Practical conversion of FT Versa series

Hello FliteTest community!

When I built my first FT Versa a couple months ago, I was really looking forward to let it fly and to the whole idea of flying a wing, because I had never flown one before. I was anxious to get my wing in the air after completion, so I figured I'd just hand-launch the wing, as almost everyone I had seen till then. This is exaclty where the trouble and frustration started for me. When holding the wind by its wing and tossing it, I kept crumpling the wing and pushing it together when launching it. Also, due to all the cut open spots for the battery, ESC, etc. The wing would have more space to cave in when crashed, due to the structural weakness. Yet, I did not want to give up on the wing. It really seemed like a fun plane, so I went back to the drawing board.

The first thing I looked up was different launching techniques, upon which I found the technique of thowing the plane into the air by its back (by the propeller) and turning on the motor as soon as my hand cleared. This works out well for me. Anyhow, the main point of this article is not the launching technique, everyone should do what suits him/her best.
I figured that if I could leave the plane's body as is, not creating any holes (except for the servos leads), then I would have an advantage when crashing. This would mean that my electronics would have to be stored elsewhere, obviously. My solution was a dock that could be taken off and in which all the electronics would fit.

I closely tried to get the dock's bottom into shape, so it would aline with the plane's body. (I could have done a better job at that.) From the inside and outside I then hotglued a bunch of velcro, so I would be able to simply put all my components inside. As you can see, I even attached a rock to the front of the plane to balance it. The velcro inside the dock has the great advantage. Different ESCs, batteries, motors, etc. could be moved around the dock and lead to a perfect weight-distribution.

Now the last step would be attaching the dock to the plane. I did not want something permanent that would be glued, taped or ziptied to the body, as this would take the liberty of moving everything all the time. I also did not want to waste plastic zipties or wires everytime I took off the dock. In conclusion, I drilled alining holes in the front and rear of the dock (see picture above), through which carbon fibre spars would fit. I also made two holes for each spar into the body of the plane, so I could get some type of rope or string through (I ended up using shoelaces). On the under-side of the plane, inbetween the two holes I glued in popsicle sticks, so a tightly knotted rope wouldn't eat into the foam, awkwardly seperating the electronics from the wing in mid air. The swappables FT Versa build video by Josh Bixler is what inspired me and sparked this whole concept of using something to hold down the dock with a knot and a stick in my head. Here are a couple more pictures that will help understand the setup.

In the end I rapped valcro around the shoelaces in the bottom rear of the plane, so they wouldn't rap around the motor.

Here is a flight video of the plane. These are the components:

-MicroJet V3 Motor
-2200 mAh 3s lipo

I just started the R/C hobby half a year ago, and this is my first article, please leave some feedback and let me know if I'm missing anything! In my opinion, no plane is more fun then the FT Versa, thank you very much FliteTest! :)