Introduction
I first came across a picture of this a couple of years ago and was immediately smitten with its good looks and “pointyness”.
The original is produced in kit form by the French company, Aviation Design. It is a 97 inch wingspan, turbine powered jet capable of 200 MPH. The kit costs approximately $3000. They have recently launched the Mini Diamond which is also turbine powered with a wingspan of 72 inches.
I started building my first attempts at this at the end of 2014. I had reasonable success with pusher versions and, based on some encouragement from the forum, moved to an EDF design using the Grayson Hobbies Viggen 70mm EDF kit. Work / life took over for a while but with the announcement of Flite Fest West 2017, I re-visited this plane with a view to making plans and a build log available.
Other folks have scratch built this plane. Lockey’s RC has plans available for a version called the “Zirconia” (clever name) Also, Dragon Hobby is selling a 90mm EDF version called the “Dymond”.
Design
There are no good quality three views available for this plane and so I resorted to using images from the internet and from Aviation Design’s website to help construct the outline of the plane in Sketchup. The original has smooth curved lines which I found difficult to deal with and so I went with a more angular approach while trying to maintain key features of the shape and dimensions. Some key differences between this design and the original are that the wing is set further back in the plane and I reduced the scale height of the side profile and the height of the vertical stabilizer. The wing adjustment was originally made to overcome issues I had trying to balance pusher versions of the plane. But I liked the new position and kept this change because I think it makes the plane look more aggressive.
Plans
A huge “Thank You” to thatjoshguy for his excellent article – “Creating Plans from Sketchup Models – Free!”. This was invaluable in finding free applications and extensions that can be used to create PDF plans from your Sketchup model. I laid out the PDF so that the pages for each part were self-contained and you only need to join pages in one direction (I always had problems with FT plans trying to tape together all of the sheets in two directions and keep everything 100% aligned).
Build
I think this is an intermediate level build. It uses many standard Flite Test concepts but includes the liberal use of an iron for wide bevels and the Pods take some time and patience to put together.
Flying
I think this is an intermediate level flyer. No terrible tendencies but it’s not a “floaty” plane either.
Enjoy!
I would love to see other folks build and improve on this, e.g. adding landing gear, a speed wing etc.
I first came across a picture of this a couple of years ago and was immediately smitten with its good looks and “pointyness”.
![Diamond.jpg Diamond.jpg](https://ftforumx2.s3.amazonaws.com/2017/03/146803_a90dddd9fcd6f3542751f228dd2c6307_thumb.jpg)
The original is produced in kit form by the French company, Aviation Design. It is a 97 inch wingspan, turbine powered jet capable of 200 MPH. The kit costs approximately $3000. They have recently launched the Mini Diamond which is also turbine powered with a wingspan of 72 inches.
I started building my first attempts at this at the end of 2014. I had reasonable success with pusher versions and, based on some encouragement from the forum, moved to an EDF design using the Grayson Hobbies Viggen 70mm EDF kit. Work / life took over for a while but with the announcement of Flite Fest West 2017, I re-visited this plane with a view to making plans and a build log available.
Other folks have scratch built this plane. Lockey’s RC has plans available for a version called the “Zirconia” (clever name) Also, Dragon Hobby is selling a 90mm EDF version called the “Dymond”.
Design
There are no good quality three views available for this plane and so I resorted to using images from the internet and from Aviation Design’s website to help construct the outline of the plane in Sketchup. The original has smooth curved lines which I found difficult to deal with and so I went with a more angular approach while trying to maintain key features of the shape and dimensions. Some key differences between this design and the original are that the wing is set further back in the plane and I reduced the scale height of the side profile and the height of the vertical stabilizer. The wing adjustment was originally made to overcome issues I had trying to balance pusher versions of the plane. But I liked the new position and kept this change because I think it makes the plane look more aggressive.
Plans
A huge “Thank You” to thatjoshguy for his excellent article – “Creating Plans from Sketchup Models – Free!”. This was invaluable in finding free applications and extensions that can be used to create PDF plans from your Sketchup model. I laid out the PDF so that the pages for each part were self-contained and you only need to join pages in one direction (I always had problems with FT plans trying to tape together all of the sheets in two directions and keep everything 100% aligned).
Build
I think this is an intermediate level build. It uses many standard Flite Test concepts but includes the liberal use of an iron for wide bevels and the Pods take some time and patience to put together.
Flying
I think this is an intermediate level flyer. No terrible tendencies but it’s not a “floaty” plane either.
Enjoy!
I would love to see other folks build and improve on this, e.g. adding landing gear, a speed wing etc.
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