Hey guy, just joined some days back while in search of some model/truck. Got addicted to this forum and is quietly following the posts for sometime and planning for rampups in this hobby. First of all to say this is very very active forum and doing very good bonding among users. That's very inspiring. 

Secondly what i had notice is RC is very expensive hobby and i got astonished to watch how much guys are spending here on it, As my long association is with another hobby (so called robotics i call it toy making at Indian level) which is almost DIY. So my innocent question why there is not much of DIY in this hobby, mostly in electronics stuff that to in radio controllers? We are buying so much expensive radio controllers and charger, are they not possible to be build DIY? Actually as i said i am ramping up on this hobby i have plans with DIY in electronics part completely. Are readymade stuff that much necessary?

This hobby is what you make of it   Isn't our lives the same way

To inspire you further :

http://www.rcindia.org/self-designed-diy-and-college-projects/dir-rc-system/
http://www.rcindia.org/self-designed-diy-and-college-projects/build-thread-diy-pic-based-servo-tester/
http://www.rcindia.org/self-designed-diy-and-college-projects/diy-lipo-balance-charger/

Take the road you like. If you take the DIY road, people will worship you like the gods.. AND I MEAN THAT

Its great that you want to get into core electronics and as anwar said - ppl will worship you. But there are so many other aspects that are very complicated as well. For eg - building a heli with all ready made electronics itself is a daunting task - setting up the head, 0 degree pitch at mid stick, +-9 degrees at either end, blade tracking, setting up gyro & servos, setting up the transmitter etc etc.

After doing all this, then comes to time to fly the thing you have been working on for months and improve your flying skills. The flying part is the main which i would like to master first.

So you see, all this itself takes soo much time - & if you start from stratch - am not sure when you will see the bird in the air

Correct me if i am wrong not sure how long it takes to build electronic components

These hobbies are some time Team effort. I had a small group of Electronic nerds back in school days (best friends till today) and we used to take up a project as team. design the circuit in module, some one dies the PCB artwork, other etch the PCB hence forth.

As Raja rightly said, RC is a very compounded hobby. If you wish to do every thing by scratch, it might take a year to go from drawing board to sky. I would love to see more club member contribute in a larger and more wonderful project than build and fly individually.

After making the Servo Tester, and procuring the BOM for LiPO balancer, I let DIY go due to time constraint. A DIY CNC is still high in my TODO: list as buying a ready made one is almost infeasible.
I would have be delighted if electronic enthusiasts like Sahil (sadly he is based in Hyderabad) could have joined as a team to build one.

I repeat again, the younger member here have much opportunity to try much of DIY as we older folks usually run out of time.

Quote from: ujjwaana on October 07, 2010, 01:53:28 PM
I would have be delighted if electronic enthusiasts like Shail (sadly he is based in Hyderabad) could have joined as a team to build one.

You mean Sahil (sahilkit on RCI)... I missed including his DIY threads in my list above.

Quote from: anwar on October 07, 2010, 02:37:29 PM
You mean Sahil (sahilkit on RCI)... I missed including his DIY threads in my list above.

Yes Anwar. Missing Sahil's post in Electronic DIY would be unjust. He made the Transmitter If I remember correctly, along with so many other home brew! I guess he has gone in some kind of hibernation. Wish to see him back.

At present i am trying my hands on small (read cheap) coaxial rotor heli, and already lost tail rotor.
Will be rip its electronics and modify/enhance the function if possible.
Actually creating/designing thrill me the most and usually when i finish a project (which is not very often) i just put in box below my bed or just break it completely and use its component for next in pipe, very bad habit but i not found that thrill again after completing or get distracted with another project.
I try with readymade stuff but got bore with them also in short time, next day they are also in same box in fully disassemble state  So make-destroy-make remain the cycle that interest me.