About 3 weeks ago when we first flew our plane it crashed about 8 seconds after takeoff. This was due to a hardware problem since the receiver we were using went out of range. The plane has two major structural components, the wing and the spine. Those two are fused together by melting two 3d printed parts. When the plane crashed, those two parts sheared from each other which resulted in minimal damage to the plane. In these last two weeks we rebuilt the plane and went flying once again. Colin Sledge, global engineer for UCI MAE projects, flew the plane. This time around we bought a new radio and receiver to prevent the same issue as last time. After some calibration, the plane flew flawlessly. The next step for us is to install the new motors that we bought onto the tips of the planes. Our current tilt rotor system is going be test but only using fixed forward flight. The goal is to see if the servo in the nacelle can handle the load.

By Jose Ortega, UAV Forge