As an opening post on this site, I am just going to introduce myself, and my initial plans for what I will attempt to contribute to this space.
First, I'm relatively new to remote controlled flight. I haven't spent twenty years of my life building scale aircraft that actually fly. That said, it's not been for a lack of interest on my part, rather a matter of time and priorities. So, scale powered flight is a bit of a new area for me.
My interests? Broadly speaking, my interests in small aircraft are as follows:
1. Warbirds. As a child, I built a lot of balsa and plastic models of WWII era planes. Between an uncle who was interested in them, and a great-uncle who had served on a Mosquito bomber in WWII, it was a great way to connect with those two relatives.
I have long had plans to build a decent scale model of a Mosquito from scratch - but that's not something I'm going to tackle right off the start. I'm still looking for the right set of plans to start from.
2. Microcontrollers and data gathering. With Arduino and other open source hardware platforms having become relatively inexpensive, I find the idea of being able to gather raw telemetry data as well as video incredibly appealing. Since multi rotor craft have become common and economical to build, I am definitely interested in exploring this further. I am a software developer by profession, and that means that some of what I want to do is going to be a little bit complicated in this area - mostly because I want to push the boundaries of what can be done with an Arduino type device. I'll explain what I'm doing and why as we go along.
3. Non-Standard Building Materials. Years ago, I built a series of ultra-light gliders out of balsa and tissue paper. These were incredibly delicate craft - wingspans of 3+ feet, and a total mass of maybe 100g. No more than a penny needed to be used on the nose to balance the overall weight of the back. We would take these up a hill not far from my home and see how far they would fly. They would often go surprising distances, especially on hot, still days. Ever since then, I've been interested in building things out of materials that aren't "standard" - whether that's building using cardboard, or experimenting with new ways of fastening things together, I will be doing experimental builds. I ran across this the other day: The Cardboard Condor - and this is the kind of thing I find really interesting - because it violates the conventions.
I'm in the process of dredging up the pieces I need for a build (that I will actually document here), and figuring out what that is going to look like.
1. Warbirds. As a child, I built a lot of balsa and plastic models of WWII era planes. Between an uncle who was interested in them, and a great-uncle who had served on a Mosquito bomber in WWII, it was a great way to connect with those two relatives.
I have long had plans to build a decent scale model of a Mosquito from scratch - but that's not something I'm going to tackle right off the start. I'm still looking for the right set of plans to start from.
2. Microcontrollers and data gathering. With Arduino and other open source hardware platforms having become relatively inexpensive, I find the idea of being able to gather raw telemetry data as well as video incredibly appealing. Since multi rotor craft have become common and economical to build, I am definitely interested in exploring this further. I am a software developer by profession, and that means that some of what I want to do is going to be a little bit complicated in this area - mostly because I want to push the boundaries of what can be done with an Arduino type device. I'll explain what I'm doing and why as we go along.
3. Non-Standard Building Materials. Years ago, I built a series of ultra-light gliders out of balsa and tissue paper. These were incredibly delicate craft - wingspans of 3+ feet, and a total mass of maybe 100g. No more than a penny needed to be used on the nose to balance the overall weight of the back. We would take these up a hill not far from my home and see how far they would fly. They would often go surprising distances, especially on hot, still days. Ever since then, I've been interested in building things out of materials that aren't "standard" - whether that's building using cardboard, or experimenting with new ways of fastening things together, I will be doing experimental builds. I ran across this the other day: The Cardboard Condor - and this is the kind of thing I find really interesting - because it violates the conventions.
I'm in the process of dredging up the pieces I need for a build (that I will actually document here), and figuring out what that is going to look like.
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