Our company struggled to open a fixed-wing division. We used Star Wars as a way to learn how to build and fly.

ActionDroneDude · Jul 12, 2019

We used "play" and "fun" as a strategy. And it paid off! So many of our education system and our way of growing discredit playing and having fun as a way of learning. I say it's the best way to learn! Watch how we overcame our problem of opening our Fixed-Wing drone division. We normally don't like to post our fails but we now understand that its part of growth. We hope you enjoy our story.

clolsonus · Jul 12, 2019

That is a really great video! I love your process! I'm also realizing the importance of sharing failures and the learning process with others. We banged in our 14' twin-EDF flying wing project yesterday on a very hard landing on the 2nd flight. Many repairs are in our near future. But we successfully flew two other projects and got really good flight data even on the flight with a bad ending. Always learning!

R.P..R · Jul 12, 2019

Budddy!!! Love the race action, reminded me of the pylon racing back in the days. Keep up having fun, brother!

ActionDroneDude · Jul 13, 2019

clolsonus said:
That is a really great video! I love your process! I'm also realizing the importance of sharing failures and the learning process with others. We banged in our 14' twin-EDF flying wing project yesterday on a very hard landing on the 2nd flight. Many repairs are in our near future. But we successfully flew two other projects and got really good flight data even on the flight with a bad ending. Always learning!

I would love to see some footage or video on your projects. I hope people share more of the failures and successes of their projects. It actually really helps me and I think it helps others not feel so sad when nothing goes right.

ActionDroneDude · Jul 13, 2019

R.P..R said:
Budddy!!! Love the race action, reminded me of the pylon racing back in the days. Keep up having fun, brother!

We are now racing using trees and hills and valleys instead but we are now also using bigger wings instead of just the delta wings.

clolsonus · Jul 13, 2019

ActionDroneDude said:
I would love to see some footage or video on your projects. I hope people share more of the failures and successes of their projects. It actually really helps me and I think it helps others not feel so sad when nothing goes right.

Here is a video of our flight #02 where things went mostly pretty well except for a hard landing. We are struggling with inability to flare ... not sure if it's a ground effect thing or a flight controller thing, or a pilot thing ...

Here is what we are calling flight #01 ... technically a flight because it got airborne, but not for very long:

For some other reasons, we had the pitch gains turned up way too high. Also it was massively out of trim. Between those two things, the pilot (me) got into a severe PIO situation and we ran out of airspeed before I got the PIO damped and before I found the plane's happy trim spot. Thankfully the damage wasn't fairly minimal and quickly fixed. Both of the setup/trim things were addressed in flight #02 and we had a sweet take off and a pretty nice flight.

ActionDroneDude · Jul 15, 2019

clolsonus said:
Here is a video of our flight #02 where things went mostly pretty well except for a hard landing. We are struggling with inability to flare ... not sure if it's a ground effect thing or a flight controller thing, or a pilot thing ...

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Here is what we are calling flight #01 ... technically a flight because it got airborne, but not for very long:

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For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

For some other reasons, we had the pitch gains turned up way too high. Also it was massively out of trim. Between those two things, the pilot (me) got into a severe PIO situation and we ran out of airspeed before I got the PIO damped and before I found the plane's happy trim spot. Thankfully the damage wasn't fairly minimal and quickly fixed. Both of the setup/trim things were addressed in flight #02 and we had a sweet take off and a pretty nice flight.

Ohh I remember seeing this project. I think it's super cool you got this big bird to fly using a ducted fan. Looks super smooth. Yeah these tiny well not so tiny for us but smaller in comparison to bigger airplanes, they are not able to flare on very slow speed. Similar to cessna 172's they really can't flare they just "transition". Honestly, your landing was really good.