RC Plane

Half the fun of an RC plane project is that you have to care about the airframe almost as much as the electronics. Weight, balance, control linkages — all the things you can ignore on a bench robot suddenly matter. Mine has a brushless motor, ESC, three servos for the control surfaces, a standard RC receiver and a LiPo battery. The build itself was a lot of patient cutting and gluing.

Radio receiver outputs control signals to ESC and servos. Mechanical control linkages move aircraft surfaces.

Balance, stiffness and reliable control linkages — get any of these wrong and the plane will tell you immediately.

Kept the build light, tested every linkage on the bench before flying, and worked through standard RC electronics so the failure modes were familiar.

A completed, hand-built RC plane prototype that I am happy to keep iterating on.

Telemetry, flight stabilization, GPS logging and a more durable airframe finish for repeat flights.