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Section 29 · Gadgets

Drones & RC

Radio-controlled models are model vehicles that can be steered using radio control, and this has been done with ground vehicles, boats, planes, helicopters, submarines and even scale railway locomotives. The appeal lies in the sheer breadth of what can be controlled and how the technology has evolved, from the vacuum tube units pioneered by the Good brothers in the 1930s to the 2.4 GHz transmissions now common in high-end control. If you want to steer a miniature version of almost any vehicle by radio, there is a path into this hobby for you. Source

Picture: ZullyC3P · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

The essentials

Checked against Radio-controlled model. Source

Radio-controlled model

steerable by radio control

World War II

increased development of radio control technology

Good brothers Bill and Walt

pioneered vacuum tube based control units in the 1930s

Guff

radio controlled plane on display at the National Aerospace museum

Berkeley's Super Aerotrol

commercially sold RC design of the late 1940s to mid 1950s

Tuned reed system

metal reeds resonate with the transmitted signal

Digital proportional systems

servo-based, from the 1960s

Integrated circuits

made 1970s electronics small, light and cheap

Miniaturised equipment

widely available in the 1990s

Space Control

Hershel Toomin design using two tones, pulse width and rate modulated

Digicon

first digital proportional radio, by Doug Spreng and Don Mathis

2.4 GHz transmissions

increasingly used in the early 21st century