Micro-swappables

by Bolvon72 | December 26, 2013 | (7) Posted in Projects

Seeing my old Champ sitting there with it's broken tail inspired me to play around a bit last night.

I decided to make half sized swappables that would fly off the Champ power brick.

The paper is peeled off of regular Dollar store foam board and at only 12g per airframe (the Flyer is 14g) I used no bracing. 30g with the pod makes these zip around nicely with the Champ power system. 

I made the pod simply enough, just a platform wide enough to hold the brick and motor and sidewalls about a cm high. Hot glued it all together. I hold the pod in place with two skewers and zip ties ala Nutball and Delta. I would have used tabs for alignment but I forgot to cut them into the sidewalls, instead of starting from scratch I used small sections of skewer glued in vertically.

To make it easily swappable I cut push rods for each plane and used Bixler's modified z bends to easily attach them to the brick. Playing off the Champ's pushrods I put an extra squared bend into each rod so it could be adjusted for trim on the plane, instead of in the transmitter. This makes swappaing easier as you dont have to keep multiple slots filled or retrim after each swap. It's working well so far. I have them bound to my DX5e anyways so no slots allowed. (Being that the Delta is not working out right now I might just use the Champ controller for these)

The Delta is not working well at this time, it seems the power with the kf airfoil is not enough to keep it up. Maybe I will play around with the airfoil, but the Delta was never one of my favorites. Aside from that, I call this little experiment a good success and will play with other designs, and maybe my crashed Spitfire UMX will become the power behind a 4 channel set of swappables. 

COMMENTS

Bolvon72 on January 24, 2014
Wow, only a month after submitting.
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#3 on January 24, 2014
cool I new it could be done just did not have a small enough motor esc battery and receiver now 1 or 2 more crashes with my champ and I also can build a indoor flyer
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Bolvon72 on January 24, 2014
This little experiment inspired me to blow more money, I got a Hextronic 5g motor and a little esc. I am working on building a working micro Fogey or Speedster.
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MishoIV on January 25, 2014
"I shall call him mini me!" :)
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Fly'n-V on January 25, 2014
Great job! The guys are definitely running a bit behind on approving posts... I had one sit for a couple of week unpublished. I sent an email and Alex responded quickly. I know there's a lot going on at FT and maybe it's time to allow some "virtual" admins for approving articles.

I've been playing with the receiver bricks also on some scratchbuilds...lot of fun in a small package! Keep experimenting and sharing! Cheers! Sr12
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AndrewT28 on January 25, 2014
I have a busted champ too, I think I'll build some too if you don't mind!
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Bolvon72 on January 25, 2014
Have a ball
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rcperson123 on January 25, 2014
u broke the champ tail to? welcome to the club
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Bolvon72 on January 25, 2014
Styrofoam plate cutouts make great tail replacements if you don't want to gut it.
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carsonpauli on February 12, 2014
i like it
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eagleeye on March 8, 2016
im so totally doing this. nice..... thank you.
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eagleeye on March 8, 2016
are their any downloadable plans for these?
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Micro-swappables