XA (3D) with Foam Board Design Challenge

Jonny Gum

Elite member
This should be an interesting build off to see what is possible with foam board. Personally, I find 3d and XA to be very fun, but extremely expensive. Even a ~50" airframe can run you up to 200$- not including electronics. Wouldn't it be great if we could build our own airframes for less than 10$? It would surely make progression easier as we wouldnt be so scared to crash.

Rules
1. Must use dtfb.
2. Planes can be any size.
3. Winner will be decided by the best flying design.
4. I will think of more rules with time.
5. There may or may not be a prize to the best design.

(XA means extreme aerobatics. It's the modern high energy 3D flying.)
 

JasonK

Participation Award Recipient
you have a few things there. the FT edge 540 looks like it could do most/all of that.

however, there are a few edge cases there...
  1. Flight time - the gas engine might have a hand up for flight time
  2. the Edge might need a carbon fiber spar added for wing strength for that dive/pull out & possibly some reinforcement on the control surfaces., but everything else looked fairly reasonable (or I missed something) unless just the pure intensity of that is going to cause problems with foam board (but if it can't be done with foam board, then we appear to be outside the challenge anyways).
 

OliverW

Legendary member
you have a few things there. the FT edge 540 looks like it could do most/all of that.

however, there are a few edge cases there...
  1. Flight time - the gas engine might have a hand up for flight time
  2. the Edge might need a carbon fiber spar added for wing strength for that dive/pull out & possibly some reinforcement on the control surfaces., but everything else looked fairly reasonable (or I missed something) unless just the pure intensity of that is going to cause problems with foam board (but if it can't be done with foam board, then we appear to be outside the challenge anyways).
The edge always comes out too heavy to have decent performance from what I've heard.
 

JasonK

Participation Award Recipient
well, that is about all I got, because I don't fly 3D... so making my own design up isn't going to go very far as I wouldn't be flying it anyways. (now weaving through trees in FPV... that I am enjoying... but I think I need to make some gates to fly through and some poles to setup a chicane to really get some challenging bits to fly though)

someone up and fly my V-Tail and did most 3D manuvers that I have seen with it.. it just had issues with hovering because of the V-tail (or was the surmised reason of the pilot.)
 

The Hangar

Fly harder!
Mentor
Like @SquirrelTail said, the edges come out heavy. I built two and the both came out heavy. both had the recommended motors and I even ran 4s in them. they barely had enough power to do a loop.
Rimfire for the win! You both are going to fly my edge when I come down - it hovers at 1/2 throttle, and that's on 3s. I'm gonna buy an 11 inch prop so I can run it on 4s.
 

Joe Carpino

Well-known member
Got the wing done for my own 3D Design. Trying to figure out a symmetrical airfoil in 2D
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