My first plane was ruined due to water damage from dew on the grass upon landing. Therefore I decided that my next plane would be a motorglider (as the name suggests, it’s a glider but with a motor). My first design was a failure as I was still an amature at designing planes, so my control surface were not sized correctly for such a plane. Upon takeoff, it flipped uncontrollably and crashed. The ESC also decided to catch fire, which was fun! (Sarcasm)
I finally decided to push my ego aside and do what I should have done from the beginning: follow a tutorial! I found the Photon motorglider design made by Experimental Airlines on Youtube so I decided to build that with a tweaks in the dimensions as my foamboard sizing was different than the one he used.
The cool thing about the Experimental Airlines plane designs are that they’re covered with packing tape which strengthen the foamboard, make the plane waterproof and also make it look cool if you use coloured tape 🙂
After approximately three days of designing and construction, the plane was completed and ready to fly!
The first flight of this plane was with the wing of the old plane. While it had slight water damage, it was still usable and had a dihedral (angle) which made it stable, which is why I decided to fly using it. The construction of the plane and the first flight can be found in the Youtube video I uploaded at the time shown below.
However I don’t consider this the first full flight as it was missing the wing specifically made to be flown with the plane! A few weeks after the events of the video you see above, I went out with a few of my friends to an empty space to test out science projects we were making for a school competition, so I decided to bring my motorglider along. The flight was a success! While takeoff was sketchy and almost resulted in disaster, I quickly got the hang of flying the plane with a wing lacking dihedral and the result was the post you see below.
This flight marked the end of my RC plane hobby for the time as my O levels were ending and I had some pretty important exams to give. The next time I would fly a plane would be a few months later in 2024 which involved cameras, landing gears, propeller failures and more… which I will talk about in my next post 😀
For now, that’s all there is regarding the Photon Motorglider. Thanks for reading!
(Here are some extra clips which weren’t posted on my Instagram)
