Update on the plane

So I managed to find enough free time today to finish the main wing. Yay! The wing's cross section is a flat bottomed airfoil. To achieve a smooth curve on the top of the wing, I peeled the paper off the underside of the foam board, and glued it on to the bottom half with the side still covered with paper facing up. I don't like the idea of having the paper  be the outer surface of the plane, so I plan to put a thin layer of fiberglass on the outside of the plane.

It went from this...

...to this.

Despite the visible progress, it's still not done yet. Dang. I still need to add vertical stabilizers on the wing tips, attach the control surfaces and cut out an access hatch in the top of the wing so I can take out the battery and receiver, as well as service the other components. 

Speaking of components, here is a parts list that covers all of the electronics that went/are going into this thing:

Turnigy 1100kv brushless outrunner

Turnigy plush 25A speed controller

Turnigy servoless retractable landing gear

Turnigy 4s LiPo battery

Turnigy 11g digital servos

Turnigy 8ch receiver

And if anyone is wondering why I'm making this out of foam board as opposed to a slightly more legitimate building material, it because this stuff is really easy to work with, it strong enough for this application, and this particular brand is ridiculously inexpensive (around $1.00 per 20" by 30" sheet).  

That's all for today. I'm short on time, so this had to be a short post. Here's another photo of the plane.

Ugh. It would be sooo much cooler if it were actually flying.

 

Yay! First post!

Hi! I'm Aidan, and I make stuff. I used to just make stuff and not show it to anyone, but one of my friends told me I was dumb for not documenting and sharing the stuff I made, so I decided to start a blog of my projects.

This first entry is going to be an overview of some of the projects I've worked on in the past. Future entries will probably be more focused on one particular project. I'm using this entry to make up for all the stuff I should have been posting, but didn't because reasons.

Alrighty then.

For the most part, two things have been preventing me from getting actual work done occupying my time: scratch-building RC planes, and my scooter.

Also scratch built.

Because a six foot wingspan clearly wasn't big enough...

The scooter is actually done. I just need to finish putting together the battery (so in that sense it isn't really done. Shame on me). The plane however need tons more work before I can do stuff with it (like fly it). 

Lets talk about the scooter.

The chassis is a 2.5' long piece of 5" wide aluminum U-channel purchased from McMaster Carr. I'll provide a detailed parts list later on, since I don't remember off the top of my head all the parts that went into it or their dimensions (Shame on me again). The motor is a 2.45 kW Turnigy SK3 from Hobby King. The motor drives the rear wheel through a #25 chain that goes around a 23 tooth sprocket on the motor and a 55 tooth sprocket on the wheel. The wheels are 8" wheels designed for a Razor E200 electric scooter. 

If the steering column looks like it's from a razor kick scooter, that's because it is. Using it made making the scooter way easier (it's always lazier easier to use a pre existing part than to make it your self). 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, so I'll talk about planes now.

Instead of being a smart normal person and buying an inexpensive trainer to look at and practice flying, I thought it would be a great idea to scratch build my first plane. I ended up building a plane that was too heavy to fly in the first place, and had a motor that was too small for it anyway. 

Ew.

  The next one was less of a monstrosity, and actually flew...for all of 6 seconds before stalling and crashing to the ground. Several times. 

Note: The derpy K'nex wheels where never actually used.

~So majestic~

The next summer I decided that I should probably try building something based off of some actual plans of something that worked. I ended up loosely following the plans I found (here) and came up with this thing:

Again, the wheels ended up being fantastically nonfunctional.

This time it only crashed because of pilot error! It probably helped that I used foam board instead of the 1" thick insulation foam from the last planes, as it ended up being easier to work with as was way lighter as well. 

Eventually I crashed the plane so many times that it became unusable, so I pulled out the electronics and built another one. This time, I decided to make a glider. Not because I particularly like gliders, but because the lower speeds gave me time to react to stuff and not destroy another plane. 

Dat wing-span

Fast forward to today and you get the monstrosity hanging from the ceiling in the second photo.

At some point I might consider making a plane with the motor in the front... 

This is basically just a scaled up version of the FT Versa Wing, but with two motors and retractable landing gear (I might be getting a little ambitious here). I designed this to be an FPV (first person video) plane or a camera plane. Unfortunately I am not super confident in my ability to pilot model aircraft, so flying this will probably wait until I have more practice on a plane I care less about. 

As with almost every other plane I built, this one was constructed from 20" by 30" sheets of foam board. 

After spending the time to carefully cut the plywood to make these motor mounts, I decided they weren't identical enough. So I printed two more and used those. 

Bottom panel before I cut it out

Glorious after photo

Dat Scrap

That's it for now. Future updates on scooter/plane/other projects will probably be posted every weekend/when I remember to post stuff. 

Thanks for checking this out!