Your Halloween Costume May Be Cool, But It’s Not Laser-Cut Cardboard Vintage Airplane Cool

October 13, 2014 by Kristina Panos 33 Comments

While others are absorbed in baseball playoffs, [Aidan] has spent his recent Octobers planning incredible Halloween costumes for his son. We don’t know what he did last year, but there’s no way it’s better than this laser-cut cardboard airplane costume.

He had a few specs in mind and started with a model of a Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat from 3D Warehouse. Using SketchUp, he simplified the model and removed the landing gear and the propeller. [Aidan] created a simpler model on top of that, and set to work changing the proportions to make it adorable and toddler-sized.

To build around his son’s proportions, he inserted a 10-inch diameter scaled tube vertically into the model and squished down the fuselage in SketchUp. The plan was to have it laser-cut by Ponoko, which meant turning the design into flat pieces for them to cut. He ended up with 58 parts, many of them mirror images due to the symmetry of his design.

When the box from Ponoko arrived, [Aidan] was giddy. He was astonished at the quality of the pieces and found the plane very satisfying to build. But, he didn’t stop there. Using LayOut, he created a custom instrument cluster with reflections and shadows. The plane also has a Wii steering wheel, a motorized propeller, and of course, decals.

Aerodynamics? Super Honey Badger Don’t Give A @#*^@!

July 30, 2014 by Adam Fabio 50 Comments

honeybadger-rcplane

[Arron Bates] is a pro R/C Pilot from Australia. He’s spent the last few years chasing the dream of a fixed wing plane which could perform unlimited spins. After some promising starts with independently controlled wing spoilers, [Arron] went all in and created The Super Honey Badger. Super Honey Badger is a giant scale R/C plane with the tail of a helicopter and a soul of pure awesome.

Starting with a standard 87″ wingspan Extra 300 designed for 3D flight, [Arron] began hacking. The entire rear fuselage was removed and replaced with carbon fiber tubes. The standard Extra 300 tail assembly fit perfectly on the tubes. Between the abbreviated fuselage and the tail, [Arron] installed a tail rotor from an 800 size helicopter. A 1.25 kW brushless motor drives the tail rotor while a high-speed servo controls the pitch.

[Arron] debuted the plane at HuckFest 2013, and pulled off some amazing aerobatics. The tail rotor made 540 stall turn an easy trick to do – even with an airplane. Flat spins were a snap to enter, even from fast forward flight! Most of [Arron’s] maneuvers defy any attempt at naming them – just watch the videos after the break.

Sadly, Super Honey Badger was destroyed in May of 2014 due to a structural failure in the carbon tubes. [Arron] walked away without injury and isn’t giving up., He’s already dropping major hints about a new plane (facebook link).

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Retrotechtacular: Build Yourself An Airplane

July 1, 2014 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

retrotechtacular-cub-j-3-piper

Planes these days are super complicated – think about the recent flaming-lithium battery issues in the B787 that may or may not have been solved – but it wasn’t always this way. Here’s a great example. The manufacture of a Piper J-3 Cub shows simple and efficient mechanical design brought to life in a multitude of steps all performed without automation.

The build starts with the frame. Pipes are nibbled into specialized fish mouths for a tight fit before being strapped to a jig and tack welded. With the fuselage in one piece the frame is removed for each joint to be fully welded and subsequently inspected. Cables are run through the frame to connect control surfaces to the cockpit. Continuing through to wing assembly we were especially surprised to see hand hammering of nails to secure the wood ribs to metal spars. How many nails do you think that worker pounded in a career? The entire aircraft is covered in fabric, an engine is added, and it’s into the wild blue yonder.

The look back at manufacturing techniques is interesting — do you think the large model shown in the video would be built these days, or would they just use a CAD rendering?

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3D Printering: Custom RC Camera Mount Takes To The Sky

March 26, 2014 by Rich Bremer 4 Comments

3D Printers are only good for printing trinkets and doodads, right? Not really. Although, I do print the occasional useless object, most of my prints are used for projects I’m working on or to meet a need that I have. These needs are the project’s design requirements and I’d like to share the process and techniques I use when creating a functional 3D object.

My pal [Toshi] has RC Airplanes and flies often. I have an Action Camera that I never use. Why not combine the two and have some fun? The only thing standing in our way was a method to mount the camera to the airplane. 3D printing makes it easy. If you have a popular vehicle or application, there may be something already available on a 3D model repository like Thingiverse. Our situation was fairly unique I decided to design and print my own mount.

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Amazing Flight Of A 3D Printed Rubber Band Powered Ornithopter

August 21, 2013 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

We’re actually going to link to an old post from back in February because we think it’s equally as impressive as the most recent work. This is a 3D printed ornithopter powered by a rubber band (translated). The frame is much like a traditional rubber band plane. The difference is that after winding it up it doesn’t spin a propeller. The flapping of the four plastic membrane wings makes it fly like magic. Seriously, check out the demo below… we almost posted this as “Real or Fake?” feature if we hadn’t seen similar offerings a couple of years back.

The flight lasts a relatively long time when considering the quick winding before launch is all that powered it. But the most recent offerings (translated) from the site include the motorized ornithopter design seen above. It carries a small Lithium cell for continuous flight. These designs have a 3D printed gear system which makes them a bit more complicated, but brings steering and remote control to the party. If you want one of your own they’re working on a small run of kits. We figure it’d be a lot more fun to prototype and print your own. Sure, it’s reinventing the wheel. But it’s a really cool wheel!

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20 Pounds And A Gut Feeling Yields A Configurable Rubidium Atomic Clock Source

April 22, 2013 by Mike Szczys 62 Comments

So you see an image like this and the description “Aircraft stable oscillator” on an eBay listing for twenty pounds (about thirty bucks), what do you do? If you’re [Alecjw] you buy the thing and crack it open to find an atomic clock source inside. But he really went the distance with this one and figured out how to reconfigure the source from the way it was set up in the factory.

First off, the fact that it’s made for the aerospace industry means that the craftsmanship on it is simply fantastic. The enclosure is machined aluminum and all of the components are glued or otherwise attached to the boards to help them stand up to the high-vibrations often experienced on a plane. After quite a bit of disassembly [Alec] gets down to a black box which is labeled “Rubidium Frequency Standard”… jackpot! He had been hoping for a 10 MHz signal to use with his test equipment but when he hooked it up the source was putting out 800 kHz. With a bit more investigation he figured out how to reconfigure the support electronics to get that 10 Mhz source. We think you’re going to love reading about how he used a test crystal during the reconfiguration step.

Once he knew what he had he returned to the eBay seller and cleared out the rest of his stock.

[Thanks DIY DSP]

RC Airplane Made From Political Signs

October 27, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 30 Comments

Whatever candidate (if any) you’re in favor of, we could bet that you’re probably tired of seeing advertisements and political signs everywhere. [Mark] wrote in with a hack that allows you to actually use these signs for something fun, making a RC airplane!

[Mark] gives a full bill of materials in his article, but the featured component is campaign sign. This isn’t LawyerADay, so we’re not sure of the legality of taking them. After election day at least, it’s doubtful anyone will care. Of course you’ll also need a motor, prop, and RC controls, as well as some dowels to attach the tail section to the main body, so don’t buy the “campaign promise” that this is a free airplane.

CAD diagrams are available of the cutouts, as well as how to cut the signs to form hinges without any other parts. This is quite clever, and a video of the plane in action on a table is available on the site. According to [Mark], no video was rolling on its test flight, but it did fly before some interference grounded the plane. Hopefully he’ll be able to get some footage of it in action soon!