Snowdragon - coroplast/FFF KF hybrid.

[mclarkson]

A friend of mine ran for Senate this year (and almost won!) I collected a few yard signs at the end of his campaign with the idea of building something out of them.

I thought about a Nutball or a Funbat, but I've already got those. Looking through some corroplast (SPAD) forums, I found the Draco which I liked the looks of.

My corroplast sheets are only 18"x24" and the flutes go the short way, so I've scaled the original plans down to about 70%, to work with my maximum wingspan of 36".

I cut two wings and joined them with a wingspar from an old Stryker.

I'm gonna try a KF4 Kline Fogleman airfoil on mine. The corroplast is heavy as so I'm using it for the main wing, but making the steps out of (much lighter) blue FFF.

The fuselage stick is a $5 Walmart CF arrow.

No idea what I'm gonna use for a power plant.

[baz49exe]

Looks like great fun. You've found something different alright!!

[mclarkson]

Will it even fly? Who knows?

[mclarkson]

I've been stumped on how to fasten a round CF arrow shaft to a flat coro plate but I think I've had an idea that might work. I've epoxied half of an old motor mount stick to the rear of the wing. The arrow fits through the hole in the center.

I've epoxied another motor mount stick to the front of the wing. The arrow slides inside this one, too.

I figure when I'm ready, I'll fill the cavities inside the two stick mounts and run my arrow shaft through there.

This way, I'm gluing a flat surface to a flat surface, and a round shaft inside of a round hole.

[mclarkson]

More photos.

[mclarkson]

Off to maiden. Wish me luck.

[mclarkson]

Yay! It flies!

[mclarkson]

YouTube Video

Not much of a first flight as it was mostly held together with packing tape, but it does fly.

[mclarkson]

I started with the Center of Gravity (CG) from the original 'Draco,' which the SnowDragon is based on, but that seemed to be waaaay nose heavy. So I went out today with a much smaller 800mAh battery. This is down from a 2200mAh battery, and pushes the CG back about a full inch, and lightens the plane by nearly 100 grams, to boot.

I gave it another try and it flies pretty well, better than with the heavier battery and forward CG. In fact, I think the CG might could stand to be pushed back even farther.

Current setup:

Emax CF2822 outrunner
30A HobbyKing BlueSeries ESC
EP 9050 propeller
R610 OrangeRX receiver
(2x) Power Up 9g Sub-Micro Servo
800-860 mAh 3S LiPo battery
AUW: 420 grams

YouTube Video