Building the WORLDS FASTEST RC Rocket Plane! (Part 2)

this video is about what happened when I upgraded the rocket-powered model jet plane from my last video and airdropped it from a drone in a quest to make it the fastest foam RC jet in the world last time out I tried to beat this ambitious Target with a highly modified RC jet fighter fitted with two forms of propulsion firstly an electric ducted fan and secondly a powerful rocket boost that could be ignited mid-air I had wanted to hit 140 miles an hour but unfortunately came up just 10 miles an hour short of that Target so clearly I had a bit of work to do this time I had a new plan the plan was to modify the plane to become a Pure rocket-powered aircraft this would make it more aerodynamic by doing away with draggy air intakes on the nose the fan would be replaced by a rocket engine directly on the center line of the aircraft to provide the added benefit of having the center of thrust and center of gravity aligned this time this would solve the problem of too much thrust higher which caused the plane to dive towards the ground down during previous test flights and required a flight computer in the form of a gyro to counteract this automatically the problem with the new plan though was how would I get the plane up to speed without an electric motor well I wanted to attach the plane to a drone which would lift it high up into the sky and then the plane could be cut loose for it to dive back towards the ground using gravity leveling out and then firing up the Rockets although through diving and leveling out the plane won't be traveling quite as fast as it did when it was just using an electric ducted fan through making the plane much more aerodynamic the rocket engine should be able to accelerate the plane to much higher speeds than previously seen so this is all simple enough in theory but would we actually be able to pull it off in practice the first thing to do was to remove the obsolete old rocket engine mount on top of the airplane and also remove the electric ducted fan which was all pretty straightforward next up the aerodynamics as previously mentioned we need to get this plane as aerodynamic as possible if you've got any chance of beating the target speed thankfully last time out the plane was a bit of a brick in the air and there are loads of easy ways to make this thing more aerodynamic one really easy job was to shorten the length of the Wings this would reduce the frontal footprint of the plane in the air if you reduce the frontal area of something it doesn't have to move so much air out of the way and this helps dramatically when it comes to the overall drag calculations obviously this means that the plane won't have quite as much lift as it did before but that's fine that just means that the stall speed would be a little bit increased now this would make Landing a bit sketchier and as you'll find out yes it was a bit tricky to land This Plane but other things contributed to that as you will see along with aerodynamic changes I found at this point I should probably do some important structural modifications if I wanted this plane to survive its next flight as I was checking over the footage of the previous test flights I noticed something a bit worrying the tail was moving a little more than I would have liked to have seen and it seemed to be bending at the top speed this plane achieved so as I wanted this plane to go even faster this problem could get a bit worse and we could even see the tail ripping off I needed to strengthen the vertical stabilizers as they looked like they were bending the most so I found my favorite Aerospace grade D wobbler fires which are otherwise known as cocktail sticks after a bit of glue the tail was much stronger hopefully now the tail could deal with wind speeds in excess of 140 miles an hour and I was a little worried if they would but as I haven't built a wind tunnel yet I'd have to just see in practice another aerodynamic mod to squeeze every last mile an hour out of this thing was to taper the trailing edges of the Wings and this would probably help quite a lot especially when sanded all nice and smooth as mentioned now that this was a pure rocket powered plane we wouldn't be needing any air intakes as Rocket engines like those that I was using carry their own oxidizer mixed into the solid propellant so to remove the air intakes and make them nice and flush I decided to try a new technique and that was to fill up the plane with a expanding foam while this dried I made a new slippery very smooth and very aerodynamic hatch last time I used tape on the top of the plane to cover up where the batteries and electronics are but this wasn't actually the best idea in the world as would you believe it it turns out that tape has a tendency to deform at high speeds I used a lot of plaster and filler to get this smooth which took quite a lot of sanding and I probably should have done this outside because now absolutely everything in my workshop is covered with a thin layer of dust I can now cut free the hatch and turn my attention to how to actually hold the rocket motor in place in the tail of the aircraft I'd need a mount for the rocket engine so I designed one on my computer and then 3D printed it now dumping all of the batteries Electronics a fresh rocket engine and the motor mount and everything else inside the plane I could stick it on at scales and see what the all-up weight was looking like and it was surprisingly respectable now importantly how was I going to capture the Flight of the plane with a high definition 4k on-board camera without compromising the overall drag coefficient of the airplane too much last time I committed the cardinal sin of aerodynamics by simply taping the very non-aerodynamic camera onto the wing of the plane this time I wanted to do it properly so sketched out a very simple aerodynamic pod for the runcam 4K and then printed it and it looks pretty good obviously it wasn't ideal having a big bulky camera like this on a pretty small airplane but the