Dogfighting with Combat Wings

When Dave and I were getting into electric planes, we flew a lot. Like, all the time. Too much, as it turned out, and I burned out and took a year off where I didn't fly at all.

Dave had no such issue, and continued to fly every day. Every now and then he'd pester me to come out, but it just didn't grab me any more ... I didn't have the drive to go out there and practice hovering and "3d" flying, or to practice the more standard aerobatics of "pattern" flying.

What lured me back? Dogfighting. That's really the kind of flying I always liked best anyway. Dave and I tried dogfighting our Pico Sticks, which were slow and controllable -- but also, unfortunately, fragile. The first contact between Pico Sticks usually means the end of the session, and what breaks most is the difficult-to-replace plastic forward wing holder. Either way, nobody else who flies around here seemed to have much interest in dogfighting.

Excuse me -- I'm told I'm supposed to say "combat". I've been informed that "dogfighting" is a term to be avoided, since now it makes everybody think of Michael Vick and other people who illegally stage fights between real dogs. Me, I still think of biplanes when I hear the term, or Top Gun.

Anyway, Pico Stick dogfights were fun except the planes were too fragile. Larger planes were even worse — if they made contact at all, they'd probably both break a wing or chew each other up with their props.

The answer? Lightweight flying wings. We had tried it early on with our Pocket Combat Wings, but we never actually made contact -- a PCW is too small, too fast and too erratic to be able to be able to hit another small, fast and erratic target with any regularity. But as motors and batteries got lighter, and wing design technology got better, we found that wings with about a meter wingspan and 6-7 oz made wonderful combat planes.

These modern wings are light enough that you can keep them in a fairly small area, which makes it more likely that they'll actually hit each other.

Because it turns out that hitting each other is actually quite difficult with R/C planes, even when you have a bunch of planes in the air and you're all trying to make contact. That's still a lot of sky compared to the size of the planes, and as anyone who's flown R/C knows, it's hard to tell exactly how far away your plane is even if you can see it in the other two dimensions.

Although combat wings are light, they're also quite fast and maneuverable. They have brushless outrunner motors and great big elevons with high control throw. These things fly wonderfully -- you can do normal aerobatics with them too, but flip to high rates and give it some throttle and you can reverse directions in barely a wingspan. Part of why I like combat so much is that the wings are so beautiful to watch as they twist and dive.

They're also rugged. Since the prop is in the rear, when they hit it's most often leading edge to leading edge. At right you can see where my Bonsai and Jerry's Rainbow Wing took out chunks of each others' forewing. Both planes still few fine, and stayed in the air for the rest of the session.

Wings you can buy in 2020

Today, there are tons of EPP wings, mostly sold as "FPV", or "First Person View", planes: they want you to build them big and heavy for slow and steady flight, and put a camera on them. It's possible to turn them into light, agile combat wings, but some are better suited to the task than others.

The best combat wing we've found that you can buy in 2020 is the Crash Test Hobby Scythe 2-pack. The Hobby King Bonsai is also good, as is the Dancing Wings Rainbow Wing.

Whatever wing core you start with, the key is to build it as light as possible. You don't need all the extra reinforcement or covering material, and if you buy a core that has cutouts that would put the servos out near the outer edge of the wing, ignore those and cut your own servo holes as far inboard as you can, so they're lined up with the inside edge of the elevons, and as far forward as you can get them. The important thing is that to get the weight of servos, batteries and electronics as far forward as possible, to balance the weight of the rear motor. Otherwise, you have to put a lot of extra weight in front to make the plane balance, and then you have to fly it too fast to keep up your airspeed; it becomes a rocket rather than an aerobatic plane. For engines, I don't have a good recommendation; Dave likes winding his own motors and has wound the motors for most of our wings, and he isn't terribly fond of anything you can buy off the shelf right now.

I'm still flying my old Wild Wing, plus a Scythe and a Bonsai. I still have the Boomer, but EPP gets soft and brittle after a while and the Boomer can't take a hit the way it used to, so it's mostly retired from combat. Dave has a Scythe, a Bonsai and the larger and slower Zorro, pictured at left with a chunk out of its right elevon from a spat with my Wild Wing's prop earlier that day. Both planes continued flying after that hit, and we only noticed the missing elevon chunk after landing.

Here are some videos of a combat meet in '08 at Sunnyvale Baylands.
Pete's blog also has some good combat movies, like this one of ten wings in the air at once.

Wild Wings and Boomers

(No longer available, alas.)

The plane at the top of this page is based on a much-modified "Wild Wing" kit. She's named "Notch", after my favorite squirrel, because of the notch in one vertical stabilizer, a souvenir from someone's prop during her first big battle. Here's an article by Pete Johnson about Building Wild Wing combat planes. And here's a later article by Mike Bowns: How to Build a Wild Wing for Combat Flying.

The other plane, the one with the "skunk cap" and a dark fuselage, is a modified version of a "Boomer". The Boomer was intended as a flight trainer, oddly enough. It starts with a Wild Wing then adds a fuselage and a different, rather fragile tail structure. Combat Boomers like this one dispense with the trail structure and a lot of the center of the wing.

On my first outing with the Boomer, I tangled with someone's Wild Wing and ended up with the other plane's prop embedded in the Boomer. It counted as a "kill" -- the Boomer was still flying, the other plane wasn't. I left the prop fragment in for the rest of the session -- it was fairly firmly embedded, as you can see from the photo.

The Boomer has flown with worse damage than that, though. The long nose is prone to breakage. One day, a hit on another plane broke the nose so that it was pointing 90° to the right. But nothing else was wrong, so I just kept flying. I wish I had a photo of that -- it looked remarkably strange, and the plane's flight characteristics weren't so good either with that big draggy nose hanging off to one side.

Some other important design factors for combat planes:

• No exposed hard or sharp parts. You will hit yourself or other pilots with the plane. EPP foam bounces off; wood keels or sharp metal rods don't. We even put little plastic beads on the exposed wire ends next to the servo horns.
• A lot of flying wing kits put the servos, motor and a bunch of structural reinforcement too far back, making the wing tail-heavy, and then you have to add a lot of nose weight and the plane ends up way too heavy. Don't just accept their design. You can make your own servo cutouts farther forward on the wing, mount the motor as far forward as you can, and skip a lot of the extra reinforcement.
• Many wing kits have the cutouts for the battery and electronics underneath. That's crazy! Remember, every time you land (unless you're very good at catching) you'll be skidding in on the belly. Don't risk your batteries and electronics: find a way to mount them on top.
• Contrasting colors are good (so you can tell which plane is which, and which side is up) but don't spend a lot of energy on your paint and graphics. You will be taking the plane home in pieces sometimes and gluing it back together; just as often, you will be taping things back together at the field and flying it that way. Don't make it beautiful; then you'll get to the field and be afraid to fly it.
• After a hit, if your plane is still flying (as it will be about 3/4 of the time), do a roll to show you still have control. If you can't roll, then you "got shot down" and the other pilot "wins" that encounter. Not that anybody's keeping score. If your plane is damaged but you manage to roll it on the way to the ground, that's good enough. After most hits, both wings wobble or spin around in the air then fly off just fine.

There's more discussion and a photo or two on the BayRC Boomer thread.