Formori
Beginner Crasher
I've watched all of the swappable series videos and loved the idea of building my own plane (I only have a very small Firefly trainer ATM) but thought that for the work/time investment that most of the plans require it might not work as well for me as a beginner (I'm too poor to buy speedbuild kits).
The spitfire was the first plane I saw and thought, "I really wanna build that", but I didn't have enough time then, and now the Racer has come out and I loved the build and review episodes and just had to build it.
I made a few changes during the build process (like glue-hinges all around) and I contemplated making a removable wing, but I like the design as it is.
If the weather cooperates, I'll be flying it tomorrow morning before class and I'll let you all know how it goes!
(Crashes or clean flying, either will make me happy!)
I decided to use simple red and yellow vinyl electrical tape (the cheapo stuff) to add some color to the plane, and the canopy is a pop-bottle piece that I cut out to fit where the speed canopy would go.
Here's my bubble-canopy made from a 2L pop bottle, the "top, shoulder" of the bottle provides the round bubble effect, and I really like how it looks, it's also really strong in comparison to the poster board.
I used a lot of extreme packing tape to reinforce edges (because I'm new to flying and I know I'll crash) and also put a layer of regular tape along the whole bottom to help with sliding on grass and stop the paper ripping if it crashes on a rough surface.
And since I didn't have any servo horns around I had to make a couple out of some scrap 1mm acrylic I had lying around, they actually seem to function really nicely, but I'll have to see how they hold up over repeated abuse.
The spitfire was the first plane I saw and thought, "I really wanna build that", but I didn't have enough time then, and now the Racer has come out and I loved the build and review episodes and just had to build it.
I made a few changes during the build process (like glue-hinges all around) and I contemplated making a removable wing, but I like the design as it is.
If the weather cooperates, I'll be flying it tomorrow morning before class and I'll let you all know how it goes!
(Crashes or clean flying, either will make me happy!)
I decided to use simple red and yellow vinyl electrical tape (the cheapo stuff) to add some color to the plane, and the canopy is a pop-bottle piece that I cut out to fit where the speed canopy would go.
Here's my bubble-canopy made from a 2L pop bottle, the "top, shoulder" of the bottle provides the round bubble effect, and I really like how it looks, it's also really strong in comparison to the poster board.
I used a lot of extreme packing tape to reinforce edges (because I'm new to flying and I know I'll crash) and also put a layer of regular tape along the whole bottom to help with sliding on grass and stop the paper ripping if it crashes on a rough surface.
And since I didn't have any servo horns around I had to make a couple out of some scrap 1mm acrylic I had lying around, they actually seem to function really nicely, but I'll have to see how they hold up over repeated abuse.
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