FlyingWings Venturi FPV Evo

[Sheldon Holy]

Bit more done.

Got the wings laminated which went well. This is my first time laminating a wing and it was super easy - if you've ever covered a model with solarfilm etc... then laminate is a piece of piss.

I also made new elevons as I had some suitable TE stock. It was about double the required thickness though so half an hour with a plane and a power sander was required :) Now I need to do some hoovering... The end result is a lot stiffer than the originals and it fits the aerofoil much better. The blue was painted and the white was done with white Solartex as that's all I had. I then laminated them and they're tough as anything. I hinged them with laminate and installed the control horns. The quality of the fittings with this kit is superb - nice hefty pushrods, clevises and the control horns are those excellent Radioactive adjustable screw types.

I've also installed the FPV camera on a little mount, so it's easily removable.

I must say that this kit is excellent overall and is great value for money. The only issue I had is with the laser cutting which wasn't amazing, but not a problem if you have a knife and a pair of hands, even easier if you have a bandsaw. Aside from that (an extra 10 mins), the build has been really smooth with no problems whatsoever.

[Brucey]

Looks tidy. What's the black square underneath?

[Sheldon Holy]

Those are my regulators, there's some more piccies of it earlier on.

[Brucey]

Oh yeah, my bad! Do they get that hot then, or is it a case of over the top cooling is better than not enough cooling?

[skyscraper]

Looking Good Sheldon.

Is The Colour scheme designed so it blends in nicely with the sky and clouds?

Also   Those linear regulators and heatsinks seem like a lot of unnecessary hassle and also waste a lot of precious sky juice... why not use switching regulators?

regards
Andy

[Sheldon Holy]

I realised halfway through painting that "this looks awfully similar to the sky" hahahha. The contrast is good though, the blue areas just show up as black whilst flying. My old Storm wing had the same scheme and that was easy to see.

The linear regs are a temporary solution (botch). I've done a board with a couple of high frequency switchers on it, but not ordered the boards yet. It uses some TI high frequency switchers, I forget the part number. All that said, the inneficiency of the regs isn't really a worry compared to the current draw of the motor, which is huge by comparison. I'll see how much things actually draw and go from there.

[skyscraper]

Cool. How long till the maiden?

regards
Andy

[Sheldon Holy]

It'll be next week sometime, Tuesday at the earliest, provided the weather plays ball.

[Sheldon Holy]

Got the wings glued on now, done the control rods, installed the Rx, mounted the motor and ESC and started to install the electronics. Also reinforced the hatch a little as the rear end and the cutout for the middle former made it quite weak and flexible.

Wiring looks like a bit of a mess but it's all very carefully thought out. No chance of a ground loop in this thing :)

I'm also going to be playing with adding right thrust on the motor to help counteract the prop torque. I believe this is a reason for yaw wobble.

[Billy_boy_2010]

Looks like a very clean build to me.

I would be interested to know the total build time when you're done too.

[Brucey]

Looks neat. Interested to see about the motor mount for the yaw wobble. I'm not sure it will make much difference,  they rock on the yaw axis because they don't have a tail. Adding a touch of nose weight helps reduce it a bit, but as soon as the air is turbulent it with wobble.

[Sheldon Holy]

All finished bar installation of the VTx. Still waiting on my PCBs and some other bits so it'll be a couple of weeks before I'm actually doing FPV with it.

The prop on there is just for illustration, the actual prop will be a 10x7 APC to begin with.

Batteries are two 35C 3300mAh 4s Nano techs in parallel. As you can see, a 4500 nano tech fits in fine, so that's something for the future...

Now I just need to wait until the wind dies down a bit and I can fly it. Hopefully tomorrow but it looks even worse than today, with 43mph gusts in the morning :) If the forecast is right then Thursday might be the earliest I can fly.

Looks neat. Interested to see about the motor mount for the yaw wobble. I'm not sure it will make much difference,  they rock on the yaw axis because they don't have a tail. Adding a touch of nose weight helps reduce it a bit, but as soon as the air is turbulent it with wobble.

Yeah, it might help a little bit but I don't hold much hope. From the looks of things these wings don't wobble massively anyway.

Looks like a very clean build to me.

I would be interested to know the total build time when you're done too.

Thanks. Well, it arrived last Wednesday, so I had wed evening, thurs evening, all day friday, all day saturday, all day sunday and all day today to work on it. Not been spending time solidly on it but had the whole day free kinda thing. You could comfortably get this done in a week of evenings.

[iPeel]

That's a great build, and an interesting motor / prop combination. You could end up with a very efficient setup.

[dp106]

What are people doing with the motor mount, drilling extra holes? Only providing two holes to mount the motor seems a bit risky.

I don't have a template to work out where they should be though so I'm doubtful I'd manage to get them in the right place

[iPeel]

What are people doing with the motor mount, drilling extra holes? Only providing two holes to mount the motor seems a bit risky.

I don't have a template to work out where they should be though so I'm doubtful I'd manage to get them in the right place

I just used the 2 stock holes and used threadlock. I've had more flights than I care to count on my Venturi and the motor's on as tightly as the day I mounted it.