Robert Guillot's 0.715g World Record Plane
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Here's some photos and information about Robert Guillot's 0.715g World Record Plane.
The plane was built by Robert Guillot. I don't make it a habit of posting other folks 
planes here currently but this one is different as I soldered the RX on it and Robert
was nice enough to use the RX on this plane. I'm sure he could solder one lighter now.
info
World Record Plane
 Amazing this thing is only about 4" wingspan.
Worl Record Plane
 Robert done quite a bit of lightening on the whole thing.
Pencil
 Nice pencil. :)
RX
I soldered together the Receiver.
The receiver is a Tanaka IRXA261 and weighs somewhere around 32 to 35mg.
I drew the layout for this particular PCB using 0201 size resistors and capacitors.
Rober has since came up with a layout using the same components but saves some board area.
AS far as I know as of 03-27-06 this is the lightest IR receiver in the world and lightest
2 channel(rudder and throttle control) remote control airplane in the world.
Here is a photo of the RX along with the IR sensor that Robert amazingly sanded down to
less than 40mg.

 

Here is what Robert posted about his plane on RC Groups.

After building a 1g plane recently I realized I could make a much lighter plane, but did I want to? I knew it would be headaches galore and the end result would likely not be something I would want to fly everyday. I don't know where this compulsion to make "the lightest plane" comes from but once it took hold it seemed all I could think about was milligrams. It was a crazy two weeks building it. This record business makes me uncomfortable, but I built this little devil and here it is. I'm grateful to Martin Newell, who aside from providing inspiration, told me how to get the shaft out of a Shicoh motor and was helpful in more ways than he knows. Billy Stiltner magically built a receiver without using any solder(!?) and it was lighter than anything I made. He kindly let me use it. He also provided the wire for the actuator, which he says measures 71ohms/m, and was by FAR the finest wire I've ever seen. The coil weighs somewhere between 5 and 10mg. I spent several frustrating days building a lighter motor (hoping to get below .7g) and thought I had a good one but the first test flight proved otherwise. I decided to use the first (heavier) motor I built and the second flight was successful. I've spent the past two weeks trying to find spaces to fly it and make sure it's reliable. It was nice to fly it in a larger space, where I didn't have to worry about flying into a dirty cobweb in my studio and ruining the motor. I do have someone lined up to take a video so I should be able to post it in the next week or so.


I must say I've had it with carbon planes. I think it's time to do a little scale job!

Robert

Here's some photos of  one of his scale jobs.
A 4" Spitfire. At the time of writing he is in the stages of trimming.
He's scheduled to test fly the plane tommorow. It might be a while before I update this page so go check out
the news at RC groups Indoor and micro models.
I must say I'm quite impressed.
Spitfire
Spitfire


Here are my thoughts on the next world record plane. I know the motor and rx could be lightened more so those are the 2 areas
that some miligrams couild be shed. The motor could use a different end bell instead of  plastic. I thought that thinned ply would be strong enough
and lighter for the end plate and rings  but Robert says that he weighed the ABS and ply and the ABS was lighter. For the RX simply use the new fets I mention on the IRXA261 page, use Robert's pcb layout(Also available on the IRXA261 page), sand down the pic and legs and you will have a lighter rx.


 I appreciate Robert putting my rx on his plane as I had started to try to make the lightest plane and found out that I was not very good at reconstructing the motors, but I was good at soldering a receiver. So I joined eforts with Robert  and sent him the wire for the actuators and told him how I wound my actuators. I think that his technique actually would work better for removing such small wire but havent tried it yet.

 Anyways I would like to congradulate everyone else who was attempting to build the lightest plane at the same time. During the building of this plane,  I done something  that I don't usually do. I delayed posting about the new parts I found fow a few weeks so Robert could have a head start but I did eventually post and share the information. I guess that it didnt matter because as of yet  if there is a lighter plane no one has shared it. So if I ever get into doing this sort of thing again I think I ought to go ahead and share the information as soon as possible.

The site is a work in progress.

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