Tools and Materials for Building FPV Wings

Here is a list of useful and essential tools for building FPV wings and planes: including the many types of glue and tape, materials and spares parts. Some of the stuff are not necessary but will make building and flying wings much easier, enjoyable and reliable.

Table of Content

  • Tools
  • Tapes
  • Glues
  • Spares & Components

The tools and materials mentioned are what I found useful personally, if there are better alternatives out there please let me know in the comment!

Tools

Soldering Iron

We explained in more detail what soldering tools you should get in this tutorial. Here are what I use:

TS100 – http://bit.ly/TS100-solder-iron

Compact and portable. It can be powered by a 3S to 6S LiPo which is great for field repairing too. See my review. As for solder, you won’t go wrong this this one:

Kester 63/37 Solder: http://amzn.to/2A6IWCu

Hobby Knife / Utility Knife

Hobby knife is great for cutting and removing foam and tape. Or at least get a box cutter, perhaps less precise and sharp.

Allen keys Set (Hex Screw Driver Set)

As known as Hex drives, is used to tighten or loosen the hex screws used on the motors. Having a set of Allen keys of different sizes available can be extremely helpful.

Screw Driver Set

multicopter-building-tools-screw-driver-set

For the screw sizes typically found on RC planes and wings, both cross slotted and single slotted.

StarTech 7-piece: http://amzn.to/2xCpGuw

Wire cutters

multicopter-building-tools-wire-cutter

Used to cut zip ties, electrical wires, control rods etc.

http://amzn.to/2stQt6Q

Pliers

multicopter-building-tools-pliers

For gripping components while working with other tools. It can also be used as a nut wrench.

http://amzn.to/2rZdzpv

Scissors

multicopter-building-tools-scissors

An obvious one, I guess everyone should have a pair scissors in the house, right? :)

Pearl Head Pins

For holding foam parts / carbon parts together if you are using glue that takes a while to dry.

Sand Paper

multicopter-building-tools-sand-paper

You want to sand the foam surfaces and carbon fibre spars before apply glue to them, it makes them stick better.

I’d say anything between 40 grits to 240 grits is fine. It depends on your preference really, as long as you’re not ripping bubbles off the foam. I personally use 80 to 120 grit, I find anything less will make the beads of foam pop out, and anything more than 120 takes a long time to achieve the desired result.

Servo Tester

It’s useful for testing servos, and centring them when setting up elevons. Also useful for troubleshooting and testing ESC and motor spin direction. You may also use it for motor thrust testing.

multicopter-building-tools-servo-tester

Tapes

Tapes and glues are so important for building wings and airplanes, they deserve their own sections :)

You can probably get 90% of the jobs done using 2-3 types of tapes, but it’s useful to have the variety for different applications too.

Scotch Heavy Duty Packing Tape

The must have tape for general purposes – covering, reinforcing hinges, laminating… Sellotape tape is okay, but I find good quality packing tape are normally thicker and stronger.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2PqIiDy

Color Packing Tape

Sometimes referred to as wing tapes, color packing tapes are great for decorating your wings, and adding some colors to it. It’s often used for covering and laminating.

The ones I use are thinner than the heavy duty packing tape and aren’t as strong. But it doesn’t add any noticeable weight to the aircraft which is what I like!

Fibre Tape

AKA Reinforce Packing Tape – it’s extremely strong and sticky! Often used to protect leading edges and reinforcing weak foam parts and joints. It can also be used for covering your servos in the wing.

Double-Sided Heavy Duty Mounting Tape

Get the 3M Scotch brand, that’s the sh*t! :) Great for sticking two separate things together, like a receiver to the plane.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Pt7xVU

Masking Tape

It’s basically just sticky paper :) You can tear it off the reel with your fingers, very convenient to use if you just want to hold something in place temporally during the build. It can be removed easily without leaving any mess behind. You can also write on it since it’s just paper.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LcLzpL

Electrical Tape

For isolating electrical joints and wires.

Amazon: http://amzn.to/2ktTm9d

Outdoor Vinyl Tape

It might feel similar to electrical tape, but it’s less stretchy and has a shiny finish and stick much more securely. It’s also twice as thick as packing tape. It conforms to irregularity well, great for applying on control surfaces, like on top of servos, it gives it a very smooth finish

Duct Tape

Stronger than packing tape and works much better on irregular surfaces, but it’s also much heavier; it’s easier to remove and replace; another disadvantage is that they tend to wrinkle up under the sun. it’s usually a choice between this or outdoor vinyl tape

Glue

Any foam friendly glues would do!

