Adventures In Tailsitting

After seeing Nicholas Rehm's super simple tailsitting wing stabilized by his own designed flight stabilizer I just had to try making my own.
There were no plans as such but with the clue in the video that he made it from a single sheet of foamboard I tried to deduce the basic dimensions.
Here's the story so far...
(Hatcam decided not to work)
First challenge was to build the stabilizer from a Teensy 4.0 board and a IMU sensing board (bought 3 of these on amazon and the 1st two were faulty which was a bit of a head scratcher.)
Nicholas's KZbin channel is: / @nicholasrehm
The tailsitter episode: • Taming the Tail-Sitter...
GitHub for the stabilizer: github.com/nickrehm/dRehmFlight
Short clips used with permission for the man himself: Nicholas Rehm.

[@DadsRCHangar]

That’s great Caroline, hope to see more videos of that. 👍🏻

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Hi Chris, more to come for sure!

[@IdahoQuadcopter]

Congratulations Caroline! It flies!! 🙂

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Welll, sort of! LOL

[@CurryKitten]

Quite a handful but pretty cool project. The thing is with those is it feels that when hovering and maybe transitioning you want the wind side on so it doesn’t turn into a sail, but obviously that’s not where you want the wind for a wing. Look forward to you next flights

[@Caroline_Tyler]

I crashed it yersterday, the wind was much stronger than forecast which made hover a right handful but the crash was my fault, not the plane. Minor damage already repaired.

[@chrismillersrcfamily]

Congratulations nice plane and build. Subbed to you my friend. I was sent by squaddy.

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Thank you! I do hope I can get this thing flying better though.

[@kasias4118]

Interesting plane! ❤ I love how it takes off x

[@Caroline_Tyler]

It's a bit of fun. Not really a very serious thing. x

[@kasias4118]

It surely looks fun! 😁

[@AndyRCchannel]

great video really enjoyed the flight

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Something different !!! :)

[@mavicairflyeruk]

looks awesome mate 👍

[@ladyintheskyuk]

Well done that woman. Amazing ❤

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Thank you!!!

[@NicholasRehm]

I struggled with the wiggling on the ground in the grass too haha. It’ll get into a bit of a resonance with the servos/IMU. Maybe some verticals that extend a few cm past the trailing edge would help

[@Caroline_Tyler]

I did make it so the elevons won't touch the ground - if the ground is flat, this wasn't :)

[@BaqPaqJaq]

Blimey that’s scary like your pal said 🤣. Can’t see you brining this in your suitcase to Spain 🤣🤣

[@Caroline_Tyler]

@@BaqPaqJaq Nope, this wing would not travel well :D

[@litterbug4023]

I've been wanting to do this for years. Will probably do one with Ardupilot one of these days. I've done single and dualcopters.

[@Caroline_Tyler]

I liked the idea of a real DIY approach, making the flight controller and all :)

[@genericfpv]

pretty awesome :)

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@tweak3667]

This thing is just mind blowing…i want to make my own..can you please! Share the dimensions that are required to make this tailsitter…??

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Weather has been against me at the weekends so on Friday there's a little workbench video going out and I'll put in all the dimensions for the wing for you.

[@tweak3667]

@@Caroline_Tyler for sure i will eagerly be waiting for that video..hope! You will upload it soon!!

[@Caroline_Tyler]

2nd February 16:30 UK time. ​@@tweak3667

[@tweak3667]

@@Caroline_Tyler one more question…instead of teensy can we use any other microcontroller board…like arduino or stm32 or something like that..?

[@Caroline_Tyler]

The Teensy is needed to run the dRehmFlight software at a reasonable pace, an Arduino would be far too slow. See the Github for more details on that. I wanted to have a go at dRehmFlight which is why I decided to have a go at this wing. I believe INAV has just added VTOL code (but the transitions between flight modes are a bit rough) so you could always use a cheap quadcopter flight stack - maybe even run Ardupilot on that.

[@hi_desert_rat]

Nice! When's the fpv system going in? :)

[@Caroline_Tyler]

Going to leave this as a line of sight wing.

[@hi_desert_rat]

@@Caroline_Tyler I can't fly LOS to save my life! 😂

[@Caroline_Tyler]

I struggle with quads LOS but planes - not a problem.