blackmetaldash
New member
Budget-scratchbuilt a wing WITHOUT prior RC build experience!
Hello folks! I'm glad to let you all know I have this lovely project in the making.
Now you'll be wondering why I picked this title, but I'm serious when I said
I don't have any experience in physical RC aircraft building.
I always flew crappy toy planes, helicopters and drones before that, and it was getting boring.
I grew tired of buying those underpowered, unnatural flying toy thingies.
I stepped up my game with buying A Walkera F210 so I could a taste of that sweet carbon fiber and
the unrelenting power of Brushless motors, but I still had to take it to a next step: Build my own RC aircraft!
However, thanks to all you lovely people and Flite Test's constant stream of encouraging videos,
I decided to start building a fixed wing out of foam myself and worry about the implications later.
I randomly just decided to do this during late fall 2016 somewhere at a friend of mine.
He had a warehouse full of foam panels ready to be thrown in the trash, but I had other plans.
I just picked up a panel and started building right away.
It's safe to say some minor underestimation was on my behalf.
That was mostly due to the nature of this light blue insulation
foam material which clearly was a pain to work with.
Sanding this material was delicate and a precision task in order not to crack the foam,
but that was also partially because the sanding machine clearly wasn't meant for this purpose.
And to add to the pain, the foam dust produced by this working process was no laughing matter,
so thank god I had a respirator at my disposal.
I have ordered the pictures I still had chronologically from oldest to newest for you
to follow along the build process.
I started by drawing a backswept wing design on a sheet of light blue insulation foam.
No, I did not consult any designs on the internet for that. I just whipped that up out of my head.
Here you can see the rough design cut out with surface curved before the trailing edge.
Have this Walkera F210 for a size comparison. The wing is just about 40 inches in span.
The wing now has been properly sanded into an aerodynamic airframe.
No fancy building techniques other than sanding.
Thanks to my grandpa, I got some balsa wood and cut stabilizers out of it
for those who wonder: the wing has a Clark Y profile
I took my wing back to my grandpa to strengthen the wing.
Prior to that I had a long and hard time choosing the right material, but I finally settled on carbon fiber flat rods.
Me and Grandpa worked together to put the rods in the crease and glued them in place, finishing off with
tape to keep an aerodynamic profile. then I cut out the trailing edge about 2-3 inches to make elevons out of.
lastly we firmly glued and taped the stabilizers in place.
Here were the electronics made together. took a bit of soldering but against all my expectations, it works!
It was even easier than I expected in the first place. I really didn't think it would be this easy.
At first the motor didn't work, but after some random tinkering I got the motor and servos to work!
It wasn't easy to program the TX because the screen looks like a digital clock instead of having a pixel screen.
Finally I had to come back once more to my grandpa to mount the motor in place.
I didn't really think that part through, but we did the job with 2 pieces of thick balsa wood and a firewall piece.
My wing is nearly ready for it's maiden. The CG has been pinpointed
All that's left now is to mount the ESC in place and have some straps to keep the battery in place.
Electronics used:
For this Build I also wanna give a big Shout-out to FA1-F1D a.k.a. Joshua Finn
for helping me out with the Electronics.
Hello folks! I'm glad to let you all know I have this lovely project in the making.
Now you'll be wondering why I picked this title, but I'm serious when I said
I don't have any experience in physical RC aircraft building.
I always flew crappy toy planes, helicopters and drones before that, and it was getting boring.
I grew tired of buying those underpowered, unnatural flying toy thingies.
I stepped up my game with buying A Walkera F210 so I could a taste of that sweet carbon fiber and
the unrelenting power of Brushless motors, but I still had to take it to a next step: Build my own RC aircraft!
However, thanks to all you lovely people and Flite Test's constant stream of encouraging videos,
I decided to start building a fixed wing out of foam myself and worry about the implications later.
I randomly just decided to do this during late fall 2016 somewhere at a friend of mine.
He had a warehouse full of foam panels ready to be thrown in the trash, but I had other plans.
I just picked up a panel and started building right away.
It's safe to say some minor underestimation was on my behalf.
That was mostly due to the nature of this light blue insulation
foam material which clearly was a pain to work with.
Sanding this material was delicate and a precision task in order not to crack the foam,
but that was also partially because the sanding machine clearly wasn't meant for this purpose.
And to add to the pain, the foam dust produced by this working process was no laughing matter,
so thank god I had a respirator at my disposal.
I have ordered the pictures I still had chronologically from oldest to newest for you
to follow along the build process.
I started by drawing a backswept wing design on a sheet of light blue insulation foam.
No, I did not consult any designs on the internet for that. I just whipped that up out of my head.
Here you can see the rough design cut out with surface curved before the trailing edge.
Have this Walkera F210 for a size comparison. The wing is just about 40 inches in span.
The wing now has been properly sanded into an aerodynamic airframe.
No fancy building techniques other than sanding.
Thanks to my grandpa, I got some balsa wood and cut stabilizers out of it
for those who wonder: the wing has a Clark Y profile
I took my wing back to my grandpa to strengthen the wing.
Prior to that I had a long and hard time choosing the right material, but I finally settled on carbon fiber flat rods.
Me and Grandpa worked together to put the rods in the crease and glued them in place, finishing off with
tape to keep an aerodynamic profile. then I cut out the trailing edge about 2-3 inches to make elevons out of.
lastly we firmly glued and taped the stabilizers in place.
Here were the electronics made together. took a bit of soldering but against all my expectations, it works!
It was even easier than I expected in the first place. I really didn't think it would be this easy.
At first the motor didn't work, but after some random tinkering I got the motor and servos to work!
It wasn't easy to program the TX because the screen looks like a digital clock instead of having a pixel screen.
Finally I had to come back once more to my grandpa to mount the motor in place.
I didn't really think that part through, but we did the job with 2 pieces of thick balsa wood and a firewall piece.
My wing is nearly ready for it's maiden. The CG has been pinpointed
All that's left now is to mount the ESC in place and have some straps to keep the battery in place.
Electronics used:
- Walkera Devo 7 Transmitter from my F210
- Walkera RX601 Receiver
- Emax XA2212 1400KV Brushless motor
- XXD HW30A ESC
- ZOP Power 11.1V 2200Mah 3S Lipo
- 2 MR.RC SG90 9g servos
For this Build I also wanna give a big Shout-out to FA1-F1D a.k.a. Joshua Finn
for helping me out with the Electronics.
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