Flying wing fail

by Rcdepronplanes | January 20, 2013 | (7) Posted in Just Fun

I have been watching some of the Team Black Sheep videos on you tube which got me thinking about flying wings. Then I had a look around the net and was surprised to find out just how much they cost. So I thought why not build one out of depron. For a night or two, I hacked away at some depron and thrashed out my own design. Instead of using carbon rod for the spars I made ply one's cos I had read somewhere that carbon in your flying wing is no good if you want to go fpv.

Any way finished building it and a couple of days later I had my first flight.

I was over the moon cos it flew beautifully until disaster struck. The wing tips decided they felt lonely and decided they wanted to hug each other.

The wing was reduced to confetti in an instant.

Post crash thoughts was that I didn't use strong enough spars. There might have been problem with the rear spar because it looked quite a clean break where as the other front spar had splintered well.

Any way I went back to the drawing board and built a stronger wing plus I blinged it up a little with some LEDs. Once this weather gets better ill report back on how it flies.

Keith

Ps at 1m 11s that sound is not me , honest 😃

Here's a link to the crash http://youtu.be/5epSCAJJgaM

COMMENTS

lonewolf7717 on January 21, 2013

I didn't know its tree frog mating season in the UK...bit nippy out there if you ask me but that's for sure what we were hearing at 1m 11s....the distinctive calls of a horny male tree frog.
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You know it really upsets me that this carbon fiber issue cost you what looked to be a very fine flying model. It is fact that cf will attenuate rf signals but there seems to be A LOT of misunderstanding and overkill on the part of many running amuck online these days. The first misnomer being spread by those with less than adequate knowledge on the subject is that cf is a rf relector...so much so that a few little cf spars will obliterate a wireless signal by means of havoc wreaking multipathing. CF IS NOT a rf reflector rather a rf absorber and those that believe otherwise should google the very definition of attenuation. Why in the world would some of the most advanced stealth aircraft utilize cf composites if all they do is reflect signals???? I can promise you for the purpose of fpv and with as little cf as we use it really is a non-issue. I guess if you wanted to build a model entirely out of cf and enclose all your tx gear and antennas inside cf...yeah I suppose then it would be a valid point. For those who think they know better, let them keep their high dollar, hard to find and heavy glass fiber as for me its carbon fiber all the way. Always amazes me to see videos of guys proud of their "cf free", "professional", fpv plane....so sure they know everything about rf signal attenuation then go fly straight into a cloud bank only to lose their plane without having a clue as to why. Dude you are good, rebuild it, throw some proper cf spars on it, fly it to your fpv hearts content and ignore the naysayers.
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Rcdepronplanes on January 22, 2013

Thanks lonewolf for your comments. My fault for reading into fpv too much. I rebuilt the wing which is shown at the end of the video. It does fly really nice bit only have a night flying video of it at the moment. Looks funky in the dark though . I've come back to the drawing board and at present building a new wing with carbon fibre spars. These cf rods are much better to use with depron cos you can bury them in 6 mm sheets. I've been taking pictures at each step of the build as I hope to put together some sort of build video. Any way thanks for taking the time to reply to my article and many thanks for updating me on using cf in models
Kind regards
Keith
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