Hot Glue

multicopter-building-tools-hot-glue-gun

Hot glue is probably the most popular option for building/repairing foam models. Because they melt into the foam like a chemical glue, but also creates an extremely strong physical bond at the same time.

The strength is also its downside. The bond is so strong it’s near impossible to remove without ripping the foam apart. Sometimes you might want the foam to just fall apart in a crash rather than completely destroyed? It’s a personal preference.

The other properties is that it sets very quickly as it cools down. But that’s also the disadvantage, because you have only a short time to position the parts. That gets worse in cold weather.

Crescent 60W Bunnings: http://amzn.to/2qLFNPP

E6000 Glue

Currently my favourite glue, I am using this as a replacement to hot glue and CA for building/fixing wings. I have a whole article to discuss why I like it so much.

UHU Por Glue

UHU POR glue is ideal for gluing hard foam like styrofoam. It is flexible, resistant to aging and waterproof. Takes 10-20 mins to set, becomes transparent when dried.

Gorilla Clear Glue

A very popular option for RC model building. Strong stuff for a great range of materials, but personally not a big fan of Gorilla glue, because getting it on your hands can be worse than epoxy!

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Qnt4Ey

Thread locker

Apply a tiny bit on your motor screws prevents the screws coming off due to vibration. I have an article discussing what it does and which one to get.

Spares

Zip-tie

Velcro

Spare control horns

Pushrods

You can get some dedicated pushrods, alternatively some stiff 0.047″/1.1mm Piano wires would do too.

2mm carbon rods

Useful for reinforcing flexible pushrods that sometimes cheap models come with; recommended if you plan to fly fast. Banggood: http://bit.ly/2SCxu7b

Weight for CG

These are weight blocks you can place in your wing to balance CG. It’s not a bad idea if you want something neat, but I normally just use coins. Actually coins turn out to be cheaper. Amazon: https://amzn.to/2UFK2wC

Electrical Parts

Servos

The power of a servo depends on the model, if it’s a small plane/wing then you don’t need the power from a heavy servo, a small one would do. A more power servo is usually heavier.

VTX

If you are using 5.8GHz, and have no special requirement, this is a good and cheap VTX to have:

VTX: Eachine TS5828 with 90 degree adapter

Camera

You can get a camera as cheap as $16 and it will get the job done just fine. But if you want battery monitoring feature in the camera, which displays the battery voltage on your screen, and better image quality, you’d have to spend a bit more.

If you want the best possible image I’d recommend the Eagle 2. Check my review here.

I am also impressed by the Foxeer Falkor’s image quality, great for day time flying on a wing! you can check out my review here:

Motors and ESC

Hugely depends on the model, and what kind of efficiency and speed you want to achieve. There are hundreds of options out there, check build logs what other people are using for the model you want to build.

See my FPV wing beginner guide for more tips how to choose motor and props combo (coming soon).

Recommended Radio Transmitters

Since I am mostly using Frsky gear, I’d be recommending Frsky radios here only. I am sure other brands work too but I am not familiar with them well enough to comment. And I don’t think it’s a good idea to jump between brands because they all have their own eco-systems (different protocols and receivers), it’d cost a lot to move to a new system.

Recommended Radio Receivers

These are all Frsky receivers compatible with the above recommended transmitters.

For Wings without flight controllers? D4R-II is good enough, it has 4 PWM channels and you only need 3. It provides 1Km of range easily in the ideal environment.

Get the D4R-II from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2SBekii

If you need more PWM channels, or features like SBUS and SmartPort Telemetry, here are some other options:

  • X4R-SB: 3 PWM channels, 16-channel SBUS, SPort telemetry
  • X4R: 4 PWM channels, SPort telemetry
  • X6R: 6 channel PWM, 16-channel SBUS, SPort telemetry
  • X8R: 8 PWM channels, 16-channel SBUS, SPort telemetry
  • G-RX8: 8 PWM channels, 16-channel SBUS, SPort telemetry with vario built-in

If you want longer range on your 2.4GHz radio, the L9R is great which has 9 PWM channel as well as 16-channel SBUS output. But it doesn’t have telemetry.

Long Range?

For even longer range flying, you should be looking at Frsky R9M or TBS Crossfire. These systems should in theory give you up to tens of miles easily in the ideal condition.

2 thoughts on “Tools and Materials for Building FPV Wings”

  2. Tim

    Good list for beginners!
    However, you should be aware of the different types of servo testers (5V and high voltage 6-7V) also not all testers are compatible to digital servos.

    Reply ↓

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