The Weird Soarer

Weird Soarer Scratch Build

Two of my favorite Flite Test planes are the FT Simple Soarer and the FT Explorer. I love the energy efficiency of the Simple Soarer; I once flew over 30 minutes on a 2200 mah 3S with this plane. But since I got into FPV, I found the front propeller annoying in the field of view. I also love the FT Explorer. It is stable and very durable for a foamboard plane. But it's a lot heavier than the Simple Soarer.

So I decided to design a lightweight pusher soarer that would be versatile. I wanted it to be used for FPV, sailing or just cruising around. It also had to be easy to fly, I'm still a beginner. I also wanted it to be able to fly with small and light 2S batteries for soaring or heavy 3500 mah 3S batteries for medium range FPV. 

I took ideas both from the Simple Soarer and the Explorer. I also made an inverted V-tail like the FT Bronco, and the general shape is inspired by the Maker Trainer 2.

This mashup of a plane ended up being pretty weird looking. It won't win any beauty contest, but it is easy to fly and does what it was designed to do.

Weight without battery:

Weird Soarer = 523 g

My FT Explorer = 834 g

So here is the video of the maiden flight with a small explanation of my design. I have no plans yet for this. If people request them I'll try to learn to make plans. Sorry about the annoying green flashing stripe in the video I have had trouble with my computer.

I also filmed my second flight with a Go Pro chinese copy (SJ4000) in the nose. I cut the nose because I built the frame so the camera would perfectly fit inside.

It was another very windy day so sorry if the flight is not stable, I was fighting the wind. I can't wait for nice calm weather to really test its capacities. 

Motor: 2212 1000kv

Prop: 9x5

ESC: 30 amp

Battery: 3500 mah 3S

Wind: 30 km/h with gusts of 40-45 km/h very turbulent (the cliff creates a turbulent wind tunnel).

And finally the third flight with almost no wind. It's pretty fast for a soarer wing and a 1000 kv motor.

And here are some pictures:

As you can see the weirdness of the plane comes from the fact that is it disproportionate. It has a longer nose than tail. It is also short for the size of the wings.

The motor mount is the FT Explorer power pod.

The belly of the plane is covered in packing tape to make it slide on snow upon landing.

The tail spare have a squared angle triangle shape. This allows for the V-tail to be glued on it at a perfect 45 degree angle.The canopy is just a taped strip of poster board to make it land lighter and give easy access to the whole nose compartment. This allows for the battery to be placed all the way to the front or all the way under the wings to balance the plane with any battery.

So I hope you like this design. I like it, so have fun experimenting.

Variant: The Weird FPV Trainer

This is an update.

Today I built a cool variant of my original design. I call it the Weird FPV Trainer. Instead of an FT Explorer wing, I used an FT Simple Storch Wing with rudder. I also replaced the V-tail with a simple stabiliser and elevator. This is a bank and yank plane. But apart from being fast, light and buoyant like the the original design, it's also capable of some areobatics. It's particularly easy to fly inverted with this plane. 

Up and down stability problem fixed

I found why I had such a hard time keeping my flight stable and it was always pulling upward and downward. Those planes don't like to have the motor higher than the wing and tilted a bit forward. It pushes the nose down when you give throttle and when you cut throttle the forward pressure releases and your plane goes up.  

So I fixed the problem by modifying the power pod so that the motor is center and level with the wing. The plane now flies like a charm. The wild horse is tamed and gentle. Very easy and stable now. 

Here are some pictures.

You can see the motor is lower and level with the plane. 

Below you can see the modifications I made to the power pod.