' in this hobby for awhile....electrics....our hobby is 3 or 4 steps removed from the big money and is greatly affected by larger consumer trends...such as lighter smaller laptops requiring a new kind of battery...lipo.
The easy money made with stocks and real estate in 2001-2005 that flowed into this hobby will probably morph over to a much different demographic that probably won't be buying rc helicopters so much.
When I got into this hobby, it was an 'old guys' thing...its funny to me to see the hobby a 'kids' thing now...not that I'm old, but I have been doing this for over half my life.
I see a little shakeup coming.
There are way too many knock-off helis out there right now also...tells me the last to know are here...and the last to show have already come and bought....attendance at many funflies this year was down too. In my mind I see the future of this hobby leveling out for a little while, taking a chill pill and moving away from Ozzy/Pantera/Slayer flying a little.
Some of those guys will turn it up more, its the easy path to establishing their brands as we all know that first impressions mean the most, but outfits like Align, should pay attention to the cycles that made TT, Kyosho, Hirobo, etc, etc, as 'the name' in the hobby once but not now.
The future of this hobby is open to many new inventions and price drops but the quartz LCD watch and electronics argument is a poor comparison to how trends work out in this hobby.....
the demand for heli technology is nothing like watches....heli technology doesnt exist....follow me here for a minute,
the greater application for vbar is nonexistant, a handful of creative types will use it to stabilize similar machines, etc, etc, but the technology inside a vbar comes from other applications to begin with....you cant say that technology started in the hobby. A greater application brought it here, like so much of the technology in this hobby....big money.
To build a heli actually requires skill in understanding how all the parts interact.....never seen an LCD watch kit before. ARF helis are still rare and not recommended because flying helis is half about building, repairing and maintaining....skills that cant be bought in a box or programmed into a machine at a factory
An LCD watch just takes a pulse and is a simple piece of **** you get from Burger King, another simple piece of ****, but everyone needs to eat and to tell time....not many need rc helis and most only buy them after squaring away their needs.
Anyways, I think the future of this hobby will be interesting but not full of huge changes overnight. The foundation of knowledge that is the core of this hobby is already very well established, but it isn't widely understood....the future will be about knowledge too
Thats the secret to the future of this hobby. It would be crazy for any governing authority to take cars away, there would be havoc....but 'loud annoying two stroke helicopters' are probably an attractive nuisance and polluting the earth right?....well there are more people who think that then there are heli pilots, so who wins??
We need to consider that technological developments are not the future of the hobby, they are already here. The future of the hobby is to maintain and grow a place for it in your communities. |
