How to start flying on your own without risking your life

I recently read a post here How to start flying, at least on something, on my own. Inspires. Undoubtedly. But it seems to me that the risks to life in this matter are many more than the author describes. This is my personal opinion, and perhaps it is not supported by anything. In the comments to the post about it said quite a few words and I will not dwell on this.

In this post I want to share with you an equally inspiring process of creating an aircraft based on the themes of "Do it yourself."

Not so long ago, somewhere from half a year ago, I wanted to “make something”, I really wanted to. Most likely idleness is so affected. All arduino robots are no longer inspired. I wanted something, albeit more complex, but more mm ... exciting something. And at that time I came across a forum of the community of radio-controlled models, where people made planes with their own hands. At first I was surprised: "Wow, people make planes themselves, and then they also fly!" On this forum (by the way, I’ll give all-all-all the links at the end of the topic) I spent 3-4 hours looking at topics on how pieces of plywood or ceiling tiles with plastic bottles turn into stormtroopers of the Second World War and then perform higher figures aerobatics in the air ... This is what inspired! But it all the same seemed to me that all this is difficult, it is not for me, I will not succeed, and so on. But all this continued to inspire. Then I remembered in what way I generally found myself on this forum, what I was looking for and what I wanted. Half a second to think, he took a blank sheet of paper and began to draw up a plan for building one of the simplest models. And then it started ...

Plan. What you need to immediately decide
Electronics
Selection of materials
Construction (there are many photos)
Flights
Finance
Useful materials

I immediately want to decide on a number of details:
  • I'm new to this business
  • my approaches / decisions / advice do not claim to be the only true ones
  • I'm not a discoverer
  • I did not invent a bicycle
  • I'm just sharing my experience in this matter


Plan. What you need to decide immediately


So let's go. The first and last thing that is important at the initial stage when building an aircraft is to determine its size and weight. Everything depends on it: the choice of materials, electronics, technologies, and just EVERYTHING. At this point, I seriously missed. With the material, the choice was made immediately - the ceiling tile (yes, it is the one that many people have glued on the ceiling in the corridors and in the kitchen). This is the easiest material to use after paper airplanes. Next, I estimated the size of the aircraft, looked at how much weight, on average, it turns out aircraft of this size. And, based on these data (mainly data on average weight), I immediately ordered electronics from China.

Aircraft come in different types: gliders, trainers, acrobats, impellers, 3D. Everyone knows how to fly, but each of them has its own purpose. It is intuitively clear from the name of these groups. Of course, I did the coach. This type of aircraft is the softest to fly and flies at lower speeds. This is in theory. But in reality it all depends on how you make it!

Then, while traveling to construction markets, choosing ceiling tiles, I finally decided on the size. I did not want to make a small (half a meter) plane, I immediately wanted something really tangible. Therefore, my dimensions were approximately 950 mm in length and 1150 mm wingspan. In the photo for the topic I (my height is 1850mm), so the plane was really tangible in size.

And the mistake was that for the average weight I took the weight of the same aircraft (by the way, it was the famous Cessna 150 aircraft) with approximately the same dimensions (range 1-1.2 meters). But I did not take into account that those planes were made by people already knowledgeable in this sense. And as a rule, their weight is 1.5 to 2 times less than for beginners. Weight gain accumulates not only due to excess material used (for example, an excessively thick layer of glue can add up to 15% of the weight), but also because of the choice of electronics. For example, I bought two batteries, more capacity and weight, respectively. I thought that I would fly longer - a bummer, it’s not so. In general, for the estimated weight, I rolled out 30% percent. He was going to build a model weighing about 650 grams, it turned out almost 900. This is critical for an airplane. Highly. Although, looking ahead, I’ll say that in the air he lifted not only his weight, but also an adjustable wrench on board! This article is not a manufacturing instruction, but rather a tale about

Electronics


This is one of the most difficult moments. I think the plane was easier to do than choose electronics. There are so many options that there is not enough free time to review, re-read and compare everything. I consulted a lot with activists from the RC Design and RC Aviation community. Basically, they told me my final set of electronics. And of course in which, as the smartest , I changed the batteries to more capacitive ones (almost twice). What is the minimum set of electronics needed to lift the packaging of ceiling tiles, 2 meters of wire, 2 square meters of film and 100 grams of glue into the sky? I had to buy:


Pictures are for informational purposes only, I bought a few other details ...

