Rowan Collier

In the fall of 2021, Rowan Landyn Collier was an ordinary girl at a Wichita, Kansas high school struggling to fit in with anyone other than her boyfriend Nathan. Isolation in the COVID pandemic had left a mark on her personality. By then, she had gotten used to being alone but wanted to rebuild a social and fun life. But this changed when he introduced her to the world of radio controlled vehicles. He got for his 17th birthday an advanced and large RC P-51 Mustang with wing-mounted airsoft guns. 

He showed it to Rowan and she was so amazed by its customizability and aerobatic abilities that she decided to get into the hobby herself. And so for Christmas 2021, Rowan’s mother bought her her first RC vehicle, a 1:16 scale Pizioni Dovice made by Jiro for about $100. Sadly, her relationship with Nathan didn’t last beyond high school. He moved to Georgia for warmer weather and to go to college. 

In February 2022, Rowan flew to Chicago for a charity RC car race to raise money for refugees from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. She won the race after some tense moments in which she felt like she was going to have a heart attack. Her prize was $500 plus reimbursement for travel.

In June of that year, Rowan entered into the Cowtown Radio Rally, an RC tournament in Dallas. But when she flew there 3 days in advance, the airline lost her RC Pizioni. Luckily, just 2 hours before the first event began, it was found in the lost and found at Love Field and Rowan took an Uber to retrieve it. Rowan went on to win the tournament, getting the grand prize of $30,000 and opening more doors to her in professional RCing. She would participate in the tournament again in 2023 but only made it to the semifinals.

The first combat RC vehicle Rowan got was the Maggot tank. It is a 1:20 scale tank inspired by various tanks from the Vietnam War to the present day. It has a laser tag gun that can be interchanged for an airsoft gun. The problem is the tank moves very slowly and has unstable, squirmy steering; which Rowan suspects is what inspired its name. When using it in a combat setting, Rowan relies on rotating the turret and firing quickly rather than trying to crawl the Maggot out of a sticky situation. Despite its slowness, this tank carried Rowan to 4th place in Tank Week 2022, held in Louisville, Kentucky in July of that year.

In the very first week of 2023, Rowan got into RC aircraft when she got a 1:24 scale P-40 Warhawk. It has four single-shot airsoft guns in the wings. The actual P-40 had six .50 caliber machine guns, three in each wing. Rowan crashed this plane once but got by with only having to replace the broken left wing.

Rowan then added an RC Woolard Mk 6 to her collection. This was based on the Woolard Mk 6, a British fighter-bomber aircraft designed during World War II. The Woolard Mk6 saw action for only 18 months from 1943-45. Despite this, pilots came to trust the aircraft enough to give it the endearing nickname of “Woolie”.  The original plane was armed with six 20mm cannons in the nose, a rear machine gun, and a bomb bay. Rowan’s RC Woolie has two airsoft guns in the nose and a bomb bay that can drop a paintball. Because the plane weighs 242 grams, she barely did not need to register it with the FAA.

For controlling her P-40 and Woolie, Rowan uses the Jiro Warsight 12 transmitter. This controller has 12 channels, memory for up to 10 receivers, and a touchscreen. The housing is designed after World War II-era vehicles.

But Rowan’s biggest, most expensive, and favorite RC aircraft has to be her B-52 Stratofortress, for which she paid $4,000. At 1:16 scale, this gives it a length of nearly 10 feet and a wingspan of 11 and a half feet. It has 8 EDF motors, which are like fake jet engines on RC planes. Mini, functional jet engines are available for RC planes but super expensive, and eight of them would be beyond Rowan’s price range. The aircraft is armed with little styrofoam bombs carried in the bomb bay. The wings can be detached and the motors unplugged to make the B-52 easier to carry. Because Rowan’s B-52 weighs more than 250 grams, she was required to register it with the FAA and needs to bring her FAA registration papers when she flies it. She also needs to reregister it every 3 years. Her FAA drone registration number is FARCDOESRC, found on a white sticker on the tail for legal reasons. She controls this not with a dedicated transmitter, but with her laptop hooked up to a 16-channel antenna.

