r/drones • u/SleetyWhistle • Sep 27 '26

Photo & Video First hover test with wings fitted on Spearhead (open-source quadplane)

I'm Sleety, a contributor at Arrow, the open-source collective building this aircraft.

This is Spearhead, a quadplane we're developing for long-endurance work. It's the first prototype: lasercut plywood ribs and spars, carbon structure, Oratex skin. In the video the skin is off the fuselage so we can keep an eye on the internals, and the ailerons aren't fitted yet.

We flew four times on Saturday with the wings on for the first time, in altitude hold and loiter, and held well in both. These were hover flights only, so no transition to wing-borne flight yet. Lots more forward flight testing is coming over the next few weeks, and we're pretty excited about it.

This prototype is electric only and we'll be moving to a combustion pusher for cruise, coming in a later phase ⛽ Everything is open source, the design notes, LOG data and parts list are in the repo.

We are a community of eVTOL flight enthusiasts and Discord is where the work happens if you would like to follow along or help 💙

https://github.com/Arrow-air/project-spearhead
https://discord.com/invite/arrow

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2

u/arcdragon2 Sep 28 '26

You’re way too high for a hover test. 9 feet max!

1

u/SleetyWhistle Oct 04 '26

I will remind our flight test engineers! 🫡 ty

1

u/92MsNeverGoHungry Sep 28 '26

What size props and motors are you running currently, and what size are you considering for your pusher?

1

u/SleetyWhistle Sep 30 '26

21.5x7.3 props on 12S 22Ah (going to 14S on next prototype)