UAS - FPV Drone and First Foam Plane

I got really into FPV (First-Person View) in the spring of my sophomore year of college. I built my first 5” freestyle drone, and from there continued to collect parts for future projects.

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I currently have 3 drones, but I always wanted to have more of a part in the design and manufacturing, rather than just picking out the components and assembling them. With a growing interest in planes, I decided I was going to take the opportunity to build a full model of my desired vehicle in CAD to plan out everything I wanted from it.

The goal of this project was much more about the process, and less about the result. I don’t know airfoils or aircraft sizing, so the general design of the aircraft is not mine. However, where others used rubber bands to hold the wings to the fuselage or bent plastic cards to support the V-Tail, I wanted to take the time to design proper components.

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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 followed:

Wing Tip Locking: My vision for the plane as that it could be torn down for travel and easily rebuilt at the field. To do so, the wing is divided into 3 sections, and screws are driven through plates and into the wing spars on each end to securely squeeze the wing into the fuselage/Wing Support Bracket.

Fuselage to Wing Support Brackets: A common issue with foamboard planes is the foam wears out; It gets compressed and bent and the wing isn’t as secure, but I want this one to last. 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, but also to better distribute the weight to more area to reduce stress in a particular area.

Pan-Tilt Camera: I always wanted to be able to fly in the sky as if I really was sitting in the plane. My solution was to design my own 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 as I am typing this, the Bluetooth Arduino I need to make a head-tracking module just came in, so that will probably be integrated soon!

V-Tail Supports: I really just 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 fit end-cap for a clean wire routing and to allow some airflow out of the fuselage for cooling internals.

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Almost ready for the maiden!

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