HOZO User Story #01 | How an RC Pilot Turned a Passion for Flying into a Life of Making — and Going Further

[FPV footage — Shark’s balsa-wood aircraft flying alongside another RC plane]

You’re looking at the view from Shark’s aircraft.
But the story of how he got here started long before FPV.
Just a week earlier, this same aircraft was still sitting on Shark’s workbench, waiting to become an FPV plane.

When we visited Shark, a newly purchased balsa-wood RC plane was already halfway through its transformation into an FPV aircraft. Shark was relaxed and smiling as he walked us through his planes, his projects, and the HOZO tools he’d been putting to use.

[Shark used NeoBlade to modify the factory PVC cockpit canopy for better FPV camera visibility.]

From Model Kits to the Sky

Shark is an RC enthusiast and FPV pilot based in Guangzhou. He doesn’t just fly his aircraft — he modifies them, repairs them, builds custom parts, and turns off-the-shelf planes into something uniquely his own.
Back in 1998, he was already deep into the world of static scale modeling. He was among the early model builders in Guangzhou and took home two championships at one of the first competitions held by the local modeling community.
When he went to college, other things took over, and he eventually stepped away from static modeling for years.
When he eventually returned to the hobby, he wanted something more.

When Modeling Wasn’t Enough

That brought him to RC aircraft. At first, he was simply flying ready-to-fly planes. But flying also meant crashing — and every crash gave him another reason to get his hands dirty. He started repairing his own planes, then modifying them, and eventually building around his own ideas.

[Customized FPV cockpit with a detailed instrument panel and miniature pilot]

Over time, flying became more than a hobby. Shark went on to establish SHARK’S Aerial Motion Films, taking his experience with aircraft into commercial aerial work, including motorsport and automotive shoots.

[A short film by SHARK’S Aerial Motion Films.]

Making a 50-Kilogram “Miniature” Fly

Then Shark got into turbine-powered aircraft.
His largest build is nearly 3.7 meters long and weighs close to 50 kilograms. The aircraft cost him around $20,000, with two turbines accounting for roughly half of that. From the day he brought home the shell to its first flight, the build took nearly six months.

[Shark’s 3.7-meter turbine-powered aircraft took flight.]

[Shark with two of his turbine-powered aircraft.]

At this scale, calling it “miniature” feels like a bit of a stretch. It’s built to recreate the experience of a real aircraft. The sound, lighting, movement, and overall presence are all part of it. Seeing it take off is, as Shark puts it, something else entirely.
And the factory shell is just where the work begins. He changes the paint, adds metal skin panels, reworks the landing gear, fabricates the exhaust from individual pieces of stainless steel, and builds out the tubing and other details himself.
Inside, he goes even further — 3D-printed cockpit interiors, miniature figures, custom weathering, and countless small details that would never come on the original aircraft.

Getting the aircraft into the air is one part of the experience. For Shark, the work doesn’t stop there. He still approaches the aircraft with the eye of a static model builder, paying attention to the details that make it feel like a real aircraft even when it’s sitting on the ground.

How Shark Turned a Balsa-Wood Plane into an FPV Aircraft

We knew this was a big RC plane before we got to Shark’s workshop. Still, seeing it in person was a whole different story.
By the time we arrived, Shark had already started modifying the balsa-wood airframe for FPV. The flight controller, GPS module, and battery all had to be fitted inside. Every component had to be carefully positioned within the limited space of the aircraft.
Since every plane has its own combination of components and layout, Shark has to work out the setup and build it himself.

Working Inside the Airframe

As Shark showed us the inside of the aircraft, he pointed to one of the thin wooden pieces that made up the airframe. At first glance, it looked like carbon fiber, but it was actually a lightweight wooden panel reinforced with a layer of carbon-fiber cloth.
The carbon-fiber cloth was bonded to the wood with epoxy resin, reinforcing the thin structure without adding the weight of a solid carbon-fiber plate.
But there was a downside. The laser-cut edges were left rough, with tiny fibers sticking out.
He told us this was the part he hated working with most.

Whenever he reached inside to install or adjust something, those fibers could get into his hands, leaving his skin red and itchy. The fine dust was another concern. Before reaching back inside the airframe, Shark would run the NeoSander Reciprocating Detail Sander along the edges to smooth out those rough fibers.

Building Out the Cockpit

Getting the FPV view right also meant making the cockpit look the part. Shark designs his own instrument panels, sends the designs out for 3D printing, and then finishes the parts himself. Once printed, they still have burrs, rough edges, and support marks that need to be cleaned up before they can go into the cockpit.
 

[Cockpit details in progress and another of Shark’s completed RC aircraft cockpits.]

Before, Shark had to go over all those little spots by hand with sandpaper. Now, he can use NeoBlade Ultrasonic Cutter to trim away the 3D-printed supports, then switch to NeoSander and its smaller sanding heads to get into the tight spots and clean up the finer details.
It’s a small part of the build, but one he has to repeat whenever he makes a new cockpit piece.

