I figured it was about time that I start sharing some of my projects, partly because I think that other people would enjoy reading through my experiences just as much as I enjoy reading about everyone elses and partly because I need some way to start documenting my builds. I suppose also need an extra push to help me actually follow a project through all the way to the end as well.
When I started flying about twelve years ago (I can never remember the exact year) one of the planes that came out and I owned was the park zone f-27 Stryker. I have some fond memories of this plane and the brushed motor coupled with the NiMH batteries that we used back then, talk about underpowered! I decided that I wanted to try to design something with about the same flying characteristics as the Stryker and this project was born. I recently got into 3d printing and decided It would be a good challenge to try to design the plane in CAD and then print it out and try to fly it so the journey began.
I got the design done and started printing the parts. I wanted to see if the plane would even fly before I added more details such as a battery bay, proper motor mount, and built in servo trays so I just printed out a shell of a plane to start and cut in places for the servos and botched together the electronics in the fuse. the goal of this first model was simply to see if it would fly, I knew that if it flew well I would then design in some key features and print out another one. I also knew that most of my first designs fail miserably and I always end up having to build a second airframe but I feel like this is a part of the hobby. I used a cobra 2204 quad copter motor to power it along with a 3 cell battery, two mini servos, spectrum receiver and 20 amp esc. these all fit in the fuse really well and I found that in order for the COG to be where it needs to be I needed to put the battery about right on the COG. I used hot glue to glue the fuse and wings together. I have tried epoxy before but I didn't have good results because of how brittle it is when it cures. the hot glue is applied with a temperature that is much greater than the glass transition temperature of the pla so it seemed to help fuse the pieces together much better even though it was a bit harder to keep neat. the plane has a 60 cm wingspan, so hopefully that will help visualize the actual scale of the aircraft.
Once the bird was built it was time for the maiden. I took it to a small grass field near where I live and attempted to launch the plane without getting my fingers near the propeller. unfortunately this first attempt did not go well as my toss was terrible and the plane ended up upside down heading towards the ground. I managed to right it just before it hit. luckily the only thing to break off was the nose so I taped that back on and I tried again. This time it flew beautifully albeit quite nose heavy. she needed a lot of up elevator to stay in the air but even so I could tell that this was going to be a good design. it was quick and seemed to be fairly well tempered in the air. the maiden flight sadly ended in disaster though, as I had used electrical tape for the hinges in my haste and one of the elevons came off mid flight. this could have been completely avoided if I had the patience to wait until I could get the proper tape, but I really wanted to test it out. in the end I feel like this design is worth further pursuing so I will continue to develop it. there are several changes that I hope to make in the next version.
1. the elavons need to be made a little larger, they didn't quite have enough area to have the control authority that I wanted (also need to be better secured)
2. a battery tray needs to be made in the proper location above the COG.
3. the plane was a little under powered, I have ordered an 850 mah 4 cell battery to remedy this.
4. proper mounting for the servos needs to be made
I hope to have these changes done before I get more filament in to print version 2, and I am going to try to get version 2 in the air by the 4th of July. We will see how this goes because sometimes life does get in the way. sorry for the long post but I hope everyone will enjoy this project just as much as I have!
When I started flying about twelve years ago (I can never remember the exact year) one of the planes that came out and I owned was the park zone f-27 Stryker. I have some fond memories of this plane and the brushed motor coupled with the NiMH batteries that we used back then, talk about underpowered! I decided that I wanted to try to design something with about the same flying characteristics as the Stryker and this project was born. I recently got into 3d printing and decided It would be a good challenge to try to design the plane in CAD and then print it out and try to fly it so the journey began.
I got the design done and started printing the parts. I wanted to see if the plane would even fly before I added more details such as a battery bay, proper motor mount, and built in servo trays so I just printed out a shell of a plane to start and cut in places for the servos and botched together the electronics in the fuse. the goal of this first model was simply to see if it would fly, I knew that if it flew well I would then design in some key features and print out another one. I also knew that most of my first designs fail miserably and I always end up having to build a second airframe but I feel like this is a part of the hobby. I used a cobra 2204 quad copter motor to power it along with a 3 cell battery, two mini servos, spectrum receiver and 20 amp esc. these all fit in the fuse really well and I found that in order for the COG to be where it needs to be I needed to put the battery about right on the COG. I used hot glue to glue the fuse and wings together. I have tried epoxy before but I didn't have good results because of how brittle it is when it cures. the hot glue is applied with a temperature that is much greater than the glass transition temperature of the pla so it seemed to help fuse the pieces together much better even though it was a bit harder to keep neat. the plane has a 60 cm wingspan, so hopefully that will help visualize the actual scale of the aircraft.
Once the bird was built it was time for the maiden. I took it to a small grass field near where I live and attempted to launch the plane without getting my fingers near the propeller. unfortunately this first attempt did not go well as my toss was terrible and the plane ended up upside down heading towards the ground. I managed to right it just before it hit. luckily the only thing to break off was the nose so I taped that back on and I tried again. This time it flew beautifully albeit quite nose heavy. she needed a lot of up elevator to stay in the air but even so I could tell that this was going to be a good design. it was quick and seemed to be fairly well tempered in the air. the maiden flight sadly ended in disaster though, as I had used electrical tape for the hinges in my haste and one of the elevons came off mid flight. this could have been completely avoided if I had the patience to wait until I could get the proper tape, but I really wanted to test it out. in the end I feel like this design is worth further pursuing so I will continue to develop it. there are several changes that I hope to make in the next version.
1. the elavons need to be made a little larger, they didn't quite have enough area to have the control authority that I wanted (also need to be better secured)
2. a battery tray needs to be made in the proper location above the COG.
3. the plane was a little under powered, I have ordered an 850 mah 4 cell battery to remedy this.
4. proper mounting for the servos needs to be made
I hope to have these changes done before I get more filament in to print version 2, and I am going to try to get version 2 in the air by the 4th of July. We will see how this goes because sometimes life does get in the way. sorry for the long post but I hope everyone will enjoy this project just as much as I have!
