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During the summer after my freshman year of college, I started one of the most complex projects I'd ever worked on.
I assembled a multidisciplinary and passionate group of friends to design and construct a remote-controlled airplane inspired by the AIAA Design, Build Fly competition.
Although this iteration certainly has kinks to work out, and currently does not fly well at all, we are going to improve upon it significantly in the second iteration.
Planes have always fascinated me and I'm so proud to make the dream of building my own come true.
Mechanical Design
Mechanical Design
Airfoil: NACA 2414
Type: Fixed wing aircraft
Materials: birch wood (fuselage), carbon fiber rods (spars), epoxy, PLA (control surfaces)
Control: ailerons, elevators, rudder
Note: we could not get the control surfaces to work on this iteration of the plane unfortunately
Current CAD model
I chose the NACA 2412 for the airfoil because it is the classic choice, with smooth stalling and balance of lift and drag. It is also used on Cessna 172s, on which this plane is loosely based.
We used Onshape to CAD the full plane and also calculate and position the center of gravity - which we decided to place slightly behind the middle of the fixed wings.
Colada Flight Computer
Colada Flight Computer
KiCad schematic for the flight computer board
This project was my first brush with electrical engineering, as I was heavily involved with the development of our custom flight computer - called Colada.
I worked a lot on the connector section, since a lot of the sensor integration was borrowed from our rocketry flight computers.
Board components:
ESP32-C3 computer
Sensors: IMU, magnetometer, barometer
Antenna
USB connector
Lots of Molex crimp connectors
Our board was designed to interface with a Flysky iA6 receiver so that we could use our Flysky controller that we already had, and it would save us the time of design and building a custom receiver/transmitter.
Though, we did challenge ourselves by adding another antenna on our board that will communicate with another Colada on the ground by sending live data throughout a flight.
Applying the solder paste using the stencil sent to us
Back of the Colada board
Front of the Colada board
Cooking the PCB in the oven!
Complete PCB with all connectors!
As a mechanical engineer, I was thrilled to go through the process from design to assembly of a full custom PCB!
Currently we are still working on putting some code on it, but it will be ready when the second plane is flightworthy.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing
Full fuselage with tail assembled!
Wing assembly with 3D printed leading edge
Epoxying the left wing onto the fuselage
Full plane as it currently is
The wood was lasercut and assembled like a puzzle, and then epoxied. The control surfaces (ailerons and elevators) were 3D printed from PLA with as little infill as possible to decrease weight. The rudder was also lasercut however, and attached to the tail with medical hinge tape.
Added strut in the back to tip the nose up
Applying shrink wrap
Ready for takeoff!
Testing
Testing
Problems to Resolve with Plane #2
Problems to Resolve with Plane #2
Propeller wire placement
Battery storage (and remembering to charge them)
Fuselage has severe torsional issues --> needs improved structural integrity
Servo mounts were all in the incorrect places and no control surfaces worked
Ailerons and elevators were heavy --> use PLA Aero (?)
Tail assembly --> needs tail box
Tail did not end up being a proper airfoil
Shrink wrap was difficult to apply and we ended up needing to use a lot of duct tape
Electronics and wire management was non-existent
Choose a more efficient wing shape
As we begin design on Plane #2, I am thrilled that we dared to start this project all the way back in June!
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