Day 4: 5/30/13

We finished our aircraft today, which entailed:

• Gluing strips of foam to the flat upper surfaces of the wings to create a KF airfoil, which is simpler and lighter than a standard airfoil.
• Gluing vertical stabilizers to the wings.
• Gluing the circuit board, antenna, battery holder, and motors to the aircraft.
• Performing a glide test to determine if the center of gravity is too far forward or aft.

With these steps performed, we took the aircraft outside for a test flight but, along with the rest of the class, decided that the day was too windy to allow for smooth, controllable flight.

Day 3: 5/28/13

We began construction of our new body and wings. We have decided to use a flying wing design as opposed to a traditional aircraft fuselage and wings to conserve foam, simplify the process, and lighten the aircraft. As construction is only partially completed, we still have time to finalize our plans slightly.

Day 2: 5/24/13

We tested battery #5's voltage drain across 3 minutes of full power useage. The results were:

Start: 5.68 volts

End: 5.17 volts

Total change: 0.51 volts

We also recieved several sheets of Dollar Tree foam, which will be made into the main body and possibly the wings, depending on verying design plans.

Day 1: 5/22/13

We chose our Yellow Bee, which was in moderately good condition, although certainly not flight ready. We disassembled part of the body and extracted the electronics. We do not plan to use the original plastic body, which we will replace with a lighter foam body. We may choose to make the wings out of the foam, or we may use the stock wings, possibly in a biplane configuration.

-Ben Whipkey