Scratch build: FPV Platform from DTFB Based on the FT-SS

Based loosely on the simple soarer from flight test. Same wing and tail. Wing was modified for ailerons, removed the dihedral and moved the polyhedral to 4" out. The tail has been mostly untouched, besides a small mod on the rudder (no notch forward on the rudders control surface). Will be doing some testing as soon as the weather clears up. Still needs the aileron servos installed and the power plant installed. The wingspan is 56" and will be running a 7" prop. I will probably be redoing the fuse to handle a little better payload, but right now, this was the simplest design for testing. I will concider making plans available if the interest is there.

Any suggestions will be welcome, as this is a new venture for me. I have built many dtfb planes, and have scratch built a few, but nothing quite this detailed. IMG_20140210_151921880.jpg IMG_20140210_151931381.jpg IMG_20140210_152015755.jpg IMG_20140210_152026843.jpg IMG_20140210_152032970.jpg

V3, more pics and details on this starting on page 4.

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A little update to the project. Going to work on getting the power plant on, motor mounted w/ proper thrust angle, and get it balanced.
 
Got some progress on it last night. I've putting some things of till I came up with the perfect idea on how to mount the motor. Now that I have that squared, I can move on to getting it together. I will update with pics when I get there.
 
Got the servo's installed and the motor mount installed. Did something a little different to keep the motor on the airframe. The mount is made of some 1/8" plastic. Used a heat gun to get the correct bend, and will be easy to change if i need a different thrust angle. This proto-type has some things that i'm not a huge fan of, but being the V1, i'm dealing with them right now. I will update a little more soon, but we are almost ready for the first flight.

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Did my first test flight today. CG the same as the simple soarer. Had about 15mph wind, but it did great. I'm at about 1.5lbs and will likely be adding much more than that. It really acted like a glider, quite floaty. I will be doing some testing on cg and thrust angle to see if I see any performance differences. I noticed the rudder has quite good authority, but at times the ailerons didn't. That could have been the wind, so we will see what a calm day does for me. I will try to get video soon.
 

DDSFlyer

Senior Member
Looking good. I like the idea, now to be able to make the motor mount easily repeatable for us noob's. I've heard the tail section may need some reinforcing (from original simple soarer plans) Can't wait to see the video
 
I've since seen that as well on the tail. I will have to add a support there. I've decided on v2 i want the wings to be 2 pieces. It doesn't travel very well in my vw, not horrible, but not great. So look for v2, as it will be made to be a little more repeatable. Thanks for the support.
 

DDSFlyer

Senior Member
I'll definitely look forward to future builds and hopefully plans! I like the idea of the simple soarer but haven't gotten around to building it. This one, I may get into more
 

A quick video on my second flight. Found that it actually take off right from the grass. That has worked out quite well. I need to tweek the thrust angle a bit to get rid of some bad tendancies. I get quite a bit of push to the ground under power, i'm hoping to overcome that with some down thrust. I am also getting some right thrust issues that will have to be dialled in a little later. I want to work that out once i'm happy with the prop i'm using and the down thrust issues.
 

DDSFlyer

Senior Member
That looks really good. As far as push to the ground it's gonna be that way as a pusher I suppose. It looks like it flies really good! Congrats on the build!
 
With some more down thrust, I should be able to minimize the downward pitching. I knew it would be a little bad, but not quite like this. Is rather make some modifications and make it a little more manageable. I'll let you know how it goes.
 
Changed the thrust angle a little, got some slop out of the control rods, and added a multiwii for stable flight. The things flies awesome now. I will update with some videos. I stuck the mobius on the nose to get some video from the air. Quite noticeable from stabilized and non-stabilized. It still needs a little tuning (as the video shows some shake), but overall, quite nice. Video coming soon.
 
Almost lost her...

Did some Multiwii testing in Horizon mode. It gives you an auto level function.

On that topic, I almost lost my plane today, and Horizon mode was the only thing that saved me. I've attached a video of what happened, pretty scary moment for me, but luckily recovered it and it didn't do any harm to anyone. Video cuts out before it even gets to the ground, but you can understand my worry seeing where it came down.


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Had a little mishap with my Multiwii controller. Ran the battery down, and bec is a little week. One of the two caused a brown out on the controller and it went into the ground pretty hard. Guess its time to push forward one V2.

Cracked the tail in 2 places and crumpled the nose, but the wing still looks good.

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Wing and motor are fine, as well as all the servos. I've just scrapped the fuse and and starting over. I'll be building a little wider fuse so I can carry a little larger battery and have more room for my larger multiwii. Really looking forward to seeing what this can carry. I'm also planning on splitting the wing and using a wing spar as well (which may require me to built the wing again anyways).