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Chaos Filming Airbus Flying Indoors for TV!
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:19 The plan
03:12 Design and build
04:53 First disaster
07:57 Second failure
11:55 Rebuilding
14:40 They don’t fly
21:00 Roll camera!
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Vollständiger Text aus dem Video: Chaos Filming Airbus Flying Indoors for TV!
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Being asked to film a TV commercial for an airline sounds like a dream come true and in every respect it was an incredible experience, one which involved not eating for two days, three tubs of glue, tears and the "magic of cinema" It all started when I was approached by a production company who were filming a TV commercial for the Spanish airline Volotea. They needed to find, and fly, an Airbus A319 or A320, ¡indoors! Not only that, the models needed to actually look the part, with some degree of scale detail. Unfortunately airliners are not regularly modelled, and even those that could be found, were definitely not designed to fly indoors, but the idea of taking part in a TV commercial was motivation enough not to give up. So I contacted my go to guy, a walking RC encyclopaedia, Carlos Marquez, best known as CMJets for his kevlar tanks, and we included him in the project. We concluded that no "ready to fly" options were available, but Carlos had the solution. He remembered having seen a small, scratch-built Airbus, in a magazine years ago and what’s better, he remembered that the plan and build instructions were included with the magazine! Not only that, but he had always wanted to build it but never got round to it, he had even ordered the EDF motor units for both himself and a friend and they had been sitting on a shelf ever since the magazine came out. We went back to the production company, explained the situation, and they agreed that it would be best to build our own Airbus, based on the magazine drawings. Little did we know just how much of a nightmare this decision was going to become. Three models were commissioned and Carlos got to building, except the deadline was already for yesterday. We initially had around 4 weeks before the shoot, but we had used almost two in figuring out how to even make it happen, especially since we had also been asked to design a way to add RC to 10 of these, but more about that later… Carlos and I would struggle to be further apart yet still remain on the Spanish map, so unfortunately it was entirely up to him to do the actual building, installing of the electronics, and performing a few test flights all before crating the models up and shipping them to Barcelona where I would see the models for the first time, ready for filming. This also meant that when things started going wrong, we could discuss options on a videocall, but when it came to the actual work, he was on his own, and things did start going wrong, badly… Carlos soon discovered just how hard this project was. Especially due to needing to make perfectly cylindrical Depron foam tubes for the fuselage, and somehow shaping the nose section to look like the right version of Airbus, all while keeping it light. Multiple attempts resulted in multiple failures, and just a couple of days prior to filming, Carlos wanted (and tried) to pull out, claiming it was an impossible task, especially in the time provided, but this far in, failure was no longer an option, with the production company pointing out that hundreds of thousands of Euros where on the line, something we shrugged off as our budget for the build was tiny and we put it down to pressure tactics… In the end though, Carlos pulled through, well, mostly… On the evening before the day that the models needed to be shipped, after a few very long nights and nervous radio silence from Carlos, a photo came through, it was of two Airbuses, with nicely cylindrical foam fuselages, ultra thin 3D printed and painted nose sections. That good news photo was followed up with a not so good phone call though, two of the three models are done, but no electronics are installed, apparently that would now be up to me to do in Barcelona. This is where the real problems started though… Not only were the electronics not installed, but Carlos had misplaced or miscalculated what electronics we needed… Servos, wires and batteries I could pick up from my local hobby shop on route to Barcelona, but the motors, I was now told are so old, that they are not even brushless! Where on earth am I going to find brushed speed controllers in under a day?! No model shop I spoke to had anything brushed. Amazon came to the rescue though with next day delivery before 1pm. With the crisis averted, it was time to get a good night’s sleep, as the following day I would go to work, and in the afternoon (once Amazon had delivered) I would drive the 5-6 hours to Barcelona, ready to then have one day to build and test the models before filming. Did I say it was time for a good night’s sleep? I meant it was time for a phone call from the production company, the director had seen the photo of the two finished Airbus, and as somewhat of a plane junkie himself, he identified the models as an A318 with a much shorter body to wing ratio than either the A319 or A320 that the airline use. Several urgent phone calls later, Carlos casually