Backwards Airplane
In this challenge, Peter tries to make his Lunar Eclipse plane fly backwards using most of the existing control surfaces!
Because the rudder needed to be adjusted so the plane could straighten out when flying backwards, Peter began by removing the old rudder and constructing a new one.
Then he added a vertical stabilizer to the wing tips and an acrylic vertical stabilizer to the nose. To make it lighter, Peter cut out some of the acrylic and used tape to fill it out.
Then he ripped out the old nose and glued a new power pod to the front of the plane.
The first test flight was pretty unstable...the plane only stayed airborne for a few seconds.
Peter cut some more off of the old rudder and added some more weight by taping a wrench to the fuselage.
Attempt number two was also unsuccessful. Peter completely removed the old rudder and added a new rudder to the acrylic vertical stabilizer. He also drilled a hole into the rudder and used some lines to tie it to the servos and added more weight.
After two more attempts, we realized that the backwards tail did not work, so Peter flipped the wing around and added three AA batteries on top of the wrench to balance the weight.
This flight looked good…until Peter flew into a pole. :)
Basically we learned that it’s possible to make things fly that aren’t supposed to fly. Unless you run into poles.
Have fun with old airframes by trying to get them to fly backwards, and let us know what challenges you want to see next in the comments!
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