Star Wars Fan Creates Speeder Bike Quadcopter

Via Malezine.com:

I got into FPV (First Person Video) multi-rotor racing a few months ago. The fast, low level flying instantly reminded me of the Endor chase scene from Return of the Jedi. This project was an obvious choice to combine my interest and experience in RC (remote control) flight with my love of Star Wars stuff. I like always having some strange project on the work bench and this one was next in line, an attempt to build a version of the Imperial Speeder Bikes from the movie that I could “get into” and fly around myself.

The body is from a 1:6 scale (or 12 inch) Hasbro Power Of The Force series Speeder Bike (if you do a deep nerd dive on wookieepedia its a “74-Z Speeder Bike” or “Imperial Speeder Bike”.) Hasbro did a ton of re-releases of toys from the 80’s (using mostly the same molds) when they released the special edition films in ’97. The particular one I have has a 1999 stamp on it. It was re-released several times with Scout Trooper, Luke, and Leia versions. The old Hasbro toys are cool in that they are generally pretty light/hollow (plastic=$), and easy to take appart. Also while most of the shell is styrene, the skinny bits, that a kid would be most likely to break are made out of what I think is vinyl. So while it looks pretty delicate, it’s actually a pretty durable model for the weight. You can still pick them up on eBay for around $50.

All the details including a slide show and an amazing video of the finished piece in flight can be found HERE.