For my last order from Hobbyking I used their new USA warehouse and I was amazed.
With $17 shipping the parts arrived in two days! Definitely not what I expected from Hobbyking.
Since I already had the ESC I ordered only the essentials which included motor, servos,
Skywalker, batteries, and props.
The
batteries are super cheap and will go out of stock quick, so buy them up!
After the box showed up I got to work.
I glued the halves of the plane together after running the servo wires from the tail.
I used Guerrilla Glue, but Hot hot glue would have held the halves together better and dded some flexibility.
Great hot glue tips video:
I ran wires for the FPV equipment and chiseled out some of the back spar of the plane.
The prop an APC 11X5.5 doesn't have clearance from the motor to the fuse (my bad). The move shouldn't effect the core strength too much.
Mounting servos is my least favorite part. I put on all the hardware in the back of the plane, but the wings were more difficult. The wing servos didn't have servo extenders, so I had to make some.
Anytime you pull out the soldering Iron, plan on spending lots of time soldering. After re-solderering cables twice (because the pairs were incorrect) I was able to mount the wing servos and glue in the wires.
I tested spray painting some EPP (the foam the plane is made out of) and it held up well. I used
spray epoxy/enamel which can be found at Walmart. I tried dusting the plane with coats, but it was cold out and I knew the layers wouldn't dry in time so I just blasted the thing. Only a few spots were a bit to thick, otherwise I think the paint job looks great!
Video of the test flights:
The plane was under powered and the elevator wasn't installed correctly. The hinge point between the control surface and rear horizontal stabilizer was incredibly stiff making the effective servo movement in the up elevator direction, near zero.
The last crash, seen at the end of the video, was hastily repaired and the nose was made much stronger (though uglier) with an apple juice bottle.
A better balanced prop helped with the noise of the plane and adjusting the throttles travel on the Transmitter from 30% to 100% helped just a bit with the power (no wonder the thing wasn't moving!).
Going out alone for the second round of flying I recorded no video of the incident, but I will try and recount it. For the first toss I noticed that the plane wanted to only turn in circles. After about 4 times around I landed it. I adjusted the rudder hoping this would solve the issue. On the second toss things seemed a bit better, the plane climbed like a mountain goat! With the FPV goggles sitting on my head I decided to give it a go. My first FPV flight was not a total failure. As I slid down the goggles over my eyes I saw the trees, a pond, and the horizon from 500 feet up. The everything began turning upside down as hard as tried I could not get the plane to level out, it just kept going in upside down circles. Then the signal failed and I snatched the goggles off only to see my plane floating down in three parts.
After searching for about ten minutes it began to rain. I went back the next day with a game plan and scanned vertically until I spotted the fuselage close to a swamp. One of the wing halves was near by, but the other I have still not found. After looking over the wreckage I have come to the conclusion that the wing spar which was gorilla glued in came out and the wing halves came lose.
At the end of the video you could hear me say something, it was: "Dang it even popped the spar out!". So I did notice the problem I just didn't fix it in time.
The journey will continue, but for now I will need a break. $1000+ already in the hobby sometimes makes you want to cry. I need a hobby that makes money...
"Starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss." -- Elon Musk