Getting the FPV View Right

For Shark, the FPV view had to be right. The factory clear PVC window wasn’t transparent enough in front of the camera, and any haze or distortion could ruin the footage. That simply wasn’t good enough.
So Shark used NeoBlade to cut out the clear PVC window from the factory canopy and replace it with his own, giving the FPV camera a much clearer view.

To keep the FPV camera secure in flight, Shark also used NeoBlade to cut a wooden mount for it. He noticed that the ultrasonic cutting did create some heat and slightly darkened the cut edge of the wood. But since the mount would sit inside the aircraft, that wasn’t an issue for him. What surprised him was that the heat slightly darkened the cut edge and appeared to reduce some of the loose fibers along the cut that could otherwise get into his hands.  

Reworking the Rest of the Aircraft

The FPV setup was only the beginning. Shark also reworked the landing gear, replacing the original wooden version with carbon fiber because it could easily break on landing.
And even once the functional work was done, he still wasn’t finished. He uses NeoBlock Sanding Block to sand and wear down parts of the aircraft’s surface, adding the scuffs and signs of use that give it the look of an aircraft that has actually been flown.
For Shark, “finished” doesn’t mean the plane is ready to fly. It means every detail is where he wants it to be.

When the Build Finally Takes Flight

A few weeks later, we were no longer in Shark’s workshop.
We were standing beside the runway, watching the aircraft he had spent so much time modifying get ready to fly.

Seeing Through the Pilot’s Eyes

When Shark put on his FPV goggles, the aircraft in front of us became the aircraft in his headset, and for the next few minutes, he was no longer watching the plane from the ground. He was in the cockpit.
He then connected the goggles to his phone and shared the live FPV feed with us.
The screen gave us a window into the flight — the runway, the aircraft’s nose, and the world rushing past from the pilot’s perspective.

From behind the goggles, Shark seemed completely at home in the sky. He flew around the lighthouse, made a few passes near the boats, and pointed out the two runways below — one in use, the other still unfinished. Even while flying, he was reading the surroundings, checking the wind and keeping an eye on the birds around the field.
Then he started showing us what the aircraft could really do.
“This is a slow roll,” he said, before smoothly rolling the aircraft through the maneuver. A moment later, he put it into inverted flight. The aircraft flipped over and kept flying as if nothing had happened, drawing an immediate reaction from everyone around us.


For Shark, though, these maneuvers seemed almost routine. He could talk about the runway, the wind, the birds, and the aircraft’s altitude while keeping the plane under control hundreds of meters above us. The aircraft was moving fast, but his movements on the controls remained remarkably calm.
He also talked about flying above the clouds and how much more spectacular the view could be, especially during the winter migration, when large numbers of birds pass through the area. It was clear that, for him, flying wasn’t simply about making the aircraft perform tricks. It was about seeing the world from a completely different perspective.

By noon, the heat was hard to ignore, but so was the energy on the field.
Seeing so many experienced pilots prepare and tune their aircraft was a completely new experience for us. The level of focus and skill made the whole hobby far more fascinating than we had expected.

[Two turbine-powered RC aircraft took to the sky.]

When Flying Gets Complicated

 Watching an RC aircraft fly is only part of the experience. When you spend this much time with an aircraft, you also learn that not everything is under your control. Sometimes it’s the aircraft. Sometimes it’s the weather.
As Shark joked, some weekends are basically just spent at the field watching the rain. Thankfully, today wasn’t one of them.
That got us wondering: when something goes wrong out on the field, what tools do RC pilots actually bring along to make a quick repair?

A broken wing, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean the day is over. If the wooden structure cracks, Shark can cut away the covering film around the damaged area, glue the wood back together, and get it ready to fly again. If a wire comes loose, he reaches for the soldering iron.
For RC pilots, being able to make a quick repair on the field means there’s often still another flight waiting.
And not every repair is about getting an aircraft back in the air. At home, Shark also uses NeoSander and NeoBlock for cosmetic repairs and restoration work.
He showed us photos on his phone of one of his turbine-powered aircraft’s cockpits, which had picked up several deep scratches and dents. He had repaired the damaged areas, sanded them back down, and repainted the cockpit himself.

Beyond RC Flying

From there, our conversation moved through flight simulators and how closely they can replicate real-world flying, Shark’s experience flying a real aircraft himself, and his work as an aerial photographer and perspective on the industry.
We also talked about painting and weathering, and how the tools and materials used on large-scale aircraft differ from those used in static modeling.

By the end of our conversation, it was clear that for Shark and the other pilots around us, RC flying was about much more than simply putting an aircraft in the air. It was about building, modifying, testing, repairing, and constantly finding ways to make the next flight better than the last.
The aircraft may start with the same blueprint, but where it ends up is shaped by the person behind the controls.