drops into the conversation that even though he had adapted the A318 magazine plan to an A319, he also stretched the wingspan to help with the wing loading for flying indoors, increasing it by 33%!. Collection had already been postponed a couple of times, the shipment had to go in the morning, and rebuilding the fuselage or the wing to scale was impossible… so we agreed that Carlos would produce another couple of foam tubes, include them in the box, and it would just be something else I would have to do on arriving in Barcelona, basically splitting the current fuselage into three sections, and splicing the extra tubes in to make the fus 33% longer and more to scale. This all went down like a lead balloon, especially given that it wasn’t exactly our first failure of the shoot, rather the second… Remember I mentioned adding radio to 10 of these? They didn’t need to fly (obviously) but they did need some of them to have a scale landing gear added, and others needed to be driven like an RC car. The scale landing gear sounded easy, so Carlos 3D printed the gear ready to be attached, but as you will be guessing by now, it wasn’t that easy… Being so small, a truly scale gear was impossible to print. Carlos re-designed a slightly less scale version with thicker struts but to the same result, no matter how many times it was scaled up and printed. Trying with a friend’s resin printer solved the issue of the print quality, but the diameter of the strut even in a scaled up version was still so flimsy (and these are surprisingly heavy!) that they kept braking… So the static versions ended up getting an M3 bolt and super glued wheels… not exactly scale… But that’s not the worst, after weeks of trying for an RC version, trying everything from cannibalising miniature RC cars which then didn’t have the power to drive due to the weight, or using our standard radio equipment and two servos with the pots removed without avail, Carlos scrapped the whole RC version after weeks of testing only two days prior to filming; only for the Director (the one that likes aviation, used to fly RC and still has friends in the hobby…!) well, he had one of his friends knock up a working version in just a couple of hours, based on the exact same design Carlos had tried of the potless servos! To say we did not look good to the production company at this point was an understatement… Anyway, it’s almost filming day, the Amazon brushed speed controllers have arrived and I am heading to Barcelona. I pick up my good friend Julian who is going to be flying the second Airbus as they now want them both flying at once; Julian is not only a good friend and pilot, he is a brilliantly efficient electrician and problem solver, and based on all the work we have ahead of us to get both planes airborne, that problem solving and not being afraid to double down and get things done is going to be worth his weight in gold… On route, we stop at our local hobby shop, where after explaining our dilemma, agrees to us effectively emptying half their shop into the back of my car, on the promise that we will bring back anything we don’t use, and pay for everything we do. We took double the number of servos we planned to need, wires, extensions, heatshrinks, carbon rods, tubes, metal rods, glues, lipos in multiple sizes and all kinds of small "replacement" brushless motors, their brushless speed controllers and even his only two pairs of brushless EDF units in the shop, and they even seem to be about the right size. Confident we had everything we would need, we arrived at our hotel in Barcelona at close to 2am ready to get up early the next morning, have breakfast and head to the production company’s art studio for 10am when the courier would be dropping the models off. Once we were able to get into the box and pull the planes out, it was abundantly obvious that the current shape and size was way off, but we knew what we had to do so we just got on with it. Cutting the seemingly finished models into sections, ready to insert the extra fuselage tubes both in front and behind the wing in a proportion that would return the model to scale while also keeping the right CG. Somehow though the spare tubes from Carlos where smaller than the ones in the fuselage, so not only did we struggle to align everything up in the first place, but we also had to keep adding extra chunks in order to get the right diameter. The tube hiccup aside, the rest of the build went relatively well and in more or less good time. Sure, it was absolutely freezing in the metal shed, even having to put the heater’s gas bottle in front of the fire to prevent it from freezing, but come mid-day we had managed to extend both models and install all the electronics. The only thing missing was the landing gear as Carlos had run out of time for his printer to finish the job and instead sent the file to the production company to print on location, so for now we temporarily attached a couple of Depron skids for testing until the gear was ready. At this point we had to head to the sports hall where the filming was taking place, the production team were waiting eagerly to see a test fly and we had no time to spare, so we packed up the car, foregoing lunch, expecting a quick couple of test flights each, and then a well deserved steak in the evening at a restaurant that Julian had found while on route