Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
taking up too much room. As the programming required for this project is minimal, you
can use a fairly small Arduino to control the plane. Finally, I chose a plane with a rear-fa-
cing propeller. We have found that many times, the plane will come down nose first, and
having a rear-facing propeller helps the plane survive more crash landings. You will have
several of those.
If this is your first project, you may want to order an RC airplane with simple controls,
perhaps with two control surfaces and a speed control. These will often be referred to as 3
Channel RC airplanes.
The first step will be to locate your control servos, speed control, and the wires that are
connected to them. In this particular airplane, the servos are integrated with the receiver,
so you'll need to remove the entire board and replace it with two micro servos. A suitable
micro servo is the HS-55 from Hitec, available at many hobby stores and most electronics
online retailers.
I placed my micro servos using velcro, and they fit very nicely in the opening. The fol-
lowing image shows all the control connections for this particular RC airplane after repla-
cing the servos:
