A light, forgiving 3-channel foamie — undercambered wing, hand-launch, belly land. About as friendly as a scratch-built first plane gets.
If you want a first scratch build that flies slow and forgives mistakes, this is the recipe. A 30″ undercambered wing makes lots of lift at low speed, the whole plane weighs about 264 grams, and at three channels (rudder, elevator, throttle) there's less to manage while you learn. No landing gear — you hand-launch it and belly-land it on grass.
| Type | RC park flyer |
| Wingspan | 30″ (76 cm) |
| Length | 30″ (76 cm) |
| Wing chord ≈ | 6¾″ (17 cm) |
| Weight | ~264 g (9.3 oz) |
| Material | 5 mm Readi-Board foam |
| Wing | Undercambered, rubber-band mount |
| Fuselage | Box-style profile |
| Tail | Conventional |
| Control surfaces | Elevator, rudder (3-channel) |
| Motor | Emax MT1806 2280Kv |
| ESC | Turnigy Plush 30A |
| Propeller | 5×4.5 three-blade |
| Servos | Hextronik HXT900 9 g |
| Transmitter | Taranis QX7 |
| Receiver | RadioMaster R86C V2 6CH |
| Battery | Ovonic FPV 850 mAh 3S LiPo |
Why it fits: my MT1806 2280Kv is an older part — this is the same 1806 class, currently in stock.
The spec that matters: the small 1806 size on a 3S pack with a 5×4.5 prop — a light power system for a ~264 g plane.
If you change the motor or prop: re-check the balance before flying — this plane wants its CG about 2″ back from the leading edge.
Why it fits: the electronics list calls for an Ovonic FPV 850 mAh 3S — this is that same spec, in stock.
The spec that matters: 3S 850 mAh — a small, light pack that keeps the whole plane around its 264 g flying weight.
If you strap in a bigger pack: the weight climbs — and light weight is the whole reason this plane crashes gently and flies slow.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Links go to a specific product that matches the spec — check it against your build before buying.
Why it fits: the whole airframe is 5 mm Readi-Board — the material in the spec table.
The spec that matters: 5 mm paper-faced foam in the standard 20″×30″ sheet this plane is cut from.
If you build heavy — thicker board, extra glue, extra tape: the weight climbs, and light weight is what makes this plane forgiving.
Straight from the flight log — what I'd change now that it's flown:
Auto-transcribed from the video, so expect the odd mis-heard word. Here so you can search or skim what was said without watching.
Hey guys welcome back to my channel. If you're new here hit that subscribe button. Today we're going to be building a slow flying easy to make DIY RC airplane. Let's get into it. Hey guys welcome back to my channel.
If you're new here hit that subscribe button. Today we're going to be making hopefully this flying easy to make DIY slow flying RC airplane. Hopefully it looks great right there. Let's get started in 3, 2, 1. So I was originally trying to see how fast I could build this airplane.
But I ended up taking way too long because of the paper. Just peeled off, took forever and the ribs took forever to glue on there. So I ended up taking forever. So I kind of scrapped that idea but the timer is still in the video. I don't want to see a general idea how long it took.
So first I'm going to remove the one side of the paper from this foam. So this is going to be the contour of our wings. So we want the inside to bend. So we have to remove the paper from that so it doesn't crinkle. So we're just going to pull that off.
I've never had paper come off a foam so hard. Like it always comes off in one big sheet. Really nice and easy. I don't know why this one was so difficult. Ridiculous.
So after we have the paper all off to the one side of the foam, we can then take and we can bend it into the general shape that we want it. And so just fold it over the edge of the table and fold it into the shape that we want it. And then we can start cutting up our ribs. So this is going to be under camber airfoil. So it's going to fly pretty slow because it's going to create a lot of lift and also create a lot of drag in the process.
So it should fly pretty slow and that'll be really cool. So we're going to go with this shape. If you want to change, if you're building this, you want to change the airfoil. Definitely go for that and you can do it however you want. So we're just going to have a couple of these airfoils here and then we can glue them onto our wing.
