FT foamies flying and build experience

Hi folks!

Im writting this just fun article to share with you how much fun I had building and flying the FT swappable series.

 First I show you a brief flying footage I made of the FT 3D and the Baby Blender:

Ok, so this is how my first scratch build looks like and thanks to the very detailed flte test build videos it can look like that. Unfortunately, I don't have any building pictures. I started building this friday 6PM and finished 3AM. I was so concentrated and exited about building this (took me a few weeks to get all the material toguether) did almost didn't stop to eat or do anything. I had a mission: fly the whole weekend with my new plane. By the way, still talking about the material, I live in Brazil and I had a hard time finding the dollar tree foam and when I finally found it, it was a bit too expensive. So I tried the internet and found better prices on a store called spumapaper. The other brasilian friends out there can try this on line store.

That is my poker face after the first acident and lesson learned: bigger wheels! Fortunately, this accident happened after a lot of fun flying, specially by trying some rolls. I dunno why but it feels really cool doing rolls with this plane. A friend of mine says "its fun like the Wacky Races plane".

The FT 3D after the paint job. Even though it looks simpler, I should say that I found this construction much harder than the Baby Blender. The narrower rear part of the fuselage with the many folds and tail junction holes made it specially hard to cut. But nothing that a bit hot glue wouldn't fix later in the construction. Talking about glue, the tense part about this build was joining the two wings. I trained a couple times and I couldn't help shaking and spreading glue all over and burning my hands! LOL You have only one chance, and you should do it right and the glue is drying, and something is not fiting perfect anymore because there's glue! Oh my God! What do I do!?!?! Its simple: forget about the fact the the HOT glue is HOT, put you hands there and fix it! Quick! The result was good though:

Just finished.

Bottom side.

And well, you could be asking yourself why the hell did he put so much color on it to look that funny? The picture above shows why. I wanted it to have the Embraer Tucano colors. It is a brasilian fighter plane. This one specifically is from the Air Force Smoke Squadron, which I spent my childhood watching it fly above the city painting cool shapes with smoke. Also their manovers are extreme hardcore! Here's a nice video from them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGhqCceuPGE . Those planes were retired one week after I painted that. Happy coincidence so now it can stay as a tribute. 

What called my attention on the FT 3D was the unexpectedly cool gliding characteristics. I try to show you that on this dark video (sorry for that). Its almost a vertical approach with a little bit of wind. Note that the motor is off from 0:21 on.

And then built the FT Flyer to try to get my friends from the "resistance" to learn to fly. What I found really cool about this FT Flyer is how quick and easy it was to build. I definetly recommend as a first plane.

Something I also enjoyed about flying those planes was being able to whatch weird cloud formations like this one:

or crazy sunsets as that one:

This is the same day as I flew the Baby Blender on the first video. Went down to the lake to try some landings with my german Seabee by robbe.

See you around!

All pictures and videos were shot in Brasília-BR with an iPhone.