Jake, what does one of those -real- jet engines cost? I am always amazed at how good these guys are, flying from the ground with no airspeed indicator to watch while landing. You can see he does what we call a "double pump" in the flare, but he saved it, touching down just a little short of the pavement (and even real pilots do that once in a while, with airpseed indicators!)
That's a nice little runway/taxi way they have set up there too.
I haven't done much with the cost side of r/c planes in a while - but I know about 4 years ago those turbines would cost around $8,000 each. I think they've come down a lot with some smaller units available in the $4,000 range - not certain though. The technology has come a long way in the last 5 years though and they don't require external support for starting anymore.
The first ones had a three stage starting process. Stage 1 was to connect a scuba tank to inject compressed air on the fan blades to start the turbine spinning. The second stage was to open a valve to a manually connected propane cylinder. The third stage was to switch the turbine to the on board JP4 fuel and then you were ready to go.
Now the units come with an on board electronic control module that spins the electric starter gets the turbine spinning. It then switches to an on board propane cylinder (very small - like a CO2 cartridge for a pellet gun)...and then it finally automatically switches to the JP4 once the engine is at adequate RPM and temperature. All this is initiated with the flip of a switch on the transmitter - pretty cool. I even saw a turbine powered R/C helicopter last year.
They really are astonishing power plants. The amount of thrust is unbelievable (it's a great way to clear leaves from 40 yards of your driveway in one shot). Lately, they are coming out with smaller and smaller units.
At the Joe Nall event held here in S.C. this past year they had 3 or 4 turbine powered jet models auger into the dirt this year. This results in an impressive mushroom cloud that is also quite scale to what the real thing looks like.
