My custom proximity wings

Proximity Wings

Hey there, long time no see, Squishy here again with some secrets of the pros.

I have been pretty focused with my fixed wing development over the last year or more after falling in love with short range proximity FPV. This style of flight is more exciting to me than anything else FPV has to offer and soon we will be racing these wings so keep an eye out.

Over the course of a few models now I have come up with a nice recipe for a proximity wing, for me. Using a few years of experience gained at a weekly night combat events for wings, I have applied what I learned to FPV with awesome results. The problem is the wing I need does not exist on the market so I have been forced to improvise, modify and order up custom cuts to suit my own needs. I typically beat up any aircraft I fly because I am always pushing my skills and doing stupid stuff. So with that being said, let me tell you about the solution to the problem that is a pilot like me.

I 1st tried a Sweepwings Flinch and knew they were notoriously waggy, yet very tough. Rubben includes fiberglass spars in his kits and that's what I was interested in testing, the flex of such spars and not their strength. So I started by building this wing and including many of the features I wanted to test. It has a stiff rear end with a flexible leading edge and precision controls to make it go straight when you need it to. No more composite designs like the Monkeyblunts or Snipod type designs. I was sick of lateral composites not holding up to the abuse so I opted for all foam this time. A wide blunt to protect the camera, a medium sized glider airfoil that was thick enough to stand up to some crashes but still had a nice glide ratio and was very efficient.

I then built, with the help of the Flight Club, a new wing using everything I learned from flying the last one. The results have been unbelievable, and I hope to convince these guys to someday sell it and share it, but for now, we are keeping most of it under wraps.  I ended up using balsawood, carbon fiber shafts, fiberglass shafts, and even a carbon fiber motor mount made out of a solid angle bracket. The entire construction of composite materials was glued together using epoxies while the shafts were laid in using white gorilla glue and you can even see the method used here.

Here is the bottom of my latest prototype. You can see the balsa I-beam, and main CF shaft, I included a sub shaft up front this time to support the foam and area where the components are. I used a new winglet design as well which is supposedly 3 times more efficient and effective than the "bunny ears" which I was using.

Here’s a side view of the sleek and effective airfoil. The Flight Club monkey brain Nick, cut me this as per my feedback of existing airfoils and a some long brain storming sessions about the exact properties we wanted the airfoil to have. There is some serious science, experience and feel programed into this wing, and it works just as intended, in the form factor I wanted.

After running it square into a pole during testing, I've now included some foam around the camera. I am still testing, tuning and getting footage to share. Stay tuned for more from this wing in the future, it doesn't even have a name yet.

The Flight Club is a group of FPV pilots from Sacramento. It's an innovative team of pilots, engineers, craftsmen and artists brought together by the joy of flight. We push ourselves to innovate beyond the possible, to test and re-test to perfection. We harbor years of experience designing, building and flying fixed wing and multirotor drone aircraft with a heavy emphasis on effective FPV systems and operations. We live at www.norcalfpv.com if you want more info..

oh and look what's cooking in the kitchen...