Hi!
My name is Chris and welcome to my newest project: the Horten Wing inspired by flitetest.
First of all, I'm from Germany so hopefully you guys won't mind some mistakes in spelling or grammar. Also it's my first article on FT, so I'm pretty nervous! Well lets start.
The last couple of weeks the weather was really bad. Always windy and nerver ending rain, but I wanted to get out and fly my modified FT Versa Wing with the new camera on top to shoot some videos. So with that not possible, what else is there to sit down and start a new scratch build?! Listening to the After Hour Podcast, hearing Josh and David talk about building planes and having fun with the whole family, I started.
Because I love my FT Versa and having build several of them for me and a friend, it was clear that the new project would be a Wing too. What else is there to build, if you love Wings and you're from Germany? Right!
A Horten Wing!!!
I startet reading about the World War II prototype of the Horten 229 and suddenly I knew this was the plane to build. But it wasn't that easy as I thought it'd be. 4 different wingshapes in just one plane with the exact dihedral and so on made out of foam...Have to use 6 mm Depron because DTFB is incredible expensiv here. I was skeptical. Questions came up like: What about the engine? I just had a brushless motor from Hobbyking and the fitting ESC out of a destroyed Versa Wing and not 2 EDFs.
So my hardware gave me the basic condition. Not to big and build as a pusher plane like the Versa.
I dicided to go with a 120 cm aka. 47,3" wingspan but with a design a little diffrent from the FT Versa. The wings should be mounted on a kind of fuselage. A 3 Part wing was the idea.
First prototype. Just Depron and tape to see if it would work.
Side view of the wing. To symetrical so I later added a wing profil in the wohle plane to make it more aerodynamic
The fuselage wtih the basic motor mount I use on my Versas
Folding everything together and cutting the hole for the prop
The wings are made out of 2 exact same pieces but got a nice shape and nearly the original properties like the wingtips have a different angle than the rest of the wing and work as stabilizer. I glued the wingtips matching each other together while the rest of the wing the sheet of depron on top is shorter because of the profil. It's hard to explane and I forgot to take a picture at this step. I also stiffend the wings with a 4mm carbon rod and a bar of depron like the FT Versa has to fit upper and lower wing. I gave the wingtips some profile with sandpaper.
Weight: 530 g with LiPo 3S 1800 mAh
After showing my Horten to my brother, he's the one with the flight talent in the family and the best Versa Wing, he told me that cutting out the ailerons in scale would make it really hard to fly. So I came up with that design idea. With the scale looks now totaly gone, I decided to leave the parts for the two engine intakes away and just hope it would fly.
Time to maiden that pice of german engineering. Putting all my trust in my little brothers flight talent, I handed the Horten and my Turnigy 9X to him. Having the feeling to see the Horten for the last time in that condition I took this picture with him, the Horten and my little "monster".
What should I say: She flies like a goddess. Throttle up to max and the 8x6 prop does the rest. It tracks so nice, there is absolutly no sign of horizontal movements at the take off. Unbelievable perfect flight characteristics from start to landing. I'm still standing there with a big smile in my face because I had never believed the Horten would fly that nice. Looking to my brother with the Tx in hands and the same smile on his face we both startet laughing. But just for a couple of seconds as the Hortens motor died. I instantly started to panic, glad not to have the control over the plane. Then the next surprise kicked in. The Horten glided. It glided even better than my FT Simple Soarer. With a couple of turns my brother sailed the plane to the ground where I catched it.
The new 30 A ESC got hot and shutted the motor down. After cutting some air intakes to the ESC we still got the problem of an overheating ESC. So I changed it to the only ESC I still had. A Turnigy Trust 55A
now after fixing the ESC problem I gave it a little paintjob because it was really hard to see which side is up in the air.
So that's it! What a plane! I love it and it's awesome flight characteristics. Flightfootage will be up as soon as possible as the plan will be if I find the time to finish the sketch completly in CAD.
I hope you enjoyed my little article and if there are any questions, feel free to ask.
Greetings from Germany
PS: Specs: Turnigy 1200 kV motor
Turnigy Trust 55 A ESC
Turnigy 9 g Servos
Wingspan: 120 cm; 47,3"
Weight: 560 g total
Trunigy 3S 1800 - 2200 mAh LiPo
Update!
First short video clip of the Horten Wing. Filmed with Mobius Actioncam on a modified FT Versa Wing.
For more future videos visit our youtube channel RCBrothers.
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