REMOTE CONTROL

When I was around 10, my cousins received a really cool remote control airplane for Christmas which we were able to fly at their house with a large yard surrounded by farmland. The airplane was an inexpensive prebuilt kit and flying (read: crashing) it was so much fun. Eventually it broke for good and was forgotten in the closet but I never forgot the experiences. Fast forward to my sophomore year of college in 2011 and I had saved a little bit of money, remembered the fun, and bought just a Spektrum DX6i radio transmitter. I couldn't afford a plane to match but found a use for it using a computer flight simulator. Months later and after much research, I decided the direction I wanted to go was to build my own remote control airplane. I used plans online and electronics sourced from the internet. 

 

 

I chose a simple 3 channel V-tail trainer with throttle, rudder and elevator control. Looking back, it was probably above my skill level to build at the time but I eventually got it to fly well and progressed from there. The wings and tail were made out of depron and it used a small 10 gram brushless motor and 500 mAh 2 cell lipo battery.  This plane taught me a lot about building and flying techniques. It’s the most rewarding thing to see something you made actually fly.

Most of the planes I built only ended up flying a handful of times before I would find plans for a new plane, gut them of their electronics and build something new. If I had to guess, I think I have built and flown about 20 airplanes

 


I really like the simplicity of flying wings. They only need 2 servos and are incredibly quick to build. This one had a 30 inch wingspan and carried an large motor placed in the back in a pusher arrangement which made this incredibly zippy and fun to fly.

 

 

This is a larger 40 inch wing (top) next to the first RC airplane wing I ever built. It had the motor mounted on the back which made this plane durable and provided room for a camera in front.

All of these pictures were taken from the plane graveyard in my parents basement asking which ones they can throw away. They're too nice for letting me keep them there when I was on school and when I moved to Seattle.

 

Here is a 36 inch wingspan aerobatic sport plane with large control surfaces. This is a plane designed by FliteTest - a fantastic YouTube channel and community dedicated to R/C aircraft flight.

 

 

All of these pictures were taken from the plane graveyard in my parents basement asking which ones they can throw away when they were moving. They're too nice for letting keep them there when I was in school and when I moved to Seattle

Not long after I got into airplanes, there was a new wave in the R/C aircraft hobby: multirotors. Again I jumped right in and built a tricopter, crashed it before I took pictures and then quadcopter based loosely on another design by FliteTest. The frame was ½” square dowel and the plates were laser cut from scrap acetate.

The frame is assembled with M3 bolts and nylock nuts and the motors are held on with zipties. Total frame cost was around $5. This is still my favorite thing to fly. The parts are:

  • KK2.0 control board

  • 30 amp ESCs flashed with SimonK firmware (overkill but leftover from my first dead tricopter

  • OrangeRX 605 receiver

  • Turnigy SK3 2822 1275 brushless motors

  • 8x4.5" propellors

  • 2200-3300 mAh 3S battery

My most recent multirotor project is the first project I’ve been able to use my 3D printer with. It’s a 20mm spacer for the ZMR250. This spacer eliminates one of the carbon fiber center plates and crams the electronics in to a much more compact package.