Everything, except the equipment, I ordered from China. The equipment that I wanted to wait there for a long time before the order, so I found it in Moscow. Although for 150% of the Chinese price. Everything arrived, as usual, in a month. The box is terribly crumpled, but the insides are safe and sound.

At first I wanted to describe some of the subtleties of selecting electronics (having experienced this in my own experience), but I thought that it’s not worthwhile cluttering up the topic with this. I will give all the links where you can find all the detailed information about this. There are even calculators ( the simplest of them ).

The main thing you need to know when using this electronics is:

  1. NEVER and under any circumstances (!) Do not start an electric motor with a propeller not properly secured! Unsecured - it means that it is on the table, in your hands (no matter how hard you hold it, it will break loose! Checked by yourself, but fortunately, it flew to the side and stopped with a blow against the wall)! Even after installing it on an airplane, if you can easily move it with your hands, it will break out!
  2. Never charge batteries unattended. Especially if the charger is cheap for them
  3. Do not recharge the batteries or discharge them below a certain threshold - otherwise you will have to throw it away
  4. In storage mode, all electronics must be de-energized. De-energized - means disconnected from the battery, and not just turned off


Selection of materials


For me, the choice of material was very simple. Ceiling tile and dot. Aircraft from it are built not only by novice aircraft models, but also already know a lot about it. I have already said that it is very easy to work with this material. He is light. It is very easy to repair an airplane out of it, which is very important for beginners (if it really became bad for him, you can cut out the injured piece and stick a new one at this place).

I went to the nearest hardware store and bought there:
  • Packaging simple (without texture) ceiling tiles 500x500mm
  • The packaging is flat, but not simple (you will understand further) 200x1000mm tiles
  • Glue TITAN

All this cost about 300-350 rubles.

In principle, there are no tricks in buying ceiling tiles, we select a flat (without relief) tile 4-5 mm thick and carry it to the cashier. But experienced pilots just do not advise with the choice of glue. There is a whole lot of parameters that you need to choose. Up to the fact that different glue is used in different parts of gluing together the nodes of the aircraft. I didn’t really bother with my head and decided to take something in between - TITAN. It is inexpensive, it is well washed off and not one of the glued parts has fallen off. You can read about the choice of glue here .

About materials, it should also be noted what else good models make of. From plastic bottles. Tetris technology. Also, cutting special aviation plywood (or balsa) on CNC machines.

Construction (there are a lot of photos)


So let's go. All we still need is a knife, a ruler and ... and that's it.

I already said that I did not invent a bicycle and tried to make a plane according to the drawings that I found on one of the sites (they are in the links at the end of the topic). But some details of the drawing were not clear to me, and after cutting the wing, I decided to move away from them and do it “by eye”.
I decided to start from the wing. As I said, it will consist of 3 parts. Cut to size from the drawing. The wing is NOT flat, like a real aircraft, it has a convex shape (or something like that). Spars are glued inside the wing, which serve (should have served ...) with the stiffening ribs of the wing and prevent it from “folding”.


Then 3 parts are glued together by the same side members. Looking ahead, I will say that these spars will not hold the wing by themselves. But in the final, the whole plane is covered with tape, which gives about 80% percent of the rigidity of the entire structure. But even adhesive tape alone will not be able to restrain the wing from "folding." Therefore, both methods are used. But the side members must be more powerful for this size. Often carbon tubes with a diameter of 3-5 mm are laid in the wing - and rightly so!

As you already noticed, the wing will be closed from above by bending a sheet of ceiling tile. To do this, glue a tape of adhesive tape on the outside of the bend (along all the lengths), and on the inside we “miss” the groove along the bend line. I used a regular CD for this, it is usually advised to use a blunt flathead screwdriver (in my opinion it is much more complicated). Then you need to place the servo drives that will control the ailerons. And you can stick the wing.


As you noticed, I already managed to paste the ailerons (a link to the dictionary of basic terms is at the end of the topic), but, unfortunately, I did not take photos. But about this process I will tell you when we will make the tail. Now let's get to the body of the plane itself. We take the tile, the one that is 200x1000mm, draw a contour. We are wondering. Redraw. Cut out. This is not true! But I did just that. Because to follow the sizes at that moment I was already very tired. Moreover, I couldn’t stand the size exactly because of different circumstances. Although, maybe he would fly even better if I did everything according to the drawings. So my story is not an ideal case! Let's continue. All parts of the aircraft will be glued from two layers of tiles. Therefore, we need 4 copies:


The surface of the ceiling used for the fuselage had a wood-like texture. I glued them to the "white" sides. In general, when gluing two layers of ceilings, it is advised to sand both surfaces (even if they are ordinary). This will help the glue absorb better. We cut out the frame part of the fuselage, in which we have 2 servo machines for controlling elevators and directions. Glue them together.