So this also took forever because I had to hold each airfoil as the glue drive. So I eventually got smart and went and got some scotch tape and taped it down. Kind of like they do with the master series builds, they tape everything together so that they don't have to stand there and hold it for kind of nice. And it went together pretty fast after that. So the next thing to do was to build a fuselage.
So I was trying to go for something different and simple here. So I just cut a piece of foam board out and cut a V into it. So it worked out fairly decent, it's fairly strong. So now we can get that piece of foam glued into a V and then it's pretty strong. So we can then glue it to the wing.
We could also use rubber bands here. It really just depends on your preference. It might have actually worked better because I would be able to move it if I wanted to up and down the wing to get the CG better. Looking back at it, I think I would have preferred to have the wing backwards a little bit so that there was more of a nose. And it would be the center gravity would be a little bit better.
But it's fine. So after we got the fuselage mounted to the wing, we can then take and add our motor. So I just have this motor that's mounted to a piece of wood here and we're just going to take a glue on the front. It was just something simple I had laying around. So we're just going to go with that.
And then we can stick the ESC in the little V channel just wherever, just mount it to the fuselage somewhere. So then after we got that mounted up, we can then take our attention and do the tail. So first we're going to make the elevator. So I'm just going to make a general elevator shape. The elevator might be a little bit small here.
I kind of have the tendency to do that. Maybe you should make your elevator a little bit bigger as that would make it more stable in the air. Especially if the rudders too small, your plane won't be very stable. I don't want to roll on you all the time. So just make sure you get your sizes about right and it should fly pretty decent.
So after we get the elevator all cut out, we can cut the channel for the control surface on the elevator. So then we can cut the 45 degree off so that it can move. And then we can move on to our rudder. So we can then cut our rudder out. It's just pretty simple and simple for just like our elevator.
And then we can cut our control surface, cut our 45. And then that is all good. So then we can glue the two together. And then we can then mount it to the fuselage. So I'm just going to glue this to the fuselage.
So let's move on to the servos. So this plane is a pretty light plane. So I'm going to mount the servos towards the front and then use longer control rods so that it can move the center of gravity more forward. Put the weight closer towards the nose. So we can glue our servos in and then add our control rods.
And then that works out pretty good. So now we can take an add in our control hornet in on the tail. And we can glue it all in place. I actually went back and added a straw in the middle of this control horn so that it doesn't deflac too much when it's pushing elevator down. Or when it's using the rudder to push the rod.
It works fairly well when it's pulling but when it's pushing it bends a little bit. So I just added a straw in the middle. So after we get all that finished up, we're pretty much ready to go. So we can then tidy up our electronics, add our receiver and it's ready for a maiden flight. Okay guys, look at that.
Look at that. So it looks awesome. So as you saw that that maiden flight didn't go the best. I kept rolling to the right and I couldn't get it under the control. So I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the plane.
It just wouldn't fly. It kept spinning on a control and it wasn't fly straight. So then I got to thinking, how did the Wright brothers plane fly? Why did they have to have ailerons? Why don't a lot of RC trainer planes have ailerons?
Well, because there's a thing called the hydro. And how that the hydro works is that when the plane tilts to the right, it generates more lift on the right. And it picks that side of the wing up. So that is my problem. I need to add the hydro.
I don't know why I didn't think about this when I was building it. But I need to go back and cut some the hydro into the wings. And then it should fly 100%. So let's get to that and get it out better. Okay guys, that plane flew a lot better.
I'm super excited with it. There's a couple things I could make. I could do to make it better though. I struggled a lot with control on that flight. And I think this could be fixed by adding a larger rudder.
More control surface on the rudder. And also by adding ailerons. So another thing I could do would be to make the wing stronger by adding maybe a spar or maybe adding a bottom sheet on the bottom of the wing. Which would sturdy it up and make it so it didn't flex when it got a lot of stresses on it. Maybe by pulling back too hard.
And it just kind of warped sometimes when you get going too fast. It's just little stuff. But it flew great. I'm super excited about this. If you guys want to build this, maybe tell me what you did differently.
Let me know in the comments down below. And if you like this video, make sure you hit that subscribe button. And check out more of my videos on my channel. And I will hope this to you next time in next week's video. See you then.
Bye. Bye.
