Cheap Prototyping

Hi guys,

This article is my first and it is about how I build my version of FT Tiny Trainer, FT Sparrow and also my own wing design.  I was not able to find foam board suppliers in india and was not able to buy from any other country.  So I thought of building the aircrafts out of card boards and similar items I had in my house.  I had made many prototypes of my own design using paper for afordability but it lacked flight charactiristics.  So I tought of building one proven design to study how to design planes. So that I had build this tiny Tiny Trainer.

At first I printed the plan from Flite Test on an A4 paper and used it to build my mini Tiny Trainer.  It glided very well.  I used magnets to balance my glider and it was also usefull for hanging it in my wall.  I flew it as many times crashed it many times.

The above image shows the real scale of Tiny Trainer.

After multiple flights and crashes my aircraft was finally beaten up so I reinforced it with pen refils and some tape.

This is my FT Sparrow model.

And now this is my own design.  I made this protoype using cardboard and tape and for protecting and balancing the wing I used a ruler.

And thanks to Flite Test in inspiring more people to the art of flight.

The use of cardboard helps me to build and fly prototypes to find and adjust the aircrafts profile and to find the balance of the aircraft at a lesser coat and it is also very fun to fly also.  Also, use of cardboard and scaling down the aircraft also helped me to cut down the build time and alowed me to conduct more flight tests to correct the balance and effects on my airframe.

So thats all for my first article, I hope you all liked my fun project.