Revenge of the Swing Wing

After the success of my first oblique wing prototype last spring, I put a few hours on the airframe before unfortunately destroying it. Turns out the stall response with the wing swept was not very benign! Anyway, I ended up regretting losing the airframe so after the winter break I started on developing a second version. The redesign was not a huge task, using the same wing with a few tweaks and the same tail with a fixed tailplane angle. However, I completely redesigned the fuselage from scratch to give more space for electronics, a wider CG margin, and make working on the internals easier. I also made a lot of improvements to make the printing experience better, as I wanted to release the files for public download to anyone brave enough to try their own model. My nickname for the original version was Archie, and as the new version 2 is all grown up I have called it Archer.

Archer awaits the maiden flight

The initial version 2 flight was on February 1st and was thankfully uneventful after the issues that version 1 had during the initial flights. The ArduPlane PID gains transferred across from the original which made it easy to maiden with an auto-takeoff. Before releasing to the public, I wanted to ensure I had the files exported nicely and a full assembly guide made. I underestimated the amount of effort this would take and, thanks also to a period of illness, it took me until mid-March to finish the guide and upload. You can find the guide here and if you are interested in building your own swing wing demonstrator you can find the files available on Printables.

Now for a few more shots of version 2!