Vanishing Point was designed to be a fast, stable and unique airplane. It weighs about 900 grams and it has a wingspan of 1 meter. The airplane is powered by an AXI motor that spins a 8” propeller at a very high RPM creating a power to weight ratio better than 1:1. This together with an aerodynamic shape makes Vanishing Point fly really fast.
The airplane is built of different materials. The fuselage is made of glass fibre to achieve the rounded shape. The wing is a traditional balsawood construction. The tail booms is square carbon fibre tubes and the tail planes is made of glass fibre reinforced foam.
Vanishing Point is equipped with roll and yaw gyros and a working pitot tube to measure airspeed. A PIC microcontroller is used to blend in different amounts of gyro stabilization at different speeds. When the airplane flies slow, a lot of dampening from the gyros is used, and when it flies really fast, the gyros are not used at all. This unique stabilisation system works great and it makes is possible to fly the airplane in windy conditions.
Hello Axel, I’m new to RC plane building and have been educating myself on the various planes and building techniques. I came across your Beast Master series on YouTube which led me to your website where I fell in love with the Vanishing Point. The plane has the appearance of something experimental NASA would have designed. I would like to attempt to build the Point and was wondering if you developed plans when building it. If so, would you consider sharing a copy? If you don’t have plans to share perhaps you could answer some questions regarding the fuselage; such as it’s dimensions and the fiberglass technique used. Any information provided would be welcomed. I appreciate your design aesthetic and would very much like to build this plane.
Hello! Am sorry, I don’t have any plans. The fuselage is molded out of glass fiber. First, the template was made out of a solid piece of wood. Then it was molded to create a two half mold. Then the actual fuselage was created inside this mold. All other parts of the plane were boult out of balsa wood. Like a traditional balsa model plane. If you just want to make a plane that looks similar, I would advise that you choose another building technique for the fuselage than creating it from glass fiber. It was very time consuming and not really worth it. Of course, it depends on your previous experience as well…