Community Spotlight: STUKA dive bomber!

November 9, 2018|FliteTest

This week on the community showcase, we're featuring a beautiful mini sized replica of the JU87 dive bomber.

Every so often, one of our awesome community members blows us away with a custom design that ticks all the right boxes - simplicity, style, and ingenuity. This Mighty Mini JU-87 Stuka, modeled after the infamous real-life German warbird, was created by Sankaran Ramanarayanan. The concept looks just incredible!

It's a foam board design that fits well into our Mighty Mini range of aircraft. Sankaran has previously designed a mini P-40 Warhawk (with free plans) so is well-versed in the smaller sized airplane genre.

The design is very well detailed and easily captures the spirit of the Stuka.

How the airplane builds

Although this aircraft hasn't officially been released yet, the early prototypes show how the build should be a straightforward one whilst providing plentiful results. It really shows how far you can push these Flite Test building techniques to end up with something that looks realistic yet takes only hours, rather than days, to complete.

You can see that Sankaran really thought about structure when creating the fuselage.

Without a turtle deck covering, the plane already looks very Stuka-ish.

The plane also includes the scale-looking fixed landing gear and gull wing that gives the JU-87 that unique silhouette in the sky.

Mods

To go the extra mile, this Stuka can be fitted with all sorts of little extras to make it even more like the real thing in miniature. These MG's were made from paper and wire.

These huge cannons were made from barbeque skewers and foam. They really look the part! Who's up for some tank bustin'?

We're super excited to see this being flown by our community. Maybe it will be a feared foe of the FT Mighty Mini Mustang? Who knows.

If you have a design your working on that you'd like to see featured in a Friday 'Community Showcase' article, email me at [email protected]. We love checking out community designs and sharing them with everyone. Let's keep elevating the world of flight one airplane at a time.