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youtube.com/shorts/iddsViYvXmg?feature=sharehttps://youtu.be/tnU0x8sLyUsFlite test, a company and YouTube channel I buy airplane parts from had an Easter sale and so I got a plane kit. the kit I got was a prop-in-slot jet meaning it uses a normal motor and propeller instead of a ducted fan like other common jets have.
many other prop-in-slot jets have flat wings but this one has an airfoil so the wing is stronger and it creates lift at zero angle of attack. It was a fast build and looks awesome with the included canopy sticker! the first flight was quite underwhelming with it stalling, crashing, and breaking the nose off (1st vid). after running up the motor at home I noticed that the motor would start vibrating past half throttle, so I tested it with a different esc and it ran smooth. I decided to just try again, and it flew great! (2nd vid) the only thing I wish it had is landing gear but it lands fine just as a belly lander. I painted it up like the 5th gen fighter from top gun and it looks even better! 1st: youtube.com/shorts/iddsViYvXmg?feature=share 2nd: youtube.com/shorts/O_cO5kgshVg?feature=share
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in December and January I built some planes and didn't have a chance to fly them so recently I got the chance to try them out. first up the flite test spitfire, made from free plans and skins. skins are just decorations that you print out and glue to your plane. the first flight went well except that the battery fell out while performing a high-g turn and without the necessary weight in the nose it and suffered some damage but flight worthy after some repairs. the second one is a flite test lazer cut kit, the millennium flerken the little brother of the original design, the flerken. this one is made for speed so I was nervous about being able to control it, and you have to throw it from the wingtip so I was concerned about that too. so I mounted a little FPV camera on and launched it into the air with no problems at all! it does fly fast and slow, but when going slow you have to be careful to get enough air over the control surfaces to make it controllable. on the last flight I went too slow right over the runway and messed up the landing, but no major damage was done. all in all I like these planes and want to fly them more. above: the millennium flerken. below; supermarine sally the spitfire. on the flite test community forum every February there is a challenge to build and fly four new airplanes in February with cool paint schemes and flight video. for my four planes I chose the flite test flyer (in the previous article) the flite test simple cub, the AP easy, and the sponz bloody wonder. the flyer I made to fly indoors. the simple cub Is for casual flying, water flying and even snow with floats or skis. the AP easy is for gliding and fpv soaring. the sponz bloody wonder is for combat where people smash their planes into each other and see who keeps flying. it also does very tight loops and rolls. all of them were fairly easy builds and all flew great and look decent. link to forum challenge: forum.flitetest.com/index.php?threads/ftfc23-buildruary-build-off-challenge.71577/ My r/c flying club sets up times and places to fly during the winter. we fly at an indoor volleyball center and an indoor basketball court so the planes have to fly slow, to give the pilot time to react, and maneuverable to turn in tight spots. to do this it needs to be light so it doesn't stall at slow speeds, these planes are usually made of carbon fiber and cellophane airframes with tiny motors, batteries, and servos. I wanted to make one from foamboard so I went with a design by flite test called the flyer. the paper on the outside of the foamboard makes up 2/3 of the weight, so I removed all the paper, and added a little packing tape for strength. I used the flite test A power pack which has a small motor, but not as small as the ones on the cellophane planes. I also recently built another flite test design the mini old fogey and it uses the same paper-removing technique and power setup. it also flies ok in a basketball court but not as good as the flyer. flyer video: vimeo.com/799281822?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=108178759 ![]() above: mini old fogey. below: flyer my first snow sled/skimmer was kind of like a boat which made turning without tipping over very hard, this year I tried some side pods to provide stability while turning, going over bumps, and jumps. I made some templates out of poster board and cut the pieces out of dollar store foamboard. me and my brother assembled it, and installed the servo for steering the rudder. To make it water-proof I put the receiver and speed controller in a ziplock bag, and spray painted the vehicle. ready to go! first drive is great steering is stable but you can also do donuts! it has lots of power with a little 2 cell battery but with a 3 cell it was just to powerful. overall this little one was great for speeding around in the backyard! I wanted to