Breakaway / Safe-Crash Plane

[Dane]

Build suggestion.

Breakaway plane that takes minimal financial loss when it is crashed.... intentionally. Could be designed such that when it takes enough force to dislodge a piece of it (say... left wing) the rest would also dislodge and the fuselage would get a parachute! Or maybe you could deploy your own parachute for the whole system when it gets hit mid-air.

Even if it were to just dbreakaway and the pieces were hanging off their respective servo wires... it would have a nice soft crash-landing with a parachute. There is a nice way to tie a knot in a wire at a join such that when force is exerted to pull the 2 pieces apart, the force is applied to mostly the wire, instead of where it mounts to the connectors.

You could then take this plane to dogfight with your friends who have the same plane, have battles... and only have to replace some props and the occasional foam piece (but it's ok, since you can make a new piece yourself!)

 

[tramsgar]

I'd go with a big bag of strong magnets and lots of trial and error to get the right amount of strength between the different parts. Servo wires would ideally break away in the same way, but you'd have to custom design the connectors (I think Apple has this design on some of their charging connectors? Watch out for lawyers).

A really cool idea, Dane!

 

[FlyingMonkey]

I am pretty sure the SloBipe was assembled with magnets. It would just fall apart on too hard of a landing.

 

[Liemavick]

It's a novel idea, but considering you cant control which part of the plane would take the damage in a dogfight your parachute deploy system may be rendered useless. A simpler solution may be just to protect your electronics with additional foam or padding since thats where the money is