runcam 4K is really reliable and it was going to be very important to capture this flight from the air as from the ground a tiny rocket plane moving across the sky at 140 miles an hour is actually very hard to see now a problem we'd seen on the last flights was the Rocket Motors ejecting themselves from the rear of the plane so to stop this happening this time I made some retaining hooks which could be twisted to lock the engines in place in their mounts if they'd work we'd have to see now to set up the electronics I decided not to use a gyro this time as it wasn't actually that helpful and with the rocket engine now on the central line of the aircraft I thought I should be able to Pilot the plane manually without the help Pizza how well this would go though was yet to be seen and changing this from the last flight was another one of those sort of factors that I was starting to worry about now how would I connect the plane to the Drone and importantly how would I detach it at the correct altitude well I've just made a really big Discovery I've hooked up two individual receivers to One controller one transmitter here and that means I can operate two separate craft from One controller I've never done that before didn't know you could do it apparently it works just fine so that's great news I designed a mechanism where a Servo would actuate a push rod that a cable could be released from three two one finally it was time to apply some all-important stickers to the aircraft along with my patreons names on the wing so that they could come along for the ride with a simulated test of all of the systems on and off the plane including a drop test with the help from Tom here if you just catch the plane okay nice we could finally head up to the Flying Field equipped with all of our gear the airplanes and some sandwiches now we just had to wait for our drone pilot to arrive so I did a few practice runs of our intended flight pattern with a model Spitfire and while I show you this footage it gives me the perfect opportunity to tell you about the sponsor of this video brilliant who've really helped to make this video possible if you're an aspiring engineer or you just want to find out some more about engineering brilliant.org can help you learn through their thousands of lessons brilliant is the best way to learn engineering maths and computer science as well as a lot of other Science and Technology subjects and new engaging lessons are added monthly I've been actually enjoying this course on mathematics as staying brushed up with my math skills makes it a lot easier to just design stuff on the Fly I do simple calculations in my head really quickly every course is designed for High Velocity learning and this makes learning more like a game with fun features to challenge yourself and compete with others and there's also helpful explanations all along the way which really help to get you to grips with the subjects that you're learning to try everything that brilliant has to offer free for a full 30 days visit brilliant.org project air or just click the link in the description the first 200 of you will get 20 off brilliant's annual premium subscription thank you very much to brilliant for sponsoring this video once we've finished with flying the Spitfire our drone pilot Tim had arrived with his very powerful but very small quadcopter we're here we've got everything in place now there's just a million things that could go wrong to stop us getting some successful flights we'll take it one step at a time and be happy with the progress that we're we're making even if it bids it on the first drop you know or it doesn't even get that far I'll learn something and then be able to apply it to the next plane we thought it would be sensible to test the Drone with a couple of rolls of tape and this was really going to show us how difficult it was going to be to lift the rocket plane thankfully after getting into a bit of a wobble the oscillations corrected themselves and the Drone could lift the tape no problem whatsoever we were a little bit worried that the Breezy conditions on the ground would only get worse higher up but again we just have to go for it and see what happened and deal with the consequences the plan is to take the plane up on the Drone and then we're going to drop it for a Glide test and that's just to test the aerodynamics of the aircraft because we've changed quite a few things on it obviously since the last time it was flown no engine we're just going to drop it Glide it down try and land it in one piece suppose the only thing to say is chocks away and let's crack on with it right time for test flight one a simple Glide test but would the Drone even be able to lift the plane to 400 feet at drop altitude with the windy missions with the plane detached successfully and would it be able to land safely in one piece everything could go wrong straight away and ruin the day meaning we'd have no chance to do any further testing so as you can probably tell I was a little bit worried okay ready okay we're gonna go for a detach in about 10 seconds ready five four three two one detach Ed okay going into the next field oh I think it was a bit of a hard Landing I'd lost sight of the plane as it went behind the stone wall separating the field so I wasn't sure if the plane had touched down gently or crashed down spectacularly unfortunately it turned out to be the latter oh I don't know man I think I can see some bits of white on it and I don't know if that's if that's the internals of the plane oh it looks like it's upside down oh no well that wasn't ideal oh no the wing is broken as well I must have it must have have hit the wingtip and it's because I couldn't see it I I lost sight and it must have cartwheeled it needs a bit of fixing Tim we quickly travel back to base and made some Hasty repairs the nice thing about foam planes like this one are that they are really easy to fix so with a bit of hot glue and some duct tape it was almost as good as new now it was time for test flight number two the