Ready for the first flight, Building a Prototype Blended Wing Body Aircraft, Natilus Horizon, FINAL

Hi everyone, I hope you're doing great. So this is going to be the final build video of the Horizon, that's the prototype model we are building for Nautilus aircraft. If you haven't seen the first video yet, go check it out. And so in this video we are hopefully going to complete the project for good, means we will do all the final touches and install all the electronics and hopefully have it ready for the maiden flight. Now maiden flight is going to be after paint, so it will be ready for the paint first and then maiden flight will follow. So far we completed around 80%, we installed the landing gears and the motors. We still need to cut the control surfaces and install the servos and also lights, plus we will need to cut a big hatch where all the electronics will be installed. All right, let's get to work. So we started with cutting the control surfaces and installing the servos. This plane will have three ailerons and one aileron on each wing, this means it's a delta wing plus two vertical stabilizers. For the servos I made those wooden holders or mounts, these were glued in the form before we even wrapped the wings. The servo covers are going to be 3D printed because each cover will have a different shape or thickness to follow the wing profile or curvature so you won't see a flat spot where there's a servo. All the hinges on this plane are going to be made out of Kevlar because those hinges are so clean and you barely see just a tiny seam and also they are really quick to make. Next I installed the lights on the wings, there are two sockets on each wing, these are also 3D printed, they are made out of high temperature resin. I will spray those with a black color so they don't look yellowish under the glass. All right, we're done with the landing gear, specifically this. This was left from last time because I was waiting for this part in here, this was made by PCBWay. This is an aluminum machine, it looks so beautiful. I chose aluminum and with this finish it's a premium finish, I don't know how they do that, it is shiny and it looks really nice. They have of course other materials as well to choose from but this one is great. As you can see I had to cut it from here because when I made this I completely forgot about the space between the strut and the cut of the door so I had to cut just a bit of it. I'm so proud of this whole undercarriage or the landing gear itself with the doors, it is so beautiful. Anyways, I'm gonna put the gear back up because I want to put it back on its belly so we can crawl inside this plane and walk from inside and at the end of the video after I connect everything we can cycle this whole landing gear and show you everything in action. All right. All right, this is the cockpit windows, this took a while for us to install. It looks a bit dirty now because there is just some glue left over but this is all going to be sanded and filled as well. There is here, we have to fill that and then sand it flush with the fuselage or with the skin and then the glass comes in here. This is resin printed and you see there is half a millimeter frame or a lip in here for the glass to sit in and there's also a channel inside for the glass to actually go inside that. When we cut this we have a template for it, we cut it and it will simply just click, it will sit tight by itself. We still see foam from the inside, we're gonna sand this a bit and just paint it black, we're gonna keep it light and this here is the beer tube, it's ready as well and glued. I just put tape because we break these all the time, we just hit them with our knees and break them so hopefully we will see that because of the yellow tape. Anyway, this is ready and now we will move on and start working on the middle section and go from there. All right, so here is the main hatch that we cut out earlier, here I'm sealing the side walls to cover the foam, of course I cannot leave any foam exposed especially in areas where the paint might reach it, the foam will melt if it gets in contact with paint. Also by sealing those we are adding stiffness to the part and so while waiting for these to fully cure I started preparing the main board where I will install all the controllers, all the batteries as well will go on this board. Now this main board will need a base for it to be bolted in inside the fuselage, I had to make some kind of assembly for it or a base for it that will be glued on the ceiling with a cutout in the bottom of it just to fit the main board so we can bolt it in. All right, this is the hatch, it's ready to be installed on the plane, we start with the obvious these are air inlets, these are obviously to keep the electronics cool especially the ACs and yeah it's a bit thick but this is the whole plane, it is that thick so I kept it as is, doesn't look bad at all, these are also printed, this is on the Formlabs, this is the F2000, I love this material I've been using it now for a while, it's amazing and this is here the latch, it is, we used this once on the C17 and it is super simple, just click it opens and just grab it and open the hatch, close and just click and it's locked and the hinges themselves are of course massive but these will allow this whole hatch to open 110 degrees forward, we're gonna glue that box inside install this and then we are ready to put the main board