Flugtag 2023 Design Challenge - der Nurflugler v2

Hello flight test family, my name is John.

I've been building and flying model airplanes since the 1970's. I have a private pilot license active since 1987 and I have built and fly my own Fokker Dr-1 Triplane based in NW Ohio. I have designed hundreds of model airplanes over the years as well. I am also an active astrophotographer and I have my own back yard observatory.

I live here in northwest Ohio and I'm entering in my contest application for the stem powered Flugtag inspired airplane this is a flying wing that was inspired by Jack Northrop and the Horton brothers along with Blohm and Voss during the 30s and 40s and you see in movies like The Avengers, Indiana Jones, and different Comic Book Heroes over the years. There's one in Captain America so kind of inspired by that and I added the Red Baron paint Scheme to the version featured here.

Make sure you check out the build and flying video at the end of the article.

I wanted to make sure it checked the boxes it's a slow flyer, yet it can fly fast, and for the power and control setup, it’s maneuverable. This was the second iteration, and you'll see in the build videos how quick and easy this goes together and you'll see in the flying videos how well it flies. I believe that this design could be a viable application in Flugtag if you took this design and since it's a single wing you could get on the top of it and modify it as inspired by kind of the contest ideas laid out by Red Bull.

While it's a flying wing, it has a fuselage pod and fins which make it more stable. It's an easy build as long as the proper steps are followed. It takes less than 30 minutes to build and install the electronics.

As unique as this plane looks, it flies amazingly well - I have made many of these over the years but this is the first profile foam board version and one of the first planes I have cut out on my xTool laser out of foam board. A capability I am looking forward to having for future projects.

I'll show you the build video link where you can follow along, and I have added some flying videos as well.

I'll put the files for the light burn and the dxf files in a Dropbox folder and I'll put the link in the build and flying video description, so check it out let me know what you think.