My christmas plane, the Volantex ASW-28

[Fluburtur]

Oh boy, I only clocked two flight on this thing and I already love it.
I wanted a glider for a while and also a plane that I could build for long range so I could fly it on the mountains where I go on vacations, there is tons of lift there.

So, I ordered myself this beauty for christmas and started to build it as soon as I opened it. It was a bit slow because I have to spare some time for familly too.

You can see my room is quite a mess as well.

Good thing the wings have a quick attach system, otherwise I wouldnt be able to get this plane out of my room. 2.6M of wingspan is a bit large!

This is the first flight, unfortunately my friend Nathan is away and my cousin isnt as good at filming planes.

Just today I did a flight with a camera inside.

Now for how it flies, well very good!
It does exactly what you tell it to do and it tracks like an arrow, it is really easy to fly and I love the whistling sound it makes when it glides by at high speed.
I had to move the CG a bit back from the recommended one, I use a 3s 2200mah lipo on the "rear" tray of the cockpit and it works decently as well.

As I mentionned I want to build it for long range so I ordered myself a QX7 (was about time), a crossfire system and a f411 flight controller as well as a runcam split mini 2.

Needless to say, christmas was expensive!

I don't have the qx7 yet but it should arrive soon, I will 3d print a pan mount for the cameras as well so I can look around. The dad of my friend that flies paraglier wanted me to follow him and film him with a rc plane, that will be perfect for that!

You can expect a lot from that, I guess.

 

[Fluburtur]

Well, I spent all day assembling and wiring the hardware for the glider. It has gps, OSD, a flight controller, camera and all that good stuff.

I will set up the controls and flight modes tomorrow, this was rather tiring but for now everything works.

 

[Fluburtur]

I did some progress, setting up the flight modes and trying them

The software wasnt using full motor power so I changed that, also can some mod move this thread over to FPV? Feel like it would fit better therere.

 

[Fluburtur]

Well some progress has been done, no dvr this time tho!

I only need to set a proper cruise speed and it should be good, rth works so I just need to wait for the new camera.

 

[Merv]

Great looking plane

 

[Fluburtur]

I did another flight to make sure all my settings were correct, everything works well and I got 1.3km out this time without any issue!

I will put some black tape on the canopy in front of the camera, the white clouds reflect on it and the camera makes the image much darker.
Now, it will be time to push the limits!

 

[Fluburtur]

I demoed the plane for the guy that wants me to fly formation with him wile paragliding, he was pretty impressed because his last experience with rc stuff was a long time ago. He enjoyed the ride and now he wants to fly in good weather because it was really cold and there is no thermals.
Guess this summer will be fun!

 

[Fluburtur]

I went out to fly today to try getting some altitude.

Worked out pretty well, I beat my distance and altitude record in one go, didnt stay up as long as I wanted however. Weather was sunny when I arrived at the field but it was really windy and it turned bad really quick and it started raining not long after I landed.

I calculated that my sink rate had an average of 1.28 meter per second between 600 and 100 meters, the plane was in angle mode and I was just steering it around but I currently have a rather large fpv camera taped to the top of the plane that probably creates most of the drag, I should get my replacement runcam split board soon so I can improve the performance.

 

[Fluburtur]

I got my runcam split replacement board and slapped it in so I can say that the glider is now 100% operationnal like I wanted it (minus a few tweaks in inav)

So, I went on a ride with it!

I mounted the camera on a servo, it barely pokes out of the canopy so it should be relatively aerodynamic and I can look to the sides. I only need to extend the endpoints to move it more, I can't see the wingtip in FPV.

Now I guess I will do some testing and tweaking while weather is cold to be ready when it becomes warm again. I will maybe fly formation with my friend this weekend but I dont think the weather will be good.

 

[Fluburtur]

After much time, I finally put together a 3S2P li-ion pack for the glider.

It is a 7000mah pack with 20amps max discharge, which is pretty much the maximum the glider will use. Plenty of power there!
I also moved the internals around a bit.

The VTRX is glued under the 3d printed battery holder that is glued under the rear wooden tray and the antenna is on the bottom of the aircraft, this was to reduce occlusion by other parts of the glider but it doesnt work as good as I want so I might move it again.

The new battery allows the plane to fly for much longer under power, I was able to reach 4km of distance and 1km of altitude with using less than half the capacity I had.

Now I can really start to push this plane.

 

[Fluburtur]

I kinda forgot about this thread, I had not flown in a few weeks because weather was crap so I got the glider out today.
Flew to 1.2km of altitude and met a paramotor, I wanted to see if the battery could make th eplane fly long enough and it does, I stayed up for around 32 minutes and traveled like 24km with less than half the battery.