This Star Wars Inspired Millennium Falcon Drone is Awesome

Ok, there must be something going on in France that we can’t quite comprehend, but it makes the members of the local drone scene really innovative and plain awesome. Being huge Star Wars fans probably also helps. Remember the Star Wars Inspired Drone Race? It was one of the most popular topics of last year (along with FPV racing in general) created by the amazing Airgonay team in France. That video is now close to 1.4 Million views.

This time a Youtube user by the name Olivier C posted yet another great piece of #droneporn (as in cloudporn or foodporn) Yesterday. Olivier from Grenoble recreated the iconic Millennium Falcon by building a foam hull for his DIY quad he calls the “Prophecy 335”. The hull itself makes the aircraft a bit clumsy and I would probably not dare to fly it on a windy day, but boy is it totally epic or not? So if you are like me, having dreamt of flying the Millennium Falcon across galaxies, you need to watch this video and check further down if you want to build one yourself too.

How Olivier Did It

The material he used to build the hull is and Ursa XPS insulant made of expanded polystyrene of 20 and 30mm thickness. It’s heavier than classic EPP, but also much stronger, and easy to cut clean. Also, it’s almost the proper color of the spaceship, says Olivier in this Imgur post where you can see the entire process.

This how he planned out and managed to balance the Millennium Falcon drone in “theory”, before building.

Millennium Falcon “Blue Print”

The main parts are cut out from the foam based on printed pattern sheets assembled and attached from A4 size parts.

After cutting the main parts, Olivier placed the quad under the hull. On the left side, you see the “host” on the left, that’s Olivier’s 335mm quad which is a custom build also. It’s normally flying FPV and carries a GoPro, but for this project he had to  remove the camera, the video transmitter and the GPS antenna to offset some of the extra weight resulting in 800 grams for the quad, and between 300 and 350 grams for the Falcon hull.

The hull locks into the frame of the quad at the front.

Next steps including but not limited to: assembly, testing paint colors and of course adding the epic front lights and back LED strips to imitate the thruster:

The 2 lights at the front were connected serial so each gets only 6V instead of 12V as it was really bright, Olivier had no plan to fly the Falcon in pitch dark.

The top LED strip is blue, bottom is white. Here is what Olivier said about the planning of the thruster: “Plan is to have the LEDs reflect against the top and bottom curves. Blue is on top because I expect this one to be dimmer than the white. I’ll maybe add aluminium tape so it reflects more, will see.”

Let there be light :).

Adding some more parts, applying paint, some test flights in the garage and the Millennium Falcon drone was ready for its maiden flight.

My bet is that the Millennium Falcon drone video will be even more popular than the Airgonay one as it snatched almost 90K views in less than a day and will probably be over a 100K by the time you read this.

As a bonus, here is a quick video from Olivier on assembly and testing:

Olivier’s next plans it to build the TIE Fighter:

Sounds like a plan to me! Well, watch, enjoy and get some inspiration to build your own special aircraft and help shedding some much-needed positive light over our hobby!

Source: Olivier’s Imgur post

Kennedy Martinez

kennedy@dronethusiast.com

Kennedy Martinez is a resident writer who joined Dronethusiast at the beginning of 2019. She has years of experience reviewing drones and other tech products. When it comes to flying drones, Kennedy loves the ability to create artistic videos from a unique point of view. Kennedy enjoys researching new drones and other exciting products that are available to consumers which is why she is committed to creating the best buyer's guides for our readers.