Stopped into the Salvation Army near my office on lunch and walked out with two little trainer planes for under twenty bucks. One's a ready-to-fly job with the radio included, the other is a bind-n-fly so I'll have to see if my old DX6 will talk to it or if I'm shopping for a receiver. The RTF one acutally came with a couple of flight batteries stuffed in the box, which was a nice surprise. Plugged one in when I got home and the lights came on and all four servos twitched to center, so the airframe at least is alive. No batteries in the transmitter though, so the real test waits untill I raid the junk drawer for AAs. No clue if the bind-n-fly even powers up since there was nothing to plug into it. I'll throw a battery at it this weekend and find out. Worst case the foam is decent and I can swap in my own gear. Either way it's the cheapest anything has ever entered my hangar, and now I need to explain to my wife why the closet smells like packing foam again.
Scored two foamies at the thrift store for cheap
Oct 30, 2026
Last reply: 3 hours ago
4 Replies
Thrift store finds like that have worked out well for me too. Grabbed an old Super Cub at a church rummage sale a few summers back for almost nothing, and the foam had a wrinkled spot on the wing that I stiffened with a bamboo skewer and some packing tape. Flew it two seasons before I finally put it into a fence post. The cheap ones fly just as good as the shiny new ones once you sort the electronics out.
On the bind-n-fly, mine would not link to my old DX6i at first and I nearly bought a new receiver over it. Turned out I just had the bind sequence wrong. Check the manual for the exact procedure, a lot of those little receivers want the bind plug inserted while you power the plane up, then it links when the transmitter comes on. It took me three tries before I read the instructions and got it on the first attempt after that.
Also worth wiggling the servo arms by hand before you commit to flying it. The servos twitching to center is a good sign, but one of mine had a stripped gear and I did not catch it until the ailerons went soft halfway thru the second flight. Glad I was high enought to glide it back in.
Funny timing reading this, since I'm usally the guy on the donating end of that deal. Cleaned out my garage last spring and dropped three planes at the thrift store down the road, all of them flyers with radios. My wife thought I was crazy for not trying to sell them, but I figured some kid or returning hobbyist getting a whole setup for pocket change was a better outcome than them gathering dust at my place another five years. So from where I sit, thanks for being the buyer half of that exchange. One thing I'd flag on the bind-n-fly side: check the date stickers on any packs that came with it before you charge them. I left a couple of 3S packs sitting in a plane's battery hatch for close to three years and one came out of storage puffed up like a pillow. I charge those old mystery batteries outside on concrete now, in a fireproof bag if I have one handy, at least for the first cycle. As for the DX6, my guess is it'll bind fine as long as the plane runs DSMX or DSM2, which most of the smaller trainers do. Worst case you're out the cost of one receiver and still way ahead.
Thrift store airframes are half my hangar at this point. I've hauled home 5 planes from estate sales and the shop near my office over the last 4 years, and 3 of them still get regular flight time. If that bind-n-fly is a Spektrum-era bird your DX6 will probably link right up, the older DSM2 gear binds without much fuss, worst case you update the radio firmware and try again. What models are they? A pic of the tail would tell the whole story, the decals give away the era fast.
The junk drawer AAs are always a gamble in my house. Half of mine are dead or corroded, so I keep a fresh pack tucked in the field box now after a transmitter quit on me mid-flight years back. That was a long walk to go pick up pieces. Also, don't toss the RTF radio if the DX6 binds. Those little stock transmitters make decent spares for teaching buddies on the buddy box setup, or you can gut the guts out and use the case for something else.
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