So Why a Blog?

So why a blog?  Well, why not.  I love the design-build process and I love flying wings.  This installment will be mainly about how I got into this hobby and why i decided to design and build my own wings.  I decided to write a blog after someone ,Nathan Knight,  asked me if I had one documenting my process.  I didn't, now I do.  Nathan is a very talented scratch builder and you should check him out( Instagram).  This blog is as much for me as it is for whoever reads it.  I need to get this crap out of my head so I can concentrate on the tasks at hand.

A couple of things up front:  This has not been a solitary journey, I have has a lot of help and advice from a lot of people that are considerably smarter than I.  I would like to claim credit for most of what I have done but the truth is that I have stood on the shoulders of giants.  Secondly, I will be pouring my thoughts out here and they are not all pleasant.  I will do my best to keep it PG, but no promises.  I once heard a of a study that claimed that people who swore are more trustworthy. If that is true I am one trustworthy SOB!

 This first post will be long and I apologize for it now but I think it is important for you all to know where I am coming from.  I promos future posts will be more concise and to the point.  I also apologize for my spelling.  It is one thing that I have never mastered in my nearly 50 years of existence.  Google will do its best to help me but you will get the idea so get over it, I have.

I started in the RC hobby about 2 years ago.  My youngest daughter decided she wanted a Parrot Spider Drone for Christmas.  It was one of the small indoor ones from Brookstones.

After I got a chance to play with that thing I was hooked.  I just had to have one myself. But, I am an engineer and I have to know how things work.  I am also a builder, I love to build all kinds of stuff, electronics, furniture, even our house.  So the logical choice for me was to research how these contraptions work and build my own.

The internet is a wondrous place!  Everything I needed to know was on the internet in one form or another, it was just a mater of finding it.  I read several articles on how to build a cheap quad from very cheap parts from amazon and eBay.  This was the most fun I have had (with my clothes on).  I wanted to know more!  My thirst for knowledge was almost insatiable so I researched more.  I wanted to know how all of this witchcraft worked so I studied control loop theory, applied aerodynamics and circuitry.  I have a background in computer programming as well so the software/firmware aspect interred me as well.

I decided to build something real, not a toy, something that could be useful.  I started acquiring parts from everyone's favorite Chinese RC retailer, HobbyKing.  I wanted something with a programmable flight controller that had GPS and way-point capabilities.  I wanted something big enough to hold a camera and a gimbal.  I wanted decent flight time and a manageable cost.  But most of all I wanted something that I could build!  I settled on a 600mm class quad with an APM Pixhawk (fauxHawk) flight controller.  This is what i have after several re-builds and new configurations.

I love this quad and it has served me well.  But how did you get from this to wings?  I'm glad you asked.  While this was fun I felt like I had a sizable investment teetering 200' in the air with just my fat thumbs at the controls ( i was a thumb flyer back then, I have since transitioned to pinch).  I have always learned for from failure than success and with this bird failure was going to be expensive.  I AM CHEAP!  Lets just get that out up front.  I stumbled onto FPV (First Person View) racing during my research on YouTube and though it look very cool.  I decided to build an FPV race quad and learn to fly under the goggles.  Small, fast, nearly indestructible quads that you could virtually fly from the cockpit, what could go wrong?

This was hilarious!  everything that could go wrong did and even a few things that i couldn't possibly screw-up.  First of all the goggles made me sick so I had to start by flying with a monitor.   This is like watching porn on a 1973 12" black and white Zenith.  Indestructible my ass! I broke just about everything I could several times.  But the thrill was addictive.  The adrenaline rush was like nothing else I had experienced (again, with my cloths on).  After a while I got the hang of flying with the goggles and started to race with the Boston Multirotor Club (BMRC) and the  Wingbusters Rotor Racers (WBRR).  That was it, I was addicted to FPV and there was nothing I could do about it.

While I really loved quad racing I still wanted to try new things and I had this nagging need to design.  Race quads for the most part have to be built by the pilot, that is half the fun.  However the build process goes something like this: buy a frame and motors and ESCs and flight controller and some other parts and solder them all together.  Fly, crash, repeat.  There wasn't enough design in it for me.  I was buying someone else's parts and assembling them.  I wanted more.  I started designing 3d-printed micro quads over the winter because in New England we get lots of snow and quads don't like snow...at all!  This was fun but very frustrating.

 I decided to try some of the FliteTest foam board plane designs.  This was great!  I was amazed at what you could build with a piece of Dollar Tree foam.  I built planes like crazy and used them to learn to fly fixed wing.  They were great and when I crashed them , which I did all too often, I could get them back in the air for a couple of dollars (remember i'm cheap). I even started designing my own planes.

At one of the later drone races in the fall of 2016 a friend and fellow quad racer, Josh Noone (SlowJet) brought one of his wings to a race.  Holy crap this thing was awesome.  I think it was a TBRC Reflex 38.  It was loud, fast and flown FPV.  I had to have a WING!  Josh, it turned out, was kind of a big deal in the FPV wing community and he lived pretty close to me.  On his advice I bought an FPVWRA Spec Wing from Video Aerial Systems (VAS).  This is a very simple EPP foam wing that was designed by Alex Greve (aka. IBCrazy) to compete in spec class races.  I built it, flew it, and was so completely hooked that I didn't fly my quad for nearly 6 months.This is where I will stop.  In the next post I will try to enplane why I love FPV wings so much and why I decided to design/build my own.  A little hint, I'm cheap...