In the central part of the wing, cut holes for servo machines and glue the wing completely.

In order for the glue to seize completely, it should take about a day (as experienced modellers write). I held the parts with discs / rubber bands and everything that only came to hand for about an hour or two. As already said - nothing fell off. Intermediate result:

The photo shows that the wing turned out crooked ... I do not know what to say. While I was making a wing - I followed the drawings with the greatest possible accuracy. The central part folded at a right angle, and the side - at an angle. Maybe this is the case ... In the future, it will all get better. Let's move on to the tail.


Here you can see how elevators are glued (similar to rudder and ailerons (see above)). In a nutshell: we draw and cut out all the parts in 2 copies. Then the parts that will be glued to each other end to end (in fact, I would advise making a 1-2mm gap there), you need to tweak it. Namely, cut right angles along the part at 45 degrees. If you look closely, this can be seen in the last photo, near the tape itself.

About scotch tape. It is double-sided, glued both to the tail itself (wing) and to the steering wheel itself. We have two-layer ones, remember yes? So, we paste part of the adhesive tape on the first layer of the steering wheel, smear the remaining area with glue and apply the second layer of the steering wheel. We apply the resulting part to the first layer of the tail, paste a piece of adhesive tape that sticks out of the steering wheel and ... well, you understand. And if you do not understand, look at the photo above again. I stopped this brain-killing story at the same moment. Glue the tail.


You may notice that the airplane is already beginning to take its final form.

Next, electronics. Uh ... There is a lot to say about this, but I'm afraid then the article will have to be divided into parts. And, given my status, this is unlikely to succeed. And the purpose of this topic is not to write detailed instructions for creating an aircraft (although I can do it in the future) - it will take 3-5 standard topics for the hub.

I’ll briefly say this. The entire aircraft is powered by a battery (thanks to KO), and, in turn, an engine regulator is connected to it. Further, all aircraft electronics receive power from the regulator. The regulator is used to smoothly increase / decrease engine speed. The motor is connected to the regulator by soldering 3 wires. They are exactly the same on the engine and on the regulator. If after soldering the engine rotates in the wrong direction, then you need to re-solder any two (swap). This is a standard procedure and the only true one - do not be surprised. The receiver also feeds from the controller (which will communicate with the control panel). All servo drives will be powered through the receiver circuit. You just need to connect them (servos) to the receiver. This is super abridged knowledge.

In the photo, the regulator and engine. 2 thick wires with a large yellow connector go to the battery, 3 thin wires to the transmitter. Unfortunately, I lost photos (I did this plane in the summer of 2012), in which I did traction from servo cars to hogs. They were glued to elevators, directions and ailerons. Boars are pieces of plastic or something similar (thin and strong enough) that are glued into the steering wheels. They look like this:

Photo by Yuri
Yushchenko of the RC Aviation community. It will be possible to notice how they are connected to the servos in the photographs below, closer to the end.

Next, you need to make an engine mount. From the name you can understand the purpose, but I will explain. Usually this term in the construction of aircraft is called the site to which the engine will be attached. But at the very beginning, when I was just about to start building an airplane, I watched a lot of videos with flights. There were cool flights, and the first flights, and carrots (the so-called crash of airplanes, when they lose control and they, like carrots, fly their nose to meet the ground ...). So, 99% of the first flights end with carrots, 90% of the second flights end with carrots, 80% ... well, you understand. So I knew that the poor nose of my plane had to withstand at least a dozen hits on the ground at speeds from 5 to 35 km / h. In those videos that I watched, half of the carrots ended in a broken nose. Well, nothing, you can stick a new one! But no,

Typically, aircraft

builders stick the engine like this. Instead of carbon fiber - a 2-3-layer ceiling. Well, after the carrots you yourself understand where all this stuff turns out to be. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to divert the concentration of energy when falling from the most fragile places - the nose. There were very brilliant thoughts, but there was no time to make a frame from rulers or plywood, so I decided this:

After that, at the top of this "safety frame" I cut out a place for the battery:

Due to the fact that the center of gravity was supposed to be on the line of the leading edge of the wing (or 2-5 cm further), the battery had to be positioned as close as possible to the nose of the aircraft. This frame served as an airbag for the most difficult parts of the aircraft - the engine and batteries. The frame rested on the plane’s frame and the stick from a Chinese restaurant passed through it, which was used to wing wing:

Thus, the frame took the energy from the impact of the battery and motor on the ground, and the frame’s attachment points kept the impact energy from the rest of the body (which weighs less than a nose).

