I simply could not pass up building a Brooklyn Aerodrome-designed Towel after seeing it on the cover of Make Volume 30.
First up - Parts. Many of the parts detailed on Brooklyn Aerodrome's website or in the Make article were out of stock in the various suppliers listed. Please note that stock changes quickly on many websites and what I was unable to find, you might be able to, and conversely, what I found, might be out of stock now.
Here is my list of parts (so far) and where I got them:
- Radio - I ordered a Optic 5 5-Ch 2.4GHz Transmitter, Minima6E Receiver combo from Phil's Hobby Shop. $89. As of this writing it appears they are sold out.
- Propellers - E-Flite 10 x 4.7 Slow Flyer from Phil's. $4. I got 2 packs of 2 propellers each.
- Servos - Hitec Ultra Micro Servo HS-55 Universal from Phil's. $10 per servo. In retrospect these have a little less torque than the specified HXT-900 but when I was doing my "shopping" the HXT-900 was out of stock for many suppliers.
- Motor - After reading the parts list on the Brooklyn Aerodrome website, I wound up ordering an Aero 2210-10 Brushless Motor from Aerocraft RC. I wasn't able to find the 2408-21 mentioned in the Make article in stock anywhere.
- Speed Controller - I got the Aero 20 Brushless Speed Controll from Aerocraft RC. This also includes a BEC and matches the specs from the Brooklyn Aerodrome and Make parts lists.
- Deck - I picked up a big piece of plain coroplast from Lowe's.
- Airframe - This one is still up in the air (no pun intended). I found the insulation described in the article but it's only available in 10-20 sheet fanfold stacks for about $30. (That's a lot of airplanes.) So I'm currently contemplating other options as I wait for parts to come in. I have a big piece of very stiff (I think it might be 4 layer) cardboard, and some foamcore hanging around from past projects - I'll probably wind up using one of those.
- Battery - A E-Flite 1800mAh 2S 7.4V 20C LiPo Battery, 13AWG EC3 from Amazon.com. I only ordered one of these - this will limit my flight time, but I wanted to make sure it worked before ordering a second one, and Amazon ships pretty quickly.
- Charger: Traxxas 2-Cell& 3-Cell Lipo Battery Balance Charger from Amazon.com. This was a bit of a guess as I don't know a lot about LiPo chargers, and boy howdy do they come with a lot of warnings. After reading all the bold, red print I'm planning on charging with the battery placed in a flower pot on top of a ceramic plate in the garage. Maybe even someone else's garage.
Thus far the following parts have arrived:
- Radio
- Propellers
- Servos
- Battery
- Charger
I've also measured and cut the deck from coroplast using the template on Brooklyn Aerodrome's site. My first shot at measuring went awry, then my first shot at cutting wasn't much better. (I basically flunked "straight lines" in kindergarten, so I'm used to writing computer programs to have the computer draw perfecly straight lines for me. Guess I should have done that this time.) I'm going to try to use their motor mount made entirely from coroplast rather than the aluminum one specified in the Make article. I figure if it fails, I have plenty of coroplast to make another deck.
Pictures of the deck to come. It's really not that interesting at the moment.