F-22 Raptor swappable

by Bob Post | June 16, 2013 | (4) Posted in Projects

I have been following the swappable series for several months now and have built a nutball, delta, old fogey, baby blender II, FT 3D alread built.  I have always wanted to fly a "bank and yank" and the delta sealed the deal for me.  I read the plans on FT for the F-22 Raptor but I wanted it to be a swappable. I have succeeded and here are pics of the plane after adding the KF step airfoil.

The first edition flew very well without the airfoil, however, it required a lot of elevator to maintain level flight.  I figured the air foil would help this.  Note: the Raptor with the swappable pod mounted is very nose heavy, I positioned the battery as far back on the power pod as possible and it made the rig managable.

Before you ask, the foam board was Dollar Tree and I bought it in black.  The cut out was half of the airplane on one sheet of foam board, then joined on the center line.  The spar is 3/16th hardwood dowel.  Two 9 gram servos sealed the deal operating the twin elevons.  It flies really good and I am not a good flyer.  Comments and advice are appreciated. 

Good luck building swappables, they really make flying and building fun.

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COMMENTS

johanjonker on June 17, 2013
I tend to make all my planes swappables aswell. But that said, I have about 4 powerpods with 4 setups. Pusher, 24g motor, bigger motor and higer kv motor for speed.. And thay fit in 80% of my planes.

You should make you next one with a pusher setup, but it looks like a fun plane to fly
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Bob Post on June 17, 2013
Thanks for the kind words, I really like the swappable feature, I have 4 set ups as well but haven't done a pusher. Maybe that's next.

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colflame on June 21, 2013
Actually I feel that making this a pusher might make getting the CG right a bit more difficult because the frame might be tail heavy as it is, and having your power pod back might increase the tail heaviness. Just my two cents, for what its worth :P
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Bob Post on June 22, 2013
Thank you colflame, the CG was a bit nose heavy on the initial test flight and when I got the plane back down I looked at the trim I had to use to fly level and it took up almost half of my elevon deflection. For that reason I added the KF step and it worked very well, however, it also overloaded the tail section of the airplane and the wing bent at the lateral line where the spar is. This required some reinforcement of the wing which I did with a dual spar running front to aft along the center line between the servos. That worked fine and the CG is much better, I can fly the plane now with very little up elevator trim. Thanks for your interest.

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Bellows on October 12, 2014
Hi, Nice job on a swappable. I built the FT F-22 as well. Mine was very nose heavy also. I smashed in the ground and repaired the nose so many times that I just cut the nose off at the wing. I then took the canopy and aattched it as the nose. My battery goes back almost all the way to the motor BUT it flies now! Whoo Hoo.
I think mounting a power pod backwards and making a pusher might be viable. I may try it myself. My shortened jet is now a FT F-21.5 :)
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F-22 Raptor swappable