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page updated: 2010.01.02

aircraft - indoor - indoor thing

early electric power gliders helicopter indoor technology future

hornet swift pico stick indoor thing

www.flyelectric.ukgateway.net

selection

Fed up with the limitations of the (rudder/elevator) pico stick I noticed people with these depron foam things.

construction

The plans (downloaded pdf) are quite informative. Wings (and tail) cut from 3mm depron grey foam. Wings trimmed front and back with 3mm carbon spar. All control sufaces edged and then hinged with sellotape. Fuselage is mostly a bit of 3mm carbon stick. I couldn't find any pico stick stick material, so made the motor mount out of a couple of bits of base wood. A hole up the middle allows the motor to be rotated to be central instead of offset. The V tail is made of a single piece, creased and then folded to achieve the 120 degree angle, held in place by being epoxied to the stick. Elevator servo stuck to the right surface with double sided tape. I left enough space on the other side to add a servo later to get rudder function. A bit impossible to steer these aileron/elevator things on the ground. I made a balsa/ply centre section to carry the various bits. The wings held on by rubber bands, forming a bit of a wing section over the central bump. Most of the bits are lifted straight from the pico stick, but I used new lighter servos - saturn 4.4g.

1st version came out at 198g all up including 7x cell 8.4V 300mAh nimhs. That had used a 5mm stick and rather a lot of wood in the centre section. Switching to 3mm and less wood saved 17g to make it 181g.

flight

Rushed it a bit to get ready for the xmas 2003 session. I initially left the 5mm stick uncut, relying on the friction of the rubber bands to keep it in place relative to wings. The V tail was stuck to a paper tube, so it could be moved. It certainly flew nice and stable, but was horribly heavy and underpowered. I cut down the stick to save weight. Over did it a bit, and it was rather unstable, and still heavy. Also the tail would slip round, making it very difficult to control.

The new version is much better. The fuselage stick is a bit flexy, but that doesn't seem to matter much. What it really needs now is Lithium polymer.

statistics

Here are some more photos.