Today, Rowan is an Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube influencer under the name of RCdoesRC. She posts videos of RC competitions she is in, reviews of RC vehicles and parts, and news relating to the hobby. She has earned a few sponsorships, including from Jiro, her favorite RC vehicle brand. She has 85,000 Instagram followers and 19,000 subscribers on YouTube. RC related content is not the only thing she posts. She also talks about real aircraft and their histories, especially designs from World War II and the Cold War. In October 2023, she uploaded a video of herself going into Popeye’s, ordering 6 of their biscuits, and eating them without any drink. She reels in around $1,500 a month in ad revenue and sponsorships online.

Rowan is a blue-eyed brunette. There are a few freckles around her eyes and a larger mole on her neck. She most often wears an orange sports top with a matching armband with a pocket. She prefers leggings, her favorite pair being her black leggings of the Opal brand. Rowan has worn glasses since the age of 9. Her favorite colors are orange, pastel blue, and white.

To avoid the health effects of sitting for a really long time working on her RC vehicles, Rowan has a membership at a local pool. She is a reservist at the Blue Lemons Swim Club. They are a swim team from Kansas. Their fight song is Everybody Wants To Rule The World. Rowan is not a full member nor does she want the commitments of being one.

She also keeps fit by walking the Collier family’s dog, Brody. He is a Shetland sheepdog. He is 6 years old and the Collier family has had him for 2 years. Rowan has taught Brody to fetch cheap RC or toy aircraft, but she never lets him near her more expensive planes.

Rowan uses her laptop for gaming and to work on the firmware that some of her RC vehicles use. It is a Cesar Astonisher. It is a silver laptop with a red stripe on the front edge. Protruding from the back is a single-pump/dual-fan AIO unit. The Astonisher comes with a Sewadi TT-16H CPU with 12 active cores and 4 reserve cores. Its graphics power comes from an NVIDIA GeForce MX330. It has a total of 24GB of RAM spread across three SODIMM sticks with a slot for an optional fourth stick. Because of its water cooling system, the Astonisher weighs about 15 pounds and is over an inch thick, but still more portable than a desktop with the same specs. The Astonisher sits below the Imperator in the company’s lineup.

Previously, Rowan had an ordinary red laptop that she got for her 12th birthday. But she lost that computer to an unintended infection with the Firecracker trojan. This is a virus created by a Palestinian programmer whose 4-year-old nephew was shot dead by Israeli troops. He designed Firecracker to attack Israel’s power grid and weapon factories. Finding out and totally understanding why the virus existed, Rowan forgave its creator and salvaged a few wires and circuit components from her old laptop.

Rowan’s real car is a white Lotus Elise S2. Because this model of Lotus comes with a Toyota engine, it’s far more reliable than most other Lotuses or other British vehicles. In fact, she is perfectly comfortable using it as her daily. She has the Kansas license plate “RCDOESRC”, her TikTok handle. Hanging on the rear view mirror is a Lottie Vic plushie. She traded in her first vehicle, a Hyundai SUV that was on its second engine, for this car. Once, on Interstate 135 near McPherson, Kansas, she reached 113 MPH in her Lotus before chickening out.

Rowan has two siblings. Her slightly older brother Ethan moved to Laredo, Texas to be an HVAC installer. He is now dating an x-ray student named Kyra. When Ethan moved out of the Collier home, he gave Rowan his boombox, a Pamplón Captain 30. Its main feature is a 30-disc rotary changer with CD-R capability and a locking system to prevent the carousel from accidentally turning while carrying the boombox. It also features a 6-band equalizer with several presets, AM/FM radio, one USB port, and Bluetooth connectivity.

Her younger sister Alma was born in 2010. She also likes electronics and sometimes helps Rowan with her projects. Rowan has taught her how to use a soldering iron and measure the gauge of a wire before even reaching her teenage years. Alma wants a MacBook for her next birthday but Rowan has tried to warn her about their anti-repair design.

Their father Jeff has been an insurance claims adjuster for 30 years. He drives a RAM 1500 pickup which Rowan may borrow to carry her B-52.