All right, I am out of breath, this one took a chunk out of our souls, this was tough especially to bolt this inside, this one turned out beautiful, I cannot close it right now because we just glued this box or this space and so next I need to still put some wires before I put the main board, I still need to make the wings, both of them and brakes, there is still another receiver that will go there between the mains right there plus another beacon light that will also go between the main landing gear, so second receiver is in the bottom and primary receiver is on top, I'm gonna install a second fin like this in the bottom as well for the second receiver, so next thing install the board, program it and power it on for the first time, how about that? All right, here's the main board, it is done, everything is connected in here so this can be just now installed inside the plane, these are the ESCs, these run on 28s and these are the two connectors for it, two batteries each is 14s connected in series, we will have four batteries for the EDFs, this is the lights controller from Unilights, we love this stuff, this is the retract controller, brakes and doors and this here is the central box 400 from Jetty Model and this here under that cover there are 3D printed just to protect it, this is the gyro inside, this is the Cortex Pro and now it's time to make the remaining wires for the wings and install this inside the plane and connect everything All right, everything is plugged in and I am ready to turn it on for the first time, it's on super quiet but why are the lights on, they're all plugged in, oh all right, first of all all the control surfaces are all over the place, I need to trim all these but lights I need to bring my laptop here, these two on the tail I need them to blink after the strobe lights on the wingtips, landing lights as well, I need to have a third position for it, the landing lights, I'll do a mix when I hit gear down they turn on, so I need to adjust the lights and also update the central box and the receivers and then start with trimming and adjusting all the control surfaces All right, look at this, the Horizon is officially finished, she is obviously just missing the paint but we are done with it, she looks stunning, everything is programmed, control surfaces are working, all the lights, these lights are so bright, let me turn on, by the way, look at this transmitter, limited edition, you cannot buy this just from Jetty, they put my logo on here beautiful, so quiet, you hear nothing, you don't hear any humming from the servos, lights, beautiful, the wing lights, I cannot look directly at them, they are so bright, those covers in here these are printed, this is the clear resin, this one is sprayed with a clear coat that is UV resistant so it makes the clear resin way better, this one I haven't sprayed it yet but when this is sprayed it will be much much more clear, landing lights with another switch they turn on, these ones here on the nose are crazy bright, the windshields are not glued yet because I have a feeling we should do that after the paint, just in case, I don't know yet, now this plane will fly after the paint, this means she will go straight to paint, it's gonna have the Nautilus livery on it, it's going to look amazing and after that we will do the final reveal and the main flight but of course to end this video I have to do the usual, take her out to the runway, drive it a bit, test everything and just see how she handles on the runway and then send it straight to paint, all right we'll plug the batteries, take her out to the runway, I have all the batteries for the ESCs, they don't need cooling in this weather, all right that's locked, all right as you can see and hear we could barely hear anything in this video that day we had 15 miles per hour crosswind plus the freezing temperatures, honestly I was planning to go a bit fast just below takeoff speed and just raise the nose up a bit but now watching the footage back I think I did risk it a lot because I actually went to 55 miles per hour but honestly I felt that at that speed she will rotate so I did not pull up on the elevators which is great because the crosswind just whooshed it to the side of the runway so at that moment I called it in but anyways I did a couple of runs back and forth, the most important thing for me was to see the acceleration of it and that was great, the thrust on this plane is going to be more than enough, the rotation speed is going to be around 58 knots for it to rotate and it will reach this speed in no time on this runway, I noticed that the steering was a bit squirrely at the beginning of the acceleration but when it reaches the 30 miles per hour the stabilizers will take over and it will stabilize it on the runway but this can be also fixed by just adding some expo on the steering, just cranking the gyro a bit up to stabilize the steering, other than that I think it's an amazing airplane, amazing looking on the runway and I could just feel it that it wants to take off but anyways this will have to wait a bit hopefully we will get a much better and warmer weather when it's finished so we can have the main flight in a perfect day which we are all looking forward to, alright so stay tuned for the main flight and the final reveal that will be all in one video hopefully very soon, thank you all so much for watching and I will see you guys in the next one!