Community Spotlight - the Mighty-Mini Discovery!

by FliteTest | February 20, 2018 | (6) Posted in Projects

The flitetest.com Community Spotlight is a new weekly feature of the website where we highlight a community project every Friday. It's a great way to encourage creative and unique builds from anyone who wants to share them in an article, on the FT Forum or the Flite Test Fans Facebook Group. This week, I noticed a particular project from the Forum user Foam Test. It's called the Mighty-Mini Discovery!


This design is a super cute, smaller version of an FPV type explorer platform, you know, those like the Skywalker or FT Explorer. The discovery takes this concept and shrinks it down for a tiny micro FPV cam. It can use one of our Mighty Mini Power Pack Kits to get it up into the air. Foam Test has even made some free plans to construct your own Mighty Mini Discovery airframe from scratch.


This one uses a small 1306 sized motor which gives the plane enough 'oomph' to get some solid performance. As you can see from the image below, the plane uses two servos to control the elevator and rudder to make the aircraft three channel.


In approaching this new aircraft design, Foam Test first set out what he wanted to achieve from the project.

"My main goal was to make an inexpensive plane to get more people into the hobby"


He went through a lot of research and development, constructing multiple airframes to get the very best performance out of the model. This perseverance is a skill that many new designers have to learn.

"I built my first prototype and it flew okay, there was a lot of trouble getting it into the air the first time, but eventually it did and it was an uneventful flight. Then I instantly went home and designed a V2"

Adjustments were made and progress continued. 


This is a really great little project from our community. You can look forward to seeing many more Community Spotlight articles appearing every Friday from now on. It's a nice way to interact with you on a one-to-one level and pull out some of the projects that can get buried on the Forums for more people to see. Hopefully, it will also incentivise you to keep building great stuff and trying new things! Next week, it could be you on here! 


Resources 

Forum Thread 

Beta Plans

Foam Test's YouTube Channel

Our FT Explorer FPV Airplane

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Article by James Whomsley

FliteTest.com Editor

www.youtube.com/projectairaviation

www.projectair.co.uk

Instagram @jameswhomsley

COMMENTS

FoamTest on February 23, 2018
Hey just a small correction, the mighty mini power packs are too large for this model. Although a gremlin motor should work if the thrust specs on Emax's website are valid.
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FliteTest on February 23, 2018
Noted!
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Daniel Kezar on February 23, 2018
good to know!
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FoamTest on February 23, 2018
These electronics from the FT Store should work for this model though.
https://store.flitetest.com/rotorgeeks-1407-4000kv-blue/

https://store.flitetest.com/blheli-series-12amp-esc-xt-30/

https://store.flitetest.com/es9051-4-3g-plastics-digital-servo/

https://store.flitetest.com/2s-300mah-35c-battery/

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Daniel Kezar on February 23, 2018
wicked design!! i'm excited for the next one! what's it gonna be!?!?
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Community Spotlight - the Mighty-Mini Discovery!