Building a Bespoke FPV Platform - How To

Video

Introduction

You could just buy a plane for your FPV gear. You could build a kit or scratch build a pre-existing design to adapt like the FT Versa. Or you could design something absolutely specific for your needs - a bespoke FPV platform. 

An FT Blunt Nose Versa Wing, perfectly fine, but why not design something unique for your purpose instead of modifying an existing design?

Maybe you want long flight times. Maybe you want it to fold up to be stored away and transported easily. All of these design criteria can be included in your finished design if you want them to. That is the beauty of being able to scratch build something. You can come up with an idea in your head and see it all the way to when it's a small silhouette soaring up above you. 

A design that I came up with, which is featured in the video.

How To Design and Build Your Idea

Firstly, start with those criteria that you wanted to have your aircraft meet. I find it useful to sketch out a very rough drawing on paper. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are at drawing, it's just so that you can get an impression of your ideas down. You really don't want to start doing any detailed drawings until you've established what goes where. 

If your criteria is speed, you may want to go for shorter, thiner wings, with smaller overall dimensions. 

Wings are a bit more inclined towards being highly versatile when it comes to speed. Just look at Josh Bixler's 108mph Versa Wing in the FT Speed Challenge. Link Here!

If your criteria is long flight times, bear in mind that you'll need to carry a larger weight. You probably will need to think carefully about where to put them. A really clever design could put them in the wings! Think about clever designs like this from history. The schneider trophy winning float plane, the Supermarine S.6B, was designed to have the fuel in the floats, giving a low centre of gravity and allowing for a thinner more streamlined fuselage. The same designer, R.J. Mitchell designed the Supermarine Spitfire. 

Take insperation from history and design things cleverly with out of the box thinking!

My design from the video's criteria meant building something similar to a glider, with long thin wings for high efficiency, and lot's of lift to carry many 2200mah batteries. If you look at some of the infamous Burt Rutan's designs of record breaking endurance aircraft, you'll see a lot of them look similar to gliders in this way. 

Looking at other people's designs, including full scale, and wondering why they are like the way they are is a useful exercise in helping come up with your own designs. 

Sometimes it's best to go for simplicity. Building a 'normal' looking plane, with one fuselarge, a single wing, and a tail, can be the most desirable thing. This plane is designed so that the wings split into three sections. Aside from from obvious storage and transport advantages that this brings, it also allows for a certain degree of modularity. If you have a bad landing or crash, you can repair the part that is damaged more easily. You can also swap out parts and mix and match wings and fuselages. You could build a whole system of plane pieces rather than just one airframe, meaning you can choose what kind of plane you want for the day. How cool would that be! 

Simplicity can be good for storage, transportation and ease of building/reparing, as is the case with this build. 

Conclusion

Scratch building is awesome. To see something that was once just an idea, a concept in your head, then be made in front of you by you with your hands is a pretty special thing. With modern techniques and building materials popularised by the Flite Test community, amazing things are possible. All you have to do is check out some of the increadible creations demonstrated at this year's Flite Fest (link here). 

Go out there and make amazing things.

Thanks for reading!

The Spec of my new FPV plane (for those interested)

Airframe

- 200cm wingspan

- 124cm fuselage length 

- Foam Board covered with tape method of construction (Experimental Airlines Style)

Electronics

-NTM 28-26 1200kv motor

-2x 2200mah 3s Turnigy batteries

-25A Turnigy ESC

Camera and FPV

-GoPro Hero (2014)

-Fatshark Predator V2 Goggles and RTF transmitter and receiver kit