RC Planes and Drones
FPV Drone
In my sophomore year of college I got the urge to fly around and be a pilot. It has always been of interest to me, but this year I made it happen. I found a guide on YouTube for the cheapest FPV drone and ordered the necessary parts. I got all the parts for under $100 and the FPV goggles for about $80. Building it and soldering the ESC board to the control board was easy enough but the real challenge was with programing the control board. I was not able to program the controller from any windows device and had to use beta flight on an apple device.
Flying it was another challenge, till this point in my life I had no real experience flying RC crafts, and with the first one being a high speed FPV drone I had to start very slow and controlled. I started by learning how to fly it line of sight, then progressed to FPV. I flew this drone for about 2 years, sometimes I attached a GoPro to capture HD video. One of the times I was tracking one of the FSAE vehicles I over corrected and flipped the drone upside down, causing it to crash into the ground. The FPV system was destroyed unfortunately. But I will rebuild it in the near future and continue flying it.
FPV Drone
FPV Goggles and Remote Controller
3D Printed Spitfire
I bought the plans for this plane from 3DLabPrint to both test my RC flying capabilities and to see how using a 3D printer to create a plane works. The design of the parts is amazing, seeing how they managed to keep the parts light weight yet hold their form has given me some ideas for my own designs. It is especially impressive because the plane has a 1.6 meter wing span. It took about a month to print and was assembled with CA glue in one day. I spent a few days testing and doing run ups before actually flying. I chose the worst day to fly as that day the wind was gusting up to 13 kts, which is a factor to be considered for actual smaller aircraft. Immediately on take off, the plane rolled severely and smashed into the ground.
I scavenged the electronics and actuators from the destroyed aircraft. I am now in the process of reassembling a new Spitfire and cannot wait to actually fly it. I would like to also add FPV functionality to it.
Scale of the main fuselage
Completed Spitfire
New Spitfire printed in bright colors to control easier
Wheels, servo motors, and landing gear actuators ready for the next plane
Other RC vehicles
I bought and built the Arrow plane from Flight Test to get more experience with RC planes after I built the FPV drone. The nice thing with this plane is the option to turn it into a FPV plane.
After I crashed the large 3D printed plane, I needed to get a durable, large foam plane, the T-28 to practice with before flying the 3D printed plane again. It flies very well and also has landing gear so I can practice take offs and landings.
One of my first experiences with RC was RC helicopters and I was lucky to be gifted a large 1 meter long helicopter. I flew it for about a day but in that time the counter weight at the top of the rotors had became very flimsy and started interfering with the rotors. It broke shortly after. To fix this I bought a metal counter weight instead of a plastic one and 3D printed the linkages to fit the new counter weight which keeps the rotors level. It flies great now.
Another great gift I received was the DJI Mini 2. This drone is perfect for just flying around in HD, scouting out locations, and getting great pictures. I love flying this drone.
Flight test cardboard Arrow RC plane
Durafly foam T-28 RC plane
Gladiator Helicopter
DJI Mini 2
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