Painted ’em black

Quick update! I had some hobby paint at home and since I already did file down the wood earlier after the sawing and I had the time – I went for it. Possibly the easiest step so far, painting the arms. I like to work with wood as a material. Much more pleasant than aluminum. Hey look another use of my Dremel workstation! Yey! 20131126-210857.jpg

Them Arms!

So I finally got to sawing the sticks into arms. With my dremel the once forseen problem with using 14x14mm sticks instead of 12.8×12.8mm soon vanished. As you can see in the images below I carved it down on one side and it is a perfect fit, somewhere around 13x14mm. I also drilled the holes using the Dremel with workstation. I managed to put the two in the back arm in pretty much perfect center and aligned with the bat bone (not done yet in the picture). It seemed impossible at first, especially since I had moved my support bits that held the wood in place. Managed to align and with careful testing and tiny corrections I got it. I’m not even sure if I can replicate that ever again. So I hope they never break… 20131125-182123.jpg
So here is the first picture of how large it will become once built. Even though there’s still much to do this milestone felt so good. 🙂

20131125-182140.jpg

Yey! It can has propellers! Lolz!
20131125-182152.jpgMy cat felt I needed her in the picture for size comparison. She is quite a sturdy cat though 😉

Hxt adapter ready!

I finished the adaptercable! Soldering the HXT was a real pain. It was really deep and required alot of tin to fill up. That in combo with my novice skills in soldering the fat AWG 10 and a few bad mistakes made it a hassle. Hopefully it is good enough to deliver both power and durability so that I never need to do this again. Although I might have learned enough to make a solid one next time. Covered upp most of the mistakes with shrink tube. I think it looks ok 🙂
Update: I made a ffwd-buildvideo

20131111-094557.jpg

I have also bought some wooden booms. Unfortunately it’s not as common with 13x13mm in Sweden as I had hoped. I will try with some 15x15mm sticks I found and see if I can make them fit without too much hassle. The alternatives beeing getting them custom made if possible at the shop or ordering online from somewhere else. But I also don’t want to wait for an order to come through every time I break an arm… Still considering the alternatives though.