Hello, everyone!
Monday was a somewhat slow day. We did a lot of computer aided designing (CADing) for our solar cell box proto-type because our group leaders decided to use our design for the solar cell box and they needed a specific design outline for the final project. Even though we already had a CADed design for our box, we had to start from scratch because we ran out of the thin Styrofoam we used for the original design so we changed the design so that it could be made with the thicker Styrofoam.
(Finalized Solar Cell CAD Design)
Tuesday we had a cookout at the OSU flight field to celebrate the other interns that had just finished their internships. This cookout was supposed to be on Friday of last week, but it was postponed because of bad weather. At the cookout we got to launch our rockets that we had made the previous week. The rockets all flew pretty high (around 1500ft) and most of them were able to be recovered, though some of them broke midair and some of the pieces were unable to be recovered. After the flying was finished, we left to go back to the lab. At the lab, we were tasked with a new project. The project was to build an RC plane from a kit that we were given, and after we built it and learned how they worked, we were supposed to build an RC plane of our own design. We spent the rest of the day building the RC plane.
(Rocket Launch)
On Wednesday, we were able to finish building the plane. We connected the servos that controlled the flaps as well as the engine to our receiver so that we could control it from our remote. We also added the proper amount of weight in order to make sure that the plane wasn’t too nose heavy or tail heavy. We were unable to fly the plane that day but our leaders had us practice flying using a program called “Real Flight 9.5”. This program allowed us to practice our RC flying with a similar controller to what we would be using when we were actually flying. After getting a basic understanding of how to fly an RC plane, we were ready to start flying.
(RC Plane Tail, RC Plane Wing)
On Thursday, we went out first thing that day to fly the plane. To make sure that our plane could fly well, the plane’s first flight was conducted by AJ, one of the RC pilot’s at the lab. We had everything set up to fly and when we launched the plane for the first time, it nose dived and snapped in half after colliding with the ground. This was because when we set up the controls for the elevators (flaps on the tail of the plane), we had them inverted so when you tried to go up, it would cause the plane to go down. We fixed the elevator controls and taped the plane back together and were ready to fly again. On our second attempt at flying, AJ was able to get the plane up in the air and it flew very well. Logan and I were each able to fly the plane and while we were not able to fly the plane very well because our lack of experience, it was still fun to fly.
(RC Plane)
On Friday, we began designing our own plane that we would build next week. We went through several possible design options before settling on one that we liked the most. Initially we wanted to build a plane that would have the propeller in the back of the plane in order to reduce the risk of breaking the propeller but AJ told us that having the propeller in the back requires difficult math in order to determine the most efficient angle at which the propeller should be placed so we scrapped that idea and decided to go for a plane that would be easy to design and build. The design that we finally settled on was a plane with two wings called a biplane. A biplane would have very sturdy wings that would prevent them from breaking as easily and allow for the plane to be flown more easily due to the extra stability provided by the second wing.
Can’t wait to hear/see how your plane turned out!