Welcome to Hover & Smile and our radio controlled misadventures.

Thanks for joining us on our adventures in the R/C aircraft hobby. With helicopters, airplanes, and a touch of electronics, we're constantly learning not only how to fly or build craft, but also how the pieces work. With some reviews, how-tos, and instructional pages, we hope you'll find something of interest!

Site Update - The tenth part of our eleven part series for RC Night Flying is up! ONE more and we're done, and they'll be up in the latter part of August!

Our Evolving Series of Articles Collections related to a specific topic

RC Night FlyingDive into Night Flying - Learn how to use kits, wire your own LED circuits, control your lights with a transmitter, and more. We'll illuminate our delta wing combat flyer for some well lit non-carnage action!


Combat!Create your own foamie Combat! flyer. We're not talking streamers, we're talking foam against foam action! Using cheap components, you can create an easily built and easily repaired combat flyer! We look at parts involved, how to build, and how to finalize the setup of a combat foam flyer.


TransmittersA series of articles about transmitters. From different kinds of radio transmission to different capabilities, we look at channels, binding, model memory, dual rates, curves, and more.


RC Circuits and PowerLearn about the primary players in an RC Circuit, how they work together, covering things like kV, mAh, C rating, ESC's, Watt Meters, Amp Draw, Prop Sizes, Prop Pitch, Thrust to Weight Ratios, and more.

Latest Entries Journal Entries & Articles

LED Night Flying Part 10 - Remote Controlling your LED circuitsControl your LED Circuits with your receiver - using simple components like brushed ESCs or remote controlled relays. Add some mixing and you can not only turn them on or off, but also dim your lights.

08/24/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 9 - Placing your LED circuits on the craftYou're done wiring, and you've got a craft. Like chocolate and peanut butter, popcorn and movies, it's time for your LEDs to become quite literally attached to your craft.

08/17/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 8 - LED Wiring and Current Check for Battery PowerLet's wire up ALL eight LED circuits we've made so far all together in parallel and check how much current the full circuit pulls, examine how to power the circuit, and even look at a modular 'power bar' to make swapping out different LEDs a snap!

08/09/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 7 - SMD LED circuit wiringSMD LEDs - You can buy the same LEDs that come in the strip kits in individual packages and wire them up any way you want. Lots of variety in color, brightness, viewing angles, just annoying in terms of size when handling.

08/08/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 6 - Wiring Your Standard Bulb LEDsWe'll calculate the resistance for our 3 bulb LEDs (Spotlight and Straw Tube), wire them up and test them out.

08/07/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 5 - LED Circuit Tools and LED Strip KitsBuilding your own circuits or just extending wires? Here's what we use for tools. Plus, we'll measure out some LED Strip Kits for the sides of our Combat! Night Flyer.

08/06/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 4 - Parallel LED CircuitsWiring in Series got you down because you don't have enough voltage to wire more LEDs? Drop some Parallel lines and add as many LEDs as your battery can handle!

08/05/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 3 - More Series LED CircuitsLet the rambling Vinnie Hoverino's circuit talk from last time sink in as we look at practical examples of LED series circuits, and use web calculators to do the math for you!

08/05/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 2 - LED Characteristics and The Simple LED CircuitLED Characteristics, from Colors to Viewing Angles, along with Vinnie Hoverino's introduction to Ohm's Law - and how to calculate the resistors you need to NOT smoke out LEDs.

08/04/2010 Read More...

LED Night Flying Part 1 - Types of LEDS and Power SourcesLooking to add some LED lights to your craft for night flying? Here starts an eleven part series of articles and videos on just that!

08/03/2010 Read More...

Twitter Feed

@g4nismo Forgive me, I've never worked on cars :) For the amp pull, you have... (YouTube http://youtu.be/rRClwHqdgF4?a) Sep 2, 08:49 AM
@g4nismo That's correct! That's not the only way, but it is the most power e... (YouTube http://youtu.be/rRClwHqdgF4?a) Aug 31, 02:31 PM
LED Night Flying Part 10/11 - Remote Controlling your LED circuits http://bit.ly/cX4jAs Aug 24, 09:55 PM
@trand95 Check out the comments below, hope that helps! (YouTube http://youtu.be/aP8vGp2TOJQ?a) Aug 24, 04:50 PM
LED Night Flying Part 9/11 - Placing your LED circuits on the craft http://bit.ly/bOvxLz Aug 17, 08:45 PM
@TheCrashCast Thanks for the mention! Tell Dorsal I'll work on a new theme after the LED series is complete, less black ;) Aug 16, 11:49 PM
Part 9 of our LED series goes up tomorrow! - We'll be placing the LEDs on our craft. Part 10 is remote control, and part 11 is flight! Aug 16, 11:47 PM
http://twitvid.com/G2FB4 - @lipopilot Amazing how the simplest of things we'll do a hundred times, we occasionally forget. We've Aug 15, 01:34 PM

The Tag Cloud

72mhz, airforceone, binding, blade_400, building_tips, charging, clubs, combat, cpp2, crashes_and_stuckness, cx3, dual_rate, dx6i, dx7, edf, electronics, escs, esky, estarter, estes, exponential, fokker, fun_fly, gr302, gyro, helis, honeybee_fp, honeybee_king3, kits, leds, lipos, mcx, micro_mustang, midwest_performance_flyers, model_memory, motors, msr, night_flying, omahawks, painting, planes, practice, projects, rc_circuits, receivers, speed_controls, telebee, test_stands, transmitters, twitter