Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Building my RC (Radio Controlled) camera plane.

I'm currently embarked on building an RC Camera Plane. This is not the first model airplane I've built by a long shot.

It has two cameras, one a flight and the other panoramic.

The flight camera is a Sony FPV (First Person View) with an OSD (Onboard Screen Display) to provide real time imagery at 700 tvl. The transmitter is 5.8 mega-hertz and the OSD is EZ OSD from Hobby King.

The panoramic camera is a Sony 4K. I just hooked it up and connected via wifi to my smart phone. I think I'll make a head harness for my dog. (Only joking) It's pretty cool walking around with it and having my wife tell me what she's seeing on her cell phone.

The camera plane will have three basic components. These are a fuselage, wing and V-tail assembly.

The fuselage is made cutting five(5) 6in circles in thin plywood and then a 3in circle inside each of these. The best way is with a drill press but a jib saw will suffice. The cardinal points are then drilled for blue coded dowels available at any hardware, building or craft store. The dowels are inserted into the holes with the bulkheads spaced along the fuselage. The forward compartment is for the electronic gear, the next is the battery compartment, the following two will provide the wing saddle and the last will be for a fuel tank if an internal combustion engine is used. CA glue is added once alignment is completed.

I use the wings of crashed models and this requires cutting into each one about three stations down from the center line. A section is added for the two booms that will hold the tail. If you are familiar with what a P-38 WW2 fighter plane looked like the general image will be familiar. Except for a couple of things. The P-38 was twin engined with each mounted forward of the two wing booms. In my model the motor will be an electric pusher mounted to the rear of the fuselage. The tail will attach at a forty-five degree angle and this means the peak of the "V" will have to be forty-five degrees and the bottom as well with the length such that it rests centered on the aft mounting platforms. The big problem with all this is that if the booms are too long, and the tail too heavy it will create some severe Center of Gravity (CG) problems. Tail heavy model airplanes don't fly well.

The V-tail assembly is attached to the aft end of the booms along with the two Control Surfaces (CS.) The CSs are actuated by regular servos and attachment hardware. This is the part I'm working on now and the first two attempts were not satisfactory. The first was too heavy and the second used the same circle technique used in the fuselage. Round did not work well and my next attempt will try an oblong cross section for the booms. Regarding the V-tail my first effort was too big. For my next attempt I'll start with rectangles, round the corners, drill out the center for the servo wires and design strong attachment points integral to to wing and tail. By integral I mean an internal fit and not something grafted onto the surface.

The reason I'm writing all this down is to make sure I have the image firmly in mind. My bio-processer is getting old and doesn't work as good as it used too.

Scratch building an RC model airplane is like writing a novel. Everything has to fit neatly and trying to slap something together as you go along is not a good idea.