dh vampiere

Hi. So I crashed a plane yesterday, which is bad - a moment of silence for the boomerang mk1.

That means, however, that I have some electronics and a need for a good park flyer. (This plane ended up being very fast, so not a very good park flyer)

So, the obvious choice of airframe is a DH vampire

So you can build one of these; I will leave links for all of the electronics.

You can use either plastic or metal gear servos in the plane.

9g plastic servos : These are the plastic gear servos; they will work fine, but they are cheaper and not as durable and prone to striping their gears. As I expect this plane to be around for a while I bought metal gear servos: metal gear servos

ESC:es c

Motor: Motor

You can use any old receiver and a small ESC; I will be flying a 3s lipo - any will work but mine was 1500MAH.

So, to get started on the build, I cut a template out of some cardboard.

After I traced the template onto the foam, I flipped it over and traced it again. (Don't forget to add extra foam for ailerons).

Because the leading edge is tapered, and the wing was exactly the width of the foam, I had to glue on some little offcuts.

Then I cut out the wing.

After that, I beveled the leading edge; I also taped the outside of that bevel to stop it from splitting.

At this point, I got my spar ready. In this case, as the wing was tapered, it could not be an arrowshaft so I went for some pine sticks glued to some foam board.

After making the spars, I cut out some space for the servos; I then used heat shrink to stop the servo leads from coming unplugged from the Y harness.

Then I glued it all down and folded the wing.

After that, I moved on to the tail booms. I made them out of two foam strips glued together with a barbecue skewer sandwiched for strength.

Then I found the angle of the wing, cut it into the tail booms, and glued them on.

At this point, I made an elevator which is a small rectangle of foam.

I also made 2 rudders and glued them onto the side of the tail.

Moving forward on the plane, I made a small power pod and cut the wing's trailing edge into it.

But, I needed to mount the motor before I glued the power pod to the wing so I screwed it on and glued that all to the wing.

Almost done, I sketched out the shape I wanted for the nose; later I trimmed it down to make it look more realistic, and cut the leading edge into it.

On the home stretch! I made push rods out of garden wire and control horns from lollypop sticks.

Conveniently, the battery I'm going to use is a snug fit in the nose, so I did not need to add any velcro. (That was a very bad decision!)

Then I glued the ESC on top of the wing and we were ready for a test flight!!!!!! Ps, this video is from a camera taped to my helmet!!

So that was interesting. Luckily the plane was undamaged and I found the battery after 10 minutes of searching.

Time for some mods: first I made a battery shelf in the nose and glued some velcro onto it; I also made a hatch from some scrap foam and used a magnet to hold it down.