This will be my first project post on this blog starting with something I made a year ago. A RC aircraft made out of depron.

Depron is a foam material intended for insulation and sound dampening of floors. I bought a 10-pack of 6 mm and a 10-pack of 3 mm at Hornbach, a local hardware store, which will be enough for several planes. At this store the foam was actually called Ebisol instead of Depron, but I guess those are just two different brands of the same stuff.

There are thousands of freely available plans for such a model only a google search away but I had to design my own. Some time behind a CAD program I ended up with this.

CAD drawing of depron aircraft

If I were to build this model again i would definitively make some changes to the plans. Some parts of the model were very hard to assemble due to their complex shapes.

A couple of evenings of assembly and some inspections from the chief engineer

The chief engineer inspecting the wing construction

The model were done.

The aircraft is done, waiting for electronics to be installed

Electronics installed

Aileron servos installed

Elevator servo installed

Almost all parts I used for this were bought from Hobby King

Radio – Hobby King 2.4Ghz 6Ch Tx & Rx V2 (Mode 2)
Motor – Turnigy 2217 20turn 860kv 22A Outrunner
ESC – Hobbyking SS Series 25-30A ESC
Servos – HXT900 9g / 1.6kg / .12sec Micro Servo
Battery – Turnigy 2200mAh 3S 20C Lipo Pack
Horns & hinges – Plastic Parts Set 29pc (horn hinge)

Apart from this i bought some carbon rods and some piano wire from a local RC store.

The only thing left to do were the test flight

That was the end of that aircraft. I’ve heard people say that the center of gravity was off making the plane unstable. I believe Murphy was trying to teach me a lesson that I should try to walk before I run. Maybe I should have used one of the existing plans known to work with a well defined spot for center of gravity.

As I said this was a year ago. Two weeks ago I visited Aeroseum which is an aircraft museum here in Gothenburg. By now my emotional wounds, from seeing hours of work crashing to the ground, have healed and i feel ready to make a new try.

More about that in a future post…