Drone Builders Collective

Paladin Automation

Ready to take your drone builds from 'it flies' to 'it’s a masterpiece of engineering'? Welcome to the Drone Builders Collective.

This is the ultimate podcast for creators, makers, and remote-control pilots who want to master the science of flight. You do not need a fancy university degree to build incredible aircraft. You just need a workbench, a soldering iron, and a curiosity about how things work.

Every episode, we break down high-level aerospace engineering concepts into simple, actionable steps you can use on your next build. Join us as we explore:

Aerodynamic Principