The hardest part of this story comes right at the end. After a maiden flight with high-speed passes, sharp banks and climbs over the fields, the airplane went down following a tight turn. The maker puts it down to loss of control and says the crash was very bad, yet still considers the whole thing a very nice project. That attitude alone earns respect in my book.
As for how it came together, this is a fully printed fixed-wing model based on the Model Z from Eclipson, with a nose-mounted propeller and a conventional tail. Even the landing gear came off the printer, done in PLA with flexible TPU for the tyres, on a tricycle layout with small black wheels. Around 200 hours of printing and roughly $30 in filament produced an airframe of about 800 grams.
The looks are a highlight: a matte black fuselage with light teal-cyan accents on the canopy, wings and wingtips, plus tapered wings carrying cyan and black markings. Before the motor powered up, the control surfaces were deflected slightly as a check, then the plane rolled along a paved path, accelerated and lifted off.
The open item is the damage. The airborne time is given as 30 seconds, and nothing has been said about how much of the airframe can be saved after such a hard arrival. For me that is the trade-off with printed designs: they fly beautifully when everything goes right, but the margins at the edges feel thin.
Project by SmiK. Watch it on their YouTube channel: