Hey guys, here is my latest project. It is in the early stages, but I thought some of you would enjoy seeing the progress.

Wii Jet, F-35 in VTOL forum

F-35 first hover.wmv (1 min 37 sec)

A very bold project! I wish you success!
BTW, when I click on the YouTube link it takes me to "my videos" namely MY videos LOL!

Originally Posted by djacob7

A very bold project! I wish you success!
BTW, when I click on the YouTube link it takes me to "my videos" namely MY videos LOL!

Thanks djacob7,

The key to this project is the smart electronics. In the multi rotor forum (tricopters quads etc.) there is some cool work being done using the guts from a Wii Motion Plus (WMP) from Nintendo. It contains 3 mems gyros. Then Alexinparis coupled this to a small controller and developed some software to make it flight controller for several types of copters.

After having flown my Tricopter with both ordinary gyros and the Wii controls, I could see a big improvement in fine tuning ability and overall stability with the Wii controls. This then gave me the idea of incorporating the Wii Tricopter concept into the F-35.

I was so confident it would work I went ahead and painted the plane as I built it.

The video link has been corrected in post #1. More extensive video to come soon.

Very nice work , cant wait to see what comes of this . I still want to build a VTO plane from a PS3 game i used to play

very cool.

Impressive work. I look forward to seeing the whole transition video!

Nice work mate, I was privy to the initial development stages of these a few years back (almost a decade) and was mightily impressed by the integration of so many desireable characteristics into the one aircraft. I was rooting for the Boeing entry, but their composite wing technology was hard to get right so they dropped out.

Don't suppose you've transitioned this baby from vertical to horizontal flight? Sure would turn a few heads!

Cheers - boingk

Here is a video of the first real hovering flight which was done this evening. So far so good.

Next will be conventional flight. After that will come transitions from flight to hover and back.

F-35 Hovering.wmv (3 min 13 sec)

insane. sound slike an army of bees .

are the luvres on a servo you have proportional control of ?
u could use em to drive forward speed before full transition .

amazing work LF good luck with transition to forward flight. looks great!

Lead, that's AWESOME !!!

Lead that is just sick! You are a true RC mad scientist.
Very cool man. Very cool. You definitely never fail to entertain with your idea's & builds.

So tell us, just how tempted are you to get some height and kick those louvers forward.

Now that is pretty cool! Great job!

Thanks guys! The smart electronics is the key to the stable hovering.

The louvers are active and are hooked up to the three position flap switch. In full open they are mixed with the elevator to help with forward and backward flight in hover. In the middle switch position the louvers can't partially back to help the jet gain forward speed, and of course the third position is flaps closed.

Today I'm going to add servos to the control surfaces and test the regular flight mode. If that goes well then the last step will be the transition back and forth to hovering in flight.

Originally Posted by leadfeather

If that goes well then the last step will be the transition back and forth to hovering in flight.

IT'S ALIVE!!!!

You so need to have the mad scientist hair do kickin' in your next vid.