FPV Drones and Fixed Wing

I like to fly FPV drones like this one below

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All are made of COTS components, but hand-picked and assembled, soldered, and otherwise built by me.

Foamboard Fixed Wing

I always wanted to have more of a part in the design and manufacturing of an aircraft, rather than just picking out the components and assembling them. With a growing interest in planes, I decided to model a basic design following examples from various YouTube channels. With this design, I then wanted to take it a step further to design parts to make the wings quick-connect, improve internal structures, and more.

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Left: V1 UAS design Right: Pan-Tilt Unit for a head-tracked FPV camera to be mounted at the front

The plane’s construction is primarily foam board. I was not fond of many of the shortcuts taken by others to get the plane into the air as fast as possible, so my custom components are as follows:

Wing Tip Locking: The wing is divided into 3 sections, and screws are driven through plates and into the wing spars at each end to securely hold the wing into the Fuselage/Wing Support Bracket.

Fuselage to Wing Support Brackets: A common issue with foamboard planes is that the foam wears out; It gets compressed and bent, over time degrading the connection until it fails in flight. Internally, there is a large beam that connects the middle third of the wing to the top surface of the fuselage to more securely hold the fuselage to the wings, while also better distributing the weight to a larger area to reduce stress concentrations.

Pan-Tilt Camera: I always wanted to be able to fly in the sky as if I really were sitting in a plane. My solution was to design my pan-tilt camera, which is installed at the front. In its current form, I use potentiometers on my transmitter to control the looking-around, but I have plans to build real-headtracking, although I need to spend time learning more about extended-kalman filters for my sensor fusion.

V-Tail Supports: I wanted something more rigid to hold them better. Some of the foam board is cut out, and these brackets fill the void for a more seamless fit with extra rigidity.

Motor Bracket: The motor I ordered just didn’t come with one, so I made a nicely fitting end-cap for a clean wire routing and to allow some airflow out of the fuselage for cooling internals.

The following image is from my final assembly, and it flew well! As I update this in 2024, it has since been scrapped for parts to support a new VTOL aircraft design I am in the early stages of. Stay tuned!

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It flew!

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