make a bigger new one to handle better at high speeds. so I took the same design and made it bigger with some modifications like a fin to deflect air upwards to have down-force at high throttle. on this one the pontoons were less sturdy because I used the same dowels as the small ones, so they wanted to fall off. I think some metal rods would be a better option. the down-force fin really limited steering so I just cut that off and it worked normally again. it was fun to slide it around on the road ice too. some improvements would be to have a servo to control the down-force level for different modes of sledding. it would be cool to 3d print some parts so I don't have to use foam-board which gets soggy and fails. video: F.P.V stands for first person view. here is how it works: a camera captures video onboard the vehicle, and the video transmitter transmits at one of the channels in the 5.8G frequency band, back to the pilot or in this case my brother. mostly this technology is used on race quads, high speed racing drones where visibility is key, but it is fun for flying from the cockpit of an r/c plane or car. the setup I use has a small lightweight all-in-one camera, (lens, camera, and transmitter) a small 1 cell lipo battery, and cheap goggles. (soon I want to get a better one with video recording ability). a little video: video above: picture taken from inside goggles while flying my best plane. (the ww1 plane)
below: camera and goggles. A small step up from my last plane, the flite test simple scout has more power and bomb dropping capability. this plane is still basically a trainer but the mid wing (through the middle) design means it's more maneuverable and less stable than high wing planes like a cub. the flight experience however showed that it was very easy to control thanks to the large tail surfaces, and perfect flying conditions. as you can see, it appears that the designing team (me and Oliver) used every can of spray paint, but I just wanted to be able to tell the right and left wing apart.
we got to drop some curved foam bombs which we lost in the pasture, (they were painted green) and some toy parachute guys who were recovered. lots of fun! due to the success or failure of my last plane (the Warhawk) I made a trainer airplane so I could get something to fly before putting a cool project in a bigger plane. It uses the same motor, speed control, and receiver that were in the warhawk to save some money, but it uses smaller 5 gram servos to save weight. with everything done, the wind was low for once and I took it out to the park for a maiden flight. the first two try's the plane fared as well as the warhawk crashing the the ground, except that the new nylon prop stayed intact this time. I found that the rudder was stuck in the right position so I taped it straight, and the next flight went well, but somehow there was a rip halfway through the wing! so I taped the wing and tried again. this time It gained some altitude, and I tried to turn, but it was coming toward me so I forgot how the ailerons worked. it started to roll, but the wing ripped in two! that ended the flight. the problem was that the spars were so thin to allow the servo wires to pass through that it wasn't strong enough for even a roll. I re-built the wing this time with a bamboo skewer and some cardboard for reinforcements. if the weather is nice I can fly it this week! the trainer with it's new wing.
the first week of march was wholesomely spent by building my first warbird, and waiting for electronics to come. I got the Idea for this project when I was reading a book about super-sonic flight. the book was talking about WWII and some of the speedy warbirds like the Apache, Mustang, and warhawk. I found some plans for it online, and it only took me about 7 hours including cutting out the pieces, electronics installation, and painting. my brother and I decided to paint the tail red so this could be a red tailed hawk! planes with low wings are typically not recommended for beginner pilots, but I decided to give this one a shot. with the fearless (Lego) pilot Rodger at the controls, the plane went 3 feet then went straight into the ground. CRACK! broken propeller. I put on a new one and gave it a launch. CRACK! broken propeller. I guess I will have to get better at flying, and get better props before trying this one again.
for the past few weeks, I have been working through a book by Make (technology media company) called geometry. the book uses a free open source kind of CAD (computer aided design) called openSCAD, where the user writes code to create precise 3d models which can be exported to a 3d printer, to become physical shapes. I have mostly coded and (not printed) the stuff in the book, but when one of the small plastic wheels on my tennis ball hopper fell off, I designed a simple half cylinder with a hole in the middle, to print on my friend's printer. I can't wait to learn more functions, and print more complex things, like rocket nose cones, and airplane details!
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