first rocket power test of the day I loaded up the same engine I'd used in the last video which achieved a top speed of 131 miles an hour with the combined thrust from the electric ducted fan using the same rocket engine but now without the electric ducted fan what it's improved aerodynamics allow this plane to fly faster it was now time to see flying up to our maximum altitude Tim was finding it a bit tricky to fight the wind and get the Drone lined up in precisely the right spot over the field Bob on the altitude just waiting for position just more of the to the left him if that's okay okay three two one release okay and firing three two one okay we've got successful burn and then that is so far away I can hardly see it I'm going to try and bring it in but I think we're gonna crash taking the wings level oh I'm stalling okay I think we're down that felt fast but had the plane survived looks like it might be upside down again well I mean it's in one piece we could go again potentially yeah interesting let's see how fast it went that's the main thing in the last video the plane achieved a top speed of 211 kilometers an hour which is the equivalent of 131 miles an hour so had I beaten 211 kilometers an hour 210. 210. 210. what all right chances of that I wish we'd gone one over it that would have been better oh well so annoying one kilometer not even a mile an hour underneath only one thing for it then time to try again but with a slightly altered flight plan to gain as much AirSpeed as possible before igniting the rocket we only needed a tiny 10 miles an hour of extra speed to beat the target so if I made sure to dive the plane right down to the ground and ignite the engine at its terminal velocity just as I was pulling up I shouldn't bleed off quite as much AirSpeed as before and then the rocket would have less work to do but would I be able to pull this off or would I end up smashing the plane into the ground at over 100 miles an hour okay everyone this could get hairy okay waiting for York a sign Tim ready you ready okay ready three two one drop thank you coming across on three two one fire [Applause] yes look at that oh look at that come on let's bring it in for a landing come on come on come on come on get it into the field at least please don't go across the wall again now we're down yes that looked a lot faster well done boys success the flight looked a lot faster from the ground so now we just had to walk a couple of hundred meters to the crash site to find it and check that GPS surely it would be faster but we were in for a nasty surprise where is it then oh there it is oh I can see something White I don't know if that's the camera or if that's some exposed foam oh let's hope that camera's still rolling please what speed do you think it got to this time come on come on please be over the uh Target oh no 161. I can't be right maybe this didn't get it then because it did look a lot faster much faster what's that then that's only like well that's 100 miles an hour now hold on just a second as you might have seen from my slightly confused expression something wasn't quite adding up here the GPS had recorded a peak speed that was a lot a lot slower than my previous flight despite the earlier ignition of the rocket engine in addition to this from our perspective on the ground and from the cameras recording the plane had appeared to fly as fast if not faster than before so is it possible that the GPS failed to record the actual top speed well thankfully I had another way of verifying the speed in the form of the onboard camera on the airplane and some very helpful landmarks at the test site which were the stone walls between each of the fields you can see that the plane took a sort of diagonal path across the fields between these two walls which looking at a map turn out to be 150 meters apart and we can pretty accurately glean the point at which the plane flew over thanks to some more specific landmarks which were the gates within the actual models themselves the time it took the the aircraft to travel this distance was 2.3 seconds so if you do the maths on this the plane flew at an average speed of 145 miles an hour between these two points which is 45 miles an hour faster than the GPS said so it seems that the GPS was definitely a little off now obviously this isn't completely conclusive but seeing as though it looks like we've beaten our Target speed of 140 miles an hour by 5 miles an hour I'm going to say that this project is a success and we've completed it congratulations everyone we actually completed a project so now this Project's complete I'm going to be turning my attention to another high-speed project which is my jet car that I've been going on about for the last couple of months if you want to stay up to date with that project then you can check out my website there are updates on there with articles and sort of blog posts and things like that and my website is also where you can get downloads to make your own projects and these downloads are things like you know plans 3D printing files things like that also thank you very much again to my patreons for helping to support this video and if you'd like to become a patreon then you can sign up with the link in the description or you can go to my website and follow a link through there and in turn you can get your name featured in these videos on the side of my Creations so these airplanes and Rockets and cars and things you can have your name printed on the side and then you can sort of be part of the video and show your support very publicly like these fantastic people who are in this video as always thank you very very much for watching and helping me to do all of this stuff here's a video I think you might like to watch next so maybe click on this one and I'll see you on the next video um yeah see you later

Channel: ProjectAir

Views: 1,764,896

Keywords: James Whomsley, whomsley, James, projectair, 3d printing, rc, r/c, airplane

Id: UtAtmW3zA64

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023