Baldwin - DIY RC Airplanes from Scratch

Breck Baldwin has been building and flying model aircraft since he was a child. He founded the Brooklyn Aerodrome in 2005 to support flying art, education, and technology developments around remote-controlled aircraft. Breck authored a cover story for Make magazine, Volume 30, featuring the Flack. He designs custom art planes for festivals, corporate events, and fun. He has led Flack building sessions at summer camps, schools, and various institutions. Breck has a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania and is the president and founder of LingPipe.

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This book is dedicated to Robert Cooper, who inspired me with his beautiful airplanes as a child, and my 7th-grade science teacher, Bob Parsons, who taught me how to fly and finish what I started.

Welcome to the world of do-it-yourself (DIY) remote-control airplanes. In this book you will learn how to build your own motorized model aircraft from scratch using materials and tools that are widely available and relatively inexpensive. Youll also learn the skills you need to get your plane into the air and keep it there. By the end of the book, you should be able to create your own customized designs, limited only by your imagination and by the laws of aerodynamics.

This book starts off with very detailed instructions on how to get our Flack (flying + hack) delta wing provisioned, understood, built, flown, and repaired in six chapters that break down as follows:

presents a shopping list and possible sources of gear, including a Brooklyn Aerodrome kit.

describes the parts of the Flack and what the parts do.

details building the deck. The deck houses all the components that control and power the Flack in a tough, resilient form. When the foam airframe is too floppy to fly, then the deck is simply removed and attached to a new airframe.

covers building an airframe from foam sheeting.

gets you flying. I am surprised by and delighted with how well the flying chapter worksI was not sure that one could learn to fly from text and photos. Some aspects of flying are fundamentally hard, such as turning, but this chapter helps you to ease into the skill one crash at a time.

offers checklists, repair diagnostics, and crash kits that will keep you flying.

There will be supporting materials on the book website (http://brooklynaerodrome.com/bible) that fill out with video what the text and photos struggle with. If you get stuck, fire off an e-mail, but try to figure it out on your own for a while firstyou will learn more. Please build a Flack and send a picture to bible@brooklynaerodrome.com. It makes my day every time I get an e-mail with a successful build.

should come with the warning sign, Welcome to the Deep End. This is where discussions are more high level and you are expected to do your own research, fill in the blanks, and generally act like the DIY hero that you are. If this was a cookbook, then the recipes would be more like suggested dishes with some guidance on pitfalls and approaches.

comes direct from the art department: How to make planes look good during the day. Lots of things have been tried, and some work better than others. This is my assembled knowledge for day fliers.