RC plane(s)

2024 - 2025

A journey of building an RC plane completely from scratch.

This project documents my progression in designing and building custom RC aircraft, starting in the summer of 2024. My first attempt was repurposing an old toy plane into an RC aircraft, which while not flight-worthy served as a learning platform. I then built a cardboard jet engine exhaust purely for aesthetics, followed by several experimental styrofoam airframes. All early systems were powered by custom firmware written for ESP32 microcontrollers. Control input was sent from a PC via USB using an Xbox controller, transmitted wirelessly using ESP-NOW to an onboard ESP32 that handled BLDC motor control and servo actuation. In 2025, I fully redesigned the aircraft in Fusion 360 and 3D-printed the airframe in lightweight PLA with ultra-thin wall thickness. The electronics were upgraded to an onboard Raspberry Pi to support future work in live camera streaming and object detection. Although the aircraft never completed its maiden flight due to the end of summer, the project laid the groundwork for future development. I plan to resume this project next summer.