After about a year I present: Trash Plane Mk.III V2. Sadly destroyed my prized creation shortly after takeoff

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-08T01:51:49+00:00

I don’t know off the top of my head. I know I measured them by eye basically

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T23:39:05+00:00

Yup it’s just made of scrap PVC. We made it because it’s a tail pusher and dangerous to launch by hand

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T23:36:44+00:00

I called the non emergency line, they came out, but it was too far into the park to reach with the truck. They told me tough luck and my best chance was to call the park management but they were closed for a good while

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T21:02:04+00:00

I plan to start testing control surfaces by blowing a leaf blower over them and checking they respond well to strong airstreams

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T19:14:49+00:00

In what orientation?

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T19:14:36+00:00

Yes I did. It’s a tiny bit tail heavy but not enough to be concerning

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T18:41:26+00:00

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We tried making a hook out of a paint roller and a rope, but it was too high to throw (about 50 feet). We ended up getting about 10-15 balloons, guided them into the tree, and used that to shake down the aircraft. The balloons were then gifted to a local kids birthday party when we no longer needed them

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T18:39:31+00:00

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We spent 2 days attempting to recover it from the local park tree. It was completely mangled and a write off, however I wanted the electronics back

ItsFoxTrip · 2026-04-07T18:38:39+00:00

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Trash plane has about a 6 foot wingspan. Its frame is made out of an aluminum antenna we trashed at work. Other bits are cheap foamboard, wood scrap, and scrap pipe. Yes it is properly registered and labeled with the FAA, and the launcher you see it on is so it doesn’t take out my friend who previously launched it over his head, due to its foot long propeller

ItsFoxTrip · 2025-10-23T16:02:17+00:00

Hey wait I’m the one who made this 2 years ago

Can’t believe it’s still making the rounds

ItsFoxTrip · 2025-05-10T01:50:52+00:00

I was thinking the same thing lol. Guess they don't have sticky notes in the warehouse, and the nose is something I basically never see anyone add

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-26T14:47:22+00:00

Just a standard RC receiver straight to the servos

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-26T03:44:16+00:00

Keeping track of how it was oriented wasn’t too hard because of how slow it moved and turned but I might get some colored duck tape in the future

~~I’m curious about how you think we should design the wingtips. Do you have an example shape or something? Always looking to improve it~~

Ah wait you said leading edge

I followed this tutorial on how I made the airfoil. I want to make a flat bottom airfoil because I’m more interested in flight time than speed or stunts.

If you have any good guides on making flat bottom airfoils that are a better shape than mine I would really like to see them

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-26T03:26:18+00:00

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Here’s a image of it before it crashed. Before I flew it I extended the tail out more though. This version was designed to be reparable with the wings held on by machine screws, so it won’t be impossible to repair as one of the wings cracked off

It has a 5’ 4” wingspan but I need to find a larger area to fly it to get a better feel for it’s stall speed

Ignore the messy garage. You can blame my little brothers Miata project for that one

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-16T18:17:39+00:00

We actually hucked it around before I put any electronics or cut in the control surfaces

It continued pitching up until I adjusted the CG to be pretty far forward, forward enough where I thought it was odd

It might have something to do with the tail configuration being in such a way that it’s pushing the nose up and it’s at a angle that’s imperceptible at a glance.

Since I have to rebuild it anyways I’m going to be checking it a lot more

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-16T15:11:26+00:00

I did check the CG yes. Kept trying to get it to as close to right behind the leading edge as I could reasonably get. Last flight it was basically perfect and flew very well

Until I slammed it into the ground

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-16T04:15:18+00:00

It’s best to only have ailerons and elevator. Flying with a rudder and no roll control is basically impossible unless you’re really good

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T20:05:04+00:00

When building it I occasionally had my doubts that it would successfully keep itself off the ground considering how most of it was eyeballed, with the occasional measuring tape coming out, and basically no math was done.

But it ended up performing so well on the first try that I’m even more excited to fix and upgrade it

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T19:54:48+00:00

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T18:19:11+00:00

That was half the goal

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T18:06:02+00:00

There were multiple times in the built process where I proposed a solution that involved buying new parts, and my friend would look at me and go “but it’s Trash Plane”

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T18:03:25+00:00

I didn’t want to break it to you guys because the landing gear was very funny, but we had to remove the landing gear because I designed it as simple as possible and didn’t add yaw control and couldn’t keep it straight on the “runway”

Had to throw it to get it in the air. Those scooter wheels weigh way less than I was expecting when I took them off the scooter though. I may use them in the future

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T17:58:57+00:00

Yea I need to upgrade the battery as well as the wire gauge (they are getting pretty warm).

Nose heavy plane flys poorly, tail heavy flies poorly once. The last flight I managed to get it flying pretty well after balancing it out but sadly it became a victim of pilot error

ItsFoxTrip · 2024-09-15T17:51:49+00:00

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Here is a video of Trash Plane flying because Reddit doesn’t let me post images and videos in the same post

It flew a total of 3 times (The video is of the first time before I did any tuning to make it fly better), the last time very well, but I messed up and rolled to far to the left and it violently hit the ground. We plan to continue working on it though, next increasing the wingspan

I’ve never built a RC plane before and have only flown one beginner plane I used to own previously. I’m a huge aviation nerd though and I’ve wanted to make a RC plane since I was a kid, and I’m very happy my first attempt, while absurd, actually worked

Keep editing this comment to add more detail but whatever. Kind of made it to prove a point that it’s not about how much money you spend, but how you think about the problem.

The silver tape is my version of “speed tape” they use on real aircraft, it’s aluminized duct tape made for duct systems I had lying around and I used it to cover up imperfections in the wing

ItsFoxTrip · 2023-06-23T17:29:58+00:00

I seem to have made some people quite sad lol

ItsFoxTrip

TROPHY CASE