FPVicious- Purpose Built FPV Parkflyer
Posted on March 3, 2010 by aaronredbaron
FPVicious is the newest member of the Simplicious family, designed by Scotty Bouck Click here to see the article on the Simplicious. Specifically intended for First Person Video flying, FPVicious is set up with a pusher motor to keep the prop out of view, and a simple pan only configuration on the camera. Its meant to provide a slow speed, stable platform to cruise around with under first person control, but still provide plenty of aerobatic capability. Despite its odd flat airfoil sporting flat surfaces and angular leading edge, FPVicious is slows down with good control and does very well inverted.
All of the construction on FPVicious is 3mm Depron. It has top and bottom sheeting, with a vertical spar and a little tape in critical areas. Its all up weight ready to fly with battery is 15 ounces. For this prototype experiment we used a Purple Peril little screamer outrunner motor swinging a 6×4 prop. Powered by a 3 cell 1300mAh LiPo pack running through a 25 amp speed control, the flight time is well over 15 minutes. The video gear is a CX-161 camera and a 2.4gHz video link, all powered at 5 volts through the receiver. Although Pan and tilt for the camera is nice, Pan alone seems to be sufficient. I used an HS-81 servo modified to provide more than stock travel for pan, and HS-56 servos for the elevons.
FPVicious is capable of low and slow flying, stable inverted flight and more, but perhaps the most fun manuever is the full up elevator parachute decent. Set up with the proper amount of elevator travel to prevent a full stall, FPVicious will hold its nose up high without dropping a wingtip and just sinks nearly straight down at a moderately slow speed. If you have a soft landing zone, its not impractical to do the decent all the way to the ground.
Scotty is working on getting the plans available in PDF format if anyone is interested in building one. Construction is pretty simple, you could build one in a few evenings without much trouble. Email Scotty at GTRScottyRC@gmail.com if you want to build one, he is asking $5 for the PDF plans.