to the hall. After brief introductions and niceties, it was the moment of truth, time to fly the first Airbus and really kick start our nightmare. The magazine very clearly stated (all be it in French) that the brushed motors they used ran and flew well on a small 2S lipo, so we installed one into the model, checked that the surfaces all worked, checked that the motors worked, that the CG was as per the magazine, and we set the model on the ground ready for a first flight. I walk over to the center of the hall, powered up slowly, and absolutely nothing happens, not even a noise… it turns out that the Amazon brushed speed controller (and BEC!) failed catastrophically. Thankfully it did so before getting airborn, but this was definitely not the start we wanted… We explain everything to production, and that we will be replacing the speed controller for another one, and not long later we are ready to go again, this time having left the model connected for about 15 minutes making sure the new ESC doesnt fail the same as the first one did. I walk out again, slowly increase power, all seems to be working, keep increasing power, reach full power, and… the model never moved… so much for running on 2S…! Just in case though, we added some slippery tape to the skids for reduced friction but to the same end. All we could do was increase the battery to a larger 3S lipo, this time it made more noise, but each time it started wanting to move, the tiny prop / fan unit would spin off from the motor. After all, it is only a push on fit, and it has been sitting, assembled, on Carlos’s shelf since brushed motors where a thing and the plastic has obviously given way… we tried sanding the hub and glueing the fan in place but each time we reached a decent amount of thrust, PING! There goes the fan unit again… Time is going quickly and the production company are looking ever more concerned given that the first of the two Airbus is yet to even move under its own power, let alone fly… It was time to bite the bullet, and go for overkill. The small brushed GWS 50mm fans obviously were not going to work, and we had picked up from our local shop two sets of brushless fans, a 48mm set and a 52mm set. We obviously needed power so decided to install the 52mm set into the first Airbus, this meant swapping out the brushed ESC of brushless versions, re-wiring everything, but we were confident it would get us flying. Some time later, I was walking back to the centre of the hall, optimistic this thing was now finally going to fly. And I guess I was right, it did leave the ground, and with basically no control or stability, it did one circuit having knife edge’d its way down the far wall before coming down again. Production saw this as a win, it flew, but Julian and I knew we had big problems. It didn’t fly slowly, it had little to no control over direction, it was massively unstable and really didn’t want to fly… Never to be disheartened, we spent the next few hours trying and tweaking, making adjustments and alterations in the hope we could get this first of the two Airbus working right. Time after time, the single circuit laps where seeing a marginal improvement, but with such limited control, such an unstable airframe and such little space in which to fly it, each attempt was costing us more repairs. The production company left us to it by mid evening, and it was now coming up to 1am. We increased the surface area of the wing both on the leading edge and trailing edge, we increased the surface area of the elevator and rudder on their trailing edges, we have significantly oversized the ailerons, elevators and rudder, we changed the engine incidences, battery location, CG, we even glued in permanent flaps attached to the ailerons to try and gain airflow control. You must be thinking that after hours and hours of test flights and all these changes we must have it all sorted right?! It was marginally better than it started, and we could now usually limp around a single circuit before causing damage on landing. Each test was causing more and more damage, and we were plain out of ideas, we haven’t eaten since breakfast and yet are so focused and nervous that eating was still the last thing on our minds. It came at a time when we had to make the decision that it wasn’t getting any better and we would have to fight it as best we could when the camera was rolling. Once we reached that point though, we still had a second Airbus to replace the motors on, swapping out the fan units, upgrading the speed controllers and making all the alterations that we had done to the first one. By the time we did all of this it was past 3am, we didn’t see the point of test flying it as it had smaller motors than the first one, which hardly flew even on the bigger engines, plus we had to get back to the hall by 6am when shooting was scheduled to start. We headed back to the hotel for the couple of hours we had, not that we could sleep, just thinking of what would happen if the film crew couldn’t get the flying shots they needed, how we were going to fly the yet untested second model that had even smaller motors than the first, and how either of them will fly once the art department ply them both with vinyl stickers with Volotea’s livery on them?! Still with nothing in our stomachs, we arrived on set at 6am to discover that the "hundreds of thousands of