Twinstar

This was the first Paparazzi airframe.

It is made of polystyrene foam and sold by Multiplex for about 90 euros (including motors). It has very tolerant flight characteristics.

It has a wingspan of 1.4m, weights 1.3kg and is powered by two speed-400 electric motors.

We use a 3S2P 2000mAh lipo battery pack as single power source.

With this setup, airspeed is around 12m/s and flight duration over 45 minutes. It flies level with 40% throttle.

A big advantage of this airframe geometry is that propellers are well protected during landing. The nose of the plane is also available for mounting forward looking sensors (like camera or pitot).

The main drawbacks is that it needs two motors, so that if you want to go for expensive brushless, it will be twice more expensive (that is why we sticked to speed400).

This plane is solid as a rock and can endure a large number of "hard landings" - I hate the word crash :) . Just reinforce the center of the wings with glass fiber and epoxy if you intend to do autonomous pylon racing :) This is the part that has proved the weakest.

It is very easy to hand launch and has proved to a be the perfect workhorse.

If you are a paparazzi beginner, we highly recommend this plane. First you will be able to use our settings. Second, it is is big and flies slowly. It will let you more time to play with settings before it looks like a point.

The first twinstar on its tripod (there have been two others since).

v1.2.1 ctl board mounted in the twinstar (GPS on left).

On top of rudder, the infrared sensor (genuine FMA in this picture) has a panoramic view.