Building a DIY REAPER Drone... Ended Badly

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[RusstickDoom]

You did a stellar job building that reaper. Beef up your landing gear and get the one 6 cell in just the right spot and you’ll have an amazing plane. It looked like it had very well performing flying characteristics for a maiden. If you decide to start over, go bigger! Bigger planes are easier to fly.

[jimhenriksen]

Oh Michael, the fact that your design flew so well in most of your video was inspiring! The reason why we (used to) build out of balsa wood is because of it's "strength to weight" ratio, nothing beats it in the flying arena. However, and bottom line here Michael (because everyone gave you such wonderful advice within their comments) is that #1-check your C/G (center of gravity). To start with your maiden, go with 25% of the forward wing in front of your C/G; this will cause your bird to be a bit "nose heavy" but better nose heavy that tail heavy Michael! #2 Once you have the C/G where you want it, be absolutely sure that your plane balance laterally (I noticed that you had a camera on the starboard wing) the weight and drag of that camera will cause the aircraft to yaw to the "right, " be sure that you suspend the craft from the nose and the tail down the centerline to check balance. I would bet that if you built the craft balanced, right to left, that you had to trim in a lot of left aileron/rudder to get it to fly level. I could be wrong; you very well may not have built it equally balanced on both right and left sides! Me personally; I would leave the camera off, too much weight and drag for the benefit! #3 A heavy plane made from epoxy, hot glue, lite-ply & paint will need a bit of a roll-out before you rotate into the air; but have faith Michael, (given, the forgoing guidelines are followed) rotate it will!
Now here's the kicker Michael; the heavier you build it, the less "acrobatics" it's going to want to do, lighter is a good thing. However, you can go too light, so use your head and think your way through this and you'll be fine. Oh also; batteries are (usually) Lipos, but not all batteries of the same "described/advertised" value are the same size and weight, you've probably discovered that by now. Do some research and find batteries that are of the "voltage/4S-6S" value that your and use as light as you can get! Also, that plane is what, about 2 meters wingspan? A Raptor is basically a glider design; if you're motor is designed to run on 14.8v then use 4S batteries, if it is designed to run on 22.2v then use 6S batteries. Also, please be sure that your ESC can handle whatever battery you decide to use; otherwise you will burn it out and your plane will crater in like you've never seen before! Finally, and this is a bit of a reach if you don't have one already; get yourself a "watt-meter" Michael, charge your battery up to maximum and place the watt-meter between your ESC and your battery and see what Watts/Amps you're drawing at full power. Oh, I almost forgot... since you're powering a prop motor, the "C value" on your batteries don't have to be more than 45-50C, any more than that and you'll have enough go juice to power up an EDF, which you're not using!
Great project Michael! With your attitude, spirit for adventure and obvious intelligence; you'll go far! Remember, a good pilot learns from his mistakes; he then utilizes this knowledge to become a better pilot!

[iforced]

I'm actually calling tail heavy on this one. As it left your hand the attitude changed quite quickly, rather than the stable dart like behavior that nose heavy would cause. All your control inputs were correct, the fact that it couldn't pitch up in time was just due to low airspeed (pusher prop giving no flow over the elevator). To check the CG of a scratch build, balance the plane on two fingers so that it's level, then shove it quickly directly upward, it should nose up just a little. You can also let it drop downward if that's easier - in either case you want the nose to lead slightly, and the tail to follow. Regarding the damage, it seems like the only connection between adjacent segments of the fuselage was the flimsy plywood frame? At least run some packing tape length-wise all the way down, would help a lot. Adding a vertical fin under the tail would save the prop, although perhaps spoil the look you're going for. Anyway it does look great!

[motionsic]

Very informative video showing a very clean and impressive build. However, two things stood out to me (as a RC flyer with two decades of flying experience).
1. The linkage setup on V-tail is the worst possible combination. With link on outermost hole on servo horn and almost inner most hole on control horn, this gives the servo the worst mechanical advantage. Making the servo prone to failure and ruddervators prone to flutter.

2. Hand launching a pusher prop plane with prop at lowest point and a heavy setup is a very bad combo that can result in severe hand injury. A crashed plane is the least of your worries.

