Building My First Plane

It was a rushed decision I made to build my first plane. I just completed my first non buddy-boxed flight, and felt ready to have a plane to join my friends in the sky. So after browsing the internet for plans I stumbled upon the 'FT Bloody Wonder' by Flite Test. I chose the plane due to the simplicity, but little did I know it was a stunt plane. We drove out, picked up a $20 brushless motor, dug up some spare 8" props, servos, and an ESC, then began the build

My friend, Brent, was also building a plane at the time, although he drew up his own plans from scratch. You can see here the wing (the elongated Hexagon in the mid-right) before the spar was in place, and before it was folded over to give it a cambered airfoil. Somehow we were able to complete the builds in less than 24 hours. While it was fun, but I will never attempt to build a plane in one sitting again.

Regrettably, I didn't take too many pictures of it, as I was in such a hurry to complete the plane. Notice how far back the motor was, this was an error on my behalf. I set the fuselage way too far back, forgetting about the weight of the battery. This put the center of gravity (CG) at the trailing edge of the wing, instead of 1/4th the distance from the leading edge (the quarter chord).

Here are a few shots of the plane as it is today sitting in the bone-yard my closet. I stripped out the components for another plane (the P-733), and you can see the many signs of crashes. Upon the first launch (with the engine slid flush to the wings), the plane was thrown, It went forward a few feet, pitched straight up, and continued to loop around until it nose dived into the grass. minimal damage was taken, luckily. So we slid the inner components pod forward, and while it did help move the CG forward, it was not enough. The next flight allowed me to sustain a 15 second flight before I lost control. It crashed again, with a little more grace than before, but broke the prop. That was the last flight of the day and the last flight of the plane. I decided the design was not for me, it was too fast for my taste and too agile.

    What I was able to pull from this (Besides the parts from the wreckage) was experience. With this new found knowledge, I set off to build my next plane, the P-733. Only this time, I built it over the course of a week.