DIY Capacitor Plane - Modding a Free Flight Glider

What happens when you take the capacitor from a free flight airplane and make it RC? This:

Alex, Andres, and Andrew, the three musketeers, decided to see what would happen if they took components from three seperate airplanes and mashed them together. Here's the video.

How it was done
It all started with a few mere chuck gliders that had lying around. They're not exactly normal chuck gliders as they include a small motor powered by a capacitor. These can be found here on the Flite Test Store.

We had limited success with them although, with a little trimming and a small quantity of patience, they would fly relatively well.

After some thought, Alex had the bright idea of modding the tiny planes into something that was RC.

When you do any sort of mods that involve customizing your electronics, like we did by combining two capacitors together in series, it's a good idea to measure what sort of voltages you're working with. This takes the guesswork out of the equation. This way, you're less likely to see a puff of magic smoke when you plug it all together.

Success! A triumph of Flite Test engineering sees the modified electronics fire up and the transmitter able to bind.

Turning to the airframe, it's sometimes surprising what you can slap some electronics to and still have it work as a functioning flying machine. For Alex, his plane was made from a glider kit found at www.nighthawkgliders.com. These are super little models that you could also use to mod with some micro electronics!

The finished glider: powered by just two small capacitors, the aircraft has rudder and elevator control.

Tips For Modding

1. Start Simple

It may be tempting to rush into a huge project that you're not quite ready for. Say, if you were to be adding more motors to one of our Flite Test designs, you might not know how to solder which may be necessary for the mod. By starting with simple projects, you can work your way up learning the skills you need to tackle grand builds. This glider doesn't even have any electronics, it just uses repurposed materials from crashed airplanes.

2. Try Transferring Electronics.

A fun mod might be to transfer the internal electronics of one plane to another. If you've crashed a plane, and the airframe is a write-off, you can still use the motor, ESC, servos and receiver in something else. It doesn't even have to be an airplane! Check out this hydroplane build that uses two quad motors, for example.

3. Practice

Like with everything, doing something repeatedly will build up your skills. Try having several projects on the go. This way, you can learn faster and get ready to take on some bigger challenges. Make sure you spend lots of time watching our build videos on the Flite Test YouTube channel! Stick some bigger motors on something, add a bomb drop, create a glider tow - do it all.