Its a new flying season, and my old untreated white DTFB Ugly Wonder was looking kind of worn so...
I built another one of these babies while it was still cold and blustery out, with an eye towards making it a bit more beautiful and hopefully increasing the longevity at the same time. I had a successful maiden this afternoon, and she's looking like a keeper! Pics below.
Some Stats:
Material - Dollar Tree Foamboard covered with colored packing tape a la Experimental Airlines. Tape is from Tape Planet (used to be called Tape Brothers). I used 3 colors: Black, White, Red (so the white you see is the tape, not the DTFB, which is the same color).
All Up Weight: 18.1 oz with a 2200 3S Turnigy NanoTech battery
Power plant: Propdrive V2 2836 1800KV with a 6x4.5 prop
Handling: Goes way faster than I can comfortably fly it at full power. Very lively at 1/2 to 3/4 throttle. Can stay up indefinitely at about 1/3 power. Roll rate is basically faster than the eye can see at full throttle and full throws!
Flight Times: About 7-9 minutes on a 2200Mah when flown at 50-75% throttle. I'm very conservative with battery voltage management, and land when voltage reaches 9.9v (3.3v/cell).
Other Thoughts: The tape added a bit more weight than I had anticipated and threw the balance off a bit. I was planning on flying this on 1000 to 1300 mah 3S batteries, but I couldn't get it to balance, hence the 2200 in the stats. On the plus side, the extra weight gives it a bit more authority in moderate winds vs my last untaped build. If I had it to do over, I'd extend the power pod forward another 2 inches or so and then it would probably balance with a 1300 3S. Also per my last post above, I used an inverted power pod this time around, so I can easily change batteries without having to dismount the power pod.
Thanks again for the great design and plans! This model has definitely earned a permanent place in my hanger!