By the way, the device of rods (pieces of wire) from servo machines to the aileron huts is clearly visible in this photo. There is nothing tricky there.

There is still a film on the photo. Yes, I will paste over it with a film, and not with adhesive tape, as I wrote earlier. Because of this, he again gained weight. But there’s nothing to be done about it ... I didn’t shoot the pasting process. There is nothing interesting, it turned out crookedly and badly.

And now it’s more interesting. Photo of the finished aircraft:

Yellow pieces on top of the wing stick to the most terrible places of pasting of purple color ... But now the conversation is not about that. The whole starter kit is still visible in the photo. Key, pliers, receiver, control panel, 2 batteries, propeller, knife and a lot of rubber bands.

Flying


There is already a slight trembling in the knees. I did it for two weeks (or a little more), giving it an average of 2 hours a day. A friend helped me launch it. I gave a brief briefing on how to throw and so on. To say that after launch I was overwhelmed with assorted emotions - to say nothing. I have not felt this for a long time. It was joy / grief / laughter / sadness / laughter / disappointment and all in a split second and all over the edge, in general, we are watching the launch!

Inspection after landing

For those who didn’t understand what happened, but probably didn’t understand 99%, right away, as soon as my friend got it out of hand, he practically twisted the dead loop on the spot with a diameter of 3-4 meters and at full speed (gas at maximum) and thrust himself almost into the place from where they let him in - a friend barely managed to run away ... Confusion.

Inspection showed that almost everything is intact. Only a little fuselage tore right under the wing in the place where the antenna comes from the receiver. Without hesitation, conducting a test for the operation of all controls, we conduct a second launch - the result is the same. Well, of course, now I threw gas as soon as I realized that it would not work to pull it out and he returned to the ground with a softer landing on the grass. The third launch went exactly the same. After thinking a bit, I thought that I still had the wrong alignment (the center of gravity was in the wrong place). He began to think what to hang up to the nose in order to level it. Empirically, we came to the only solution that helped move the center of gravity to the desired point:

Tough, I know. I also knew that the plane already has a good advantage. But do not leave home after only three aerobatics? It’s just that there’s nowhere to let me near the house, so I went out of town ~ 20 minutes one way.

On landing, he also went against my will. But what to do, he shouldn’t have to fly with such a load.

Results of the first day:


As you noticed, the blows to the ground were really not weak!

As it turned out, the reason for this behavior was not only poor alignment. But the improperly pasted stabilizer (the horizontal part of the tail), the wrong angle of attack of the wing (it just pulled the model continuously upwards) and the center of gravity. In general, I corrected everything that could be easily corrected (the center of gravity and the angle of attack of the wing), and went for the next tests:

Attentive people could notice that at the end of the video the wing of a plane broke, but this is a completely different story ... It is also noticeable how difficult it is for this aircraft to deal with incoming air masses, how difficult it is to climb up and all this because of weight gain. So remember, if you start building your plane with blackjack and ... - buy a motor with a margin of traction!

Finance



Plus, about 350 rubles for the ceiling and glue, 500 rubles for the film, 3000 rubles for the control panel.
In total, the first plane came out at 7500 rubles.
Please note the following. Charging and control panel (main consumption items) can be used not only for this model, but not only in aviation in general. Given that charging weighs about a kilogram, and the delivery of such a package costs about 500-600 rubles, we can say that the plane itself cost me about 3000 rubles!

For the money you can buy a finished plane in the same stores. But with a cheap control panel (no further than 100 meters) and with poor charge or no charge at all. Anyway, I wanted to do it myself rather than fly!

Useful materials


The resources on this topic are not really counted. But here are some of the most useful (at least for me):


And one more piece of positive in the end, thanks to my girlfriend!
A photo



PS I hope I did not bore you, and you will sympathize with this article and its purpose (see at the very beginning), will not kick for stylistic and grammatical errors, and let me share another story with you - F-22:
Thank you for your attention!

upd: I took out all the pictures from under the spoilers, of course, at the request of readers.

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