Building an RC Plane… Part 1

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been in the process of building my very first remote control (rc) airplane.

First, I want to start by saying that I have absolutely no experience building or flying an RC airplane outside of a toy glider purchased at Harbor Freight. You can see that here.

But, shortly after buying that, the Hubs and I saw the old boys flying their rc planes at an RC airport nearby. You can see that post, here.

One of the gentlemen recommended Flitetest.com to learn about the hobby, and I was hooked! They also have a YouTube channel where they put their planes into action. You can either buy kits or scratch build planes, which is what I chose…more on that in a minute…

I chose to build the FT Simple Cub. This little plane has the ability to grow with me as I develop my skills. It will start off as a three channel plane. It will grow into a four channel plane adding more flight controls. Then, lastly a five channel plane, that will allow the plane to drop bombs. This plane can even land on water with the additional float kit. You can see the Flite Test video here. I dare you to watch it. You will think it is the coolest thing ever…

So, first I printed two sets of plans. I taped the first set together and cut them out. I then glued them using spray adhesive to poster board.

Then, I taped the second set of paper plans together and cut them out.

Now, the most important thing is to make sure the plans print to scale and do not get cut off on the edges! That is extremely important. Also, you could always use one set of plans and use spray adhesive to attach the plans to the foam board. You can do that as you work on each section so the adhesives doesn’t dry all the way allowing you to pull off the pattern after all the cuts are made… I made my pattern so that it could be used over and over again!

So, after cutting out the second set of patterns, and ordering all of my parts, it was time to start putting this thing together…There are two ways you can order your parts…. You can order everything right from Flite Test and even get your plane all ready laser cut so all you have to do is punch it out…This is called speed building… Or, you can do it the harder way… scratch build… Which is what I chose to do…

The foam board came from the Dollar Tree. I bought 4 sheets and had some left over. I used my little hot glue gun that I already had, my square ruler that I use for craft projects, my utility knives, chalk tracing paper found in the sewing section of Walmart, and packing tape with the lines of fiberglass in it…

I followed the step-by-step instructions from the Flite Test video here. This is what I ended up with…

So, here sits the “Wounded Duck” partially put together. This could all be done in one day, but I am a mother, a wife, I work full-time as a nurse, and I love to cook for my family…. I do think that this took me a good part of 8 hours to complete, but includes cutting out the patterns, flying them down, tracing all the info onto the pieces, and putting them all together…. Also, this was my first attempt of doing this…. So, I don’t think that was too bad… We will see if it was worth scratch building in the end or if I should have just bought the speed kit…

What do you all think so far? Isn’t this exciting??!!