euros" that this was costing, may not be an exaggeration after all. The equipment that had already been setup, the number of people, the stages that had been prepared for filming, the cinema camera with cine lenses, this shoot truly was a big deal; and we have one plane that doesn’t want to fly and one that likely won’t fly at all… We are greeted by the owner of the production company, the owner of the advertising company, even the owner of the airline! Forget the on site buffet breakfast which we still couldn’t face, if we could have run away, we would have done! The advert itself portrays the company’s Airbus’s life, starting off small, all the way through to their first flights, before finally embarking on passenger flights, and the day started off with filming the early scenes from the advert, and we need to control the miniature RC models in multiple scenarios. Our flights are to be recorded right after lunch which was held on site; once again though, with imminent failure looming, we tried to eat but couldn’t, and I ended up pulling out a foamy that I had with me, to actually fly something "decent" and subconsciously probably show everyone that we actually do know what we are doing, despite what it may seem up to this point! Thankfully, the director could see and appreciate how difficult it was to do what they where asking of us, and eventually decided that trying to get both in the air at the same time was going to be practically impossible; so we agreed that I would basically take off and fly as much as I could, as a single "long" shot that they could then cut down as required (rather than risk multiple short flights and crash landings…) Ready to go, we place the first Airbus at the beginning of the hall, this time loaded with the Volotea livery, and for the first time with the 3D printed landing gear and wheels. The set goes silent, the director shouts ACTION! And I increased power, unfortunately though the art department who installed the landing gear, used a super soft metal pin as a wheel axel, resulting in the wheel not being able to spin, turning the model sideways and aborting the takeoff. We tried this a few times, everyone is watching, until on one of the attempts, the Airbus stayed straight, and she took to the air. Unfortunately though, the non turning wheels seemingly offered more resistance than the skids used previously, and that resulted in using more of the hall than usual to take-off, which then resulted in not having enough room to turn in time before planting the model against the far wall, it was the final nail in the coffin and the first Airbus, the one that we knew did fly, the one that had the big engines, was out of action. At this point, I am resigned to failure, I am left with an untested model, with the same silly wheels that don’t work, and smaller motors than the one that could barely keep aloft. It obviously has little to no chance of taking off from the ground, and even if it does it likely won’t make the turn before flying into the same wall as the first one did. The only option we have is for Julian to hand-launch it, untested, from the top of the scoreboard, in the hope that even if we somehow could get one, single, solitary circuit, they may be able to edit it enough that it works. Very much an all or nothing moment, once again everyone goes quiet in expectation, Action! I increased power, Julian gently pushed the Airbus away, she wiggled, turned, and somehow completed a lap. At this point I am flying this thing until it falls out of the sky, keep that camera rolling because chances are this is going to be our only chance! Miraculously, it stayed in the air, lap after lap, after lap, with full rudder, full aileron, and full elevator to keep it turning; even if slowly it was sliding more and more off centre, before eventually clipping the wall but even that couldn’t stop it!! I idled back and landed as best I could, to a roar or applause and cheers, followed by the entire crew coming over to shake our hands, it was hugs all round. Me? I almost dropped my radio the second the Airbus touched down, and spent the next 10 minutes crying, the relief, the satisfaction, the achievement, unbelievable; we had actually managed it. Somehow, despite all the issues and not having eaten or slept for two days, the plane had flown at what was very much its very last chance. The director subsequently pulled me aside, and with his arm around me concluded his appreciation for all that we had done, closing with "the magic of cinema – its real". I don’t know if it was magic, or a miracle, I am just so pleased it worked out, and boy do we have a story to tell! And this is still the short version! The end result, makes it all look easy, even if it does last barely two seconds on screen. After allowing the nerves to calm down, we sat back and enjoyed watching how the final shots of the advert where filmed. I will include a link to the full advert on Volotea’s YouTube channel below Big thanks especially to my friend Julian for joining me on this adventure, I couldnt have got it all done without you. Carlos, we will have words when I see you my friend, but thank you anyway for the half finished models.
Für den Inhalt des Videos ist der VideoCreator: Martin Pickering verantwortlich.
#Chaos #Filming #Airbus #Flying #Indoors
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