Otherwise, keep up the great work!

[MaximKachurovskiy]

Amazing content, my friend, please don't be dismayed by this setback, it just forces your hand to built something better sooner.

[DanDaMan]

You did a FANTASTIC job with this build! I bet if you had an asphalt runway you would still be flying. This was a great video, keep up the great work!

[magnussorensen]

Instead of trowing the plane make a drone launcher like zipline.

[inter-linked]

This definitiely needs a follow-up!
Especially the GPS automated flight patterns.

Enjoyed it.

[eorfner]

Hi Michael, my 82yr old machinist dad and I have been building and flying (and crashing. Lots of crashing.) foamboard planes for about 3 years now. Our passion project is the Bugatti 100P and we're on the third iteration with counter rotating props. So far our fuselage designs have, well, sucked, and I really appreciate your frame and foamboard skin approach. The Reaper turned out amazing and it hurt my heart to see it crash. What would it take to entice you to do a video of your design process, particularly how you land on the correct size/shape foamboard skin components? Any other advice or direction you could provide would be vastly appreciated!

[michaelparker]

Not sure if anyone brought this up, but you seem to be lacking a flight control surface dedicated solely to yaw control. It would seem you have roll and pitch covered, but the V shaped elevators will only produce so much yaw, and not at a perpendicular angle to the Z axis in flight. I would recommend adding a rudder directly under the fuselage below the elevators at the rear. This should give you full yaw authority in any crosswind flying conditions.

[JayReding]

That's an awesome project! The last flight was definitely too heavy. Adding a higher cell count probably isn't necessary for something like that. Depending on what your amp draw is you might want to consider using something like a 3S 18650 pack, you can get a huge amount of flight time so long as you're not really pushing the amp draw to more than the cells can handle. You might also want to consider doing more with the LW-PLA. I bet you could save some overall weight by using LW-PLA panels instead of foam board.

This might be a good design for a launch rail or even a high start bungee launch. Hand launching is always hit or miss, and I really hate having to hand launch something with a pusher prop.

Hope you build a second version - that first one turned out fantastic other than being a bit too heavy with a big pack.

[TurningoffyourGaslights]

Nice project!
And it seems no one uses wood anymore in the hobby.
As you pointed out, balsa is the go-to wood for many projects, but cedar wood is a good too, stronger, heavier than balsa but relatively light at 0.32gm/cc.
And easy to get hold of too.
Good use of modern materials too.

[SonicKiwi]

It's nice to see videos like this still posted even when the end result isn't a success. There was still a lot of work that went into this, a lot of successes along the way and a large potential for success in the future. It would be a waste just to throw it away, as I'm sure other creators have

[robinconnelly]

This is so cool. I was a big model aircraft fan in my school days. That was the 80's. The closest I got to this was a programmable glider that used a shift-register to turn the tail left or right. I was too heavy to fly, though.

If I was kid today, I think I would have so much fun. The new tech has endless possibilities.

[ghostrunner]

I just realized how crazy it is there aren't really any reaper drones from rc companies after seeing yours I would buy one instantly.

[TheFarmacySeedsNetwork]

Looking forward to the re-worked version! Very cool machine!

[gamerguy]

Please add a FPV camera that can output the Loitering view as if you were using it for ISR. You can use a small FPV monitor and would beable to get some cool shots.

[starsoldier]

Drones dont need wheels to land. Use a catapult system for launch and use a folding prop. Think military, they even use nets to catch drones.

[ghostrunner]

might be cool to have the esc under that top vent in the back it gets some airflow and can pull back the center of gravity plus that vent would actually be functional which would be cool. awesome build.

[davidanalyst]

Your landing gear def needs help. Go look at the planes that land at that range, and see what they do. My guess Is to tune up the suspension (use flexible metal straps) for the suspension, which will absorb a landing instead of bouncing around. I love projects like this. This project is so much easier to control and program than a drone because it is more stable in the air given a velocity, and this has more energy capacity as it isnt' using all its energy to push down 100% of the time. You need to put on lights, a couple fireworks, a trailing advertisement, or do some cropdusting. Some farmers have switched to drones for crop dusting which is amazing.