Mini Mustang 3D by BryanHaley

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6AjeQHcghg
Note: This is pretty much just an experiment. At the time of writing this, I have not yet maiden'd this plane, though I will soon. It's got a roughly 1:1 thrust to weight ratio (with two 3S 850mAh batteries and an added 2 ounces to the nose for balance) and it balances, so it'll -probably- fly, but no guarantees. Dimensions are similar to the foam board FT Mini Mustang. The first version of this design was built directly from the foam board plans, but that came out ridiculously heavy. Version 2 here is completely my own design (apart from using some P-51D blueprints for reference), but obviously the design is inspired from the FT Mini Mustang.
All that said, if you just want something to fly and don't really care for the novelty of a 3D printed aircraft, just get the FT Mini Mustang speed build kit and call it a day. This will take more time and effort and offers few advantages.
This design has a lot of mistakes. It's the first plane I've ever built in a CAD program and is definitely the most complex thing I've ever built in CAD, and I learned a lot from doing it, but if I were to start over now I would've designed it better and spent less time on the design. However, since like I said this offers little advantage over its foamie sister design, I will likely not invest time into a version three - I'd rather design aircraft that would be more difficult to build with foam, and doesn't already have FT plans (some WW2 Japanese aircraft come to mind). I have uploaded the Fusion 360 save file if you wish to take a look.
This was designed with the FT Power Pack F in mind, but you could (and probably should) fit a beefier system in it. The fuselage is much more spacious than the FT Mini Mustang, and with the Power Pack F it needs added weight to the nose to balance anyway, so getting a bigger more powerful motor and a bigger battery instead just makes sense. With how heavy it is, the extra power would be put to good use. I will, however, maiden it with the Power Pack F as I consider that the "baseline" of power it should have.
Warning: I didn't take the time to orient each piece into its ideal printing position, sorry. It should be fairly obvious which way they're intended to be printed, though. Generally fuselage pieces are printed nose down, no support (use 15% infill for the Fore Fuselage piece, and 5% for all others); tail pieces are printed flat, 10% infill; wing pieces are printed with their leading edge on the build plate, using "touching buildplate" supports. After printing, remove the support scaffolding that is included in the design (the length-wise supports in the fuselage; leave the horizontal struts).