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Lab 3 - Build Believer

Lab Overview

In lab 1, students swapped aircraft and conducted a peer review of another group’s Believer build. Each group identified defects, concerns, workmanship issues, and positive build practices on one other aircraft and documented their findings.

In this lab, students will return to their own aircraft and use the feedback provided by another group to critically assess their current build status. The goal is to identify deficiencies, understand root causes, and develop a clear corrective plan before continuing further assembly.

Feedback Review

Carefully review the written feedback provided by the other group.

Discuss the comments as a team to ensure everyone understands:

What issues were identified

Why the reviewing group flagged them

Whether the issue is cosmetic, structural, alignment-related, or procedural

You are expected to take the feedback seriously. Even if you disagree with a comment, you must be able to justify why it is not an issue based on the build instructions, measurements, or aircraft configuration.

For every issue listed, develop a clear corrective plan, including:

Specific steps required to fix or mitigate the issue

Tools or materials needed

Whether disassembly is required

Group 1 Corrective Path

As the reviewing group referenced, we could certainly do a better job at documenting our steps by taking pictures and signifying where our progress ended; due to our group’s teamwork and steps in the blog that could be executed simultaneously by different members, a logically chronological list was (and will continue to be) hard to match to the blog steps.

Group that inspected our prior work improperly packaged the fuselage; left tail wing has a slight deformity as shown in the picture below:

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Current corrective action that can be taken will include: using the fiber tape to ensure no further damage and that there will be no issues in flight.

“Glued the black piece on the end of the wing before installing anything”

This turned out to not be an issue, as the esc had an opening to sit in and was not blocked. The path for the wires was also not blocked, so there was 0 issues with this. Yes this “issue” was done out of order, but it did not cause any issues that needed correcting.

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Heat shrinking on BOTH ESC wires & D-Sub connector (may require re-soldering on one wire)

We plan to do this, our plan of correction was executed in a prior lab as Lucas de-soldered the wires so to could fit through the wing panel and it could have heat shrink put on. Now our plan is to make sure the heat shrink is implemented, and the wires are re soldered.

Swapping rudder servo flight control rods from the outside of the connectors to the inside (no tools required)

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Resecuring the pitot tube; will require refilling cavity with hot glue, we will simply ensure the pitot tube is placed in a level position and will fill the excess area with hot glue.

The right wing flight servo connecter is at a slight twist. After talking to Anestis, this should not be a problem. As of right now it was glued down with the E6000, so its not an easy fix, but when we test our full servo function, we will further assess it to ensure there will be no issues

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If an issue cannot be fully corrected, the group must explain:

Why correction is not possible

How the risk will be minimized moving forward

The build

Continue the physical build of your Believer and document all work in detail.

Your documentation should clearly reflect

What work was done

Reference and follow your wiring diagram throughout the build

Include photos of relevant steps

Group 1 Build Continuation

In the last lab, Lucas was able to de-solder the ESC wire in order to include the shrink wrap on the single wire that didn’t have it. Additionally, without removing the panels and glue, Lucas was able to insert the ESC into the mount despite the prior group’s reference to obstruction risk. Aidan worked to correctly solder the remaining ESC wire and D-Sub connector set.

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Lucas was able to properly mount the motors into both of the side wings; both ESCs installed in side wings as previously referenced in the “Corrective Action” section. Lucas was also able to mount the right wing servo (left wing servo had already been mounted in a previous lab).

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Hunter was responsible for documentation throughout, resecuring the pitot tube, and creating the wiring diagram graphic

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The goal is not just to complete steps, but to ensure the aircraft is being assembled cleanly and deliberately.

Apply the feedback and lessons learned from the peer review to the remainder of the build. The expectation is that build quality improves moving forward and that previously identified issues do not reappear later in the project.

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