By now we’re all familiar with the quad-rotor design most popular among modern drones, and of course there are many variants using more or less propellers and even fixed-wing drones that can fly autonomously. We’ve even seen drones that convert from rotorcraft to fixed-wing mid flight. But there are even more esoteric drones out there […]
Many makers start by building mock-ups from cardboard, but [Alex-08] has managed to build an R/C plane that actually flies, out of cardboard. If you’ve been thinking of building an R/C plane from scratch yourself, this guide is an excellent place to start. [Alex-08] goes through excruciating detail on how he designed and constructed this […]
Purdue’s Bio-Robotics lab has been working on a robotic hummingbird and, as you can see in the videos below, have had a lot of success. What’s more, is they’ve shared that success on GitHub. If you want to make a flapping-winged robot, this is definitely where you start. If you’ve ever watched a hummingbird, you […]
If you want to play around with high altitudes, weather balloons are the way to go. With a bit of latex and some helium, it’s possible to scrape up against the edge of space without having to start your own rocketry program. [Blake] was interested in doing just this, and decided to build a near […]
It’s a situation that plays out every day, all over the world – you walk into work, and there’s a full-scale foam toilet sitting on the bench, demanding to be used in a crackpot project. This time, it happened to be at the [FliteTest] workshop, and naturally, they set about making it fly. The team […]
In the days during and immediately after World War II, aerospace research was a forefront consideration for national security. All manner of wild designs were explored as nation states attempted to gain the upper hand in the struggle for survival. The Hiller Hornet was one such craft built during this time – a helicopter which […]