It’s alive My own little Varitech lives & flies!



Parts from a plastic kit of my favorite fighter Jet of all times F-14 Tomcat was merged with my flying robot. There is still work to do, as I attached the wings and parts with tape and stuff just to test the aerodynamics. I was pretty sure that it would immediately go head down and crash with all the extra surfaces which will interfere with the balance of the unit. But it didn’t.



I got out half a sleep first thing in the morning to do a test before the winds picked up. I couldn’t catch the really calm hours but it was calm enough to test. The plastic parts added some weight and the unit has never been this heavy before.



It flew beautifully. The handling was almost like the additional surfaces has not been added, which means that the additional surfaces are very well balanced. Before the additions the unit was a little too eager to tilt and required me to intervene and correct. I was hoping that the wings would fix that but it didn’t. So, I will need do work on that. I got sun blinded and even made contact with the unit towards the end of the test.



For this 35mm unit, I install everything permanently and do everything that I can to make it look real. I want to try some weathering, too.



This means that the next step is to build a unit that can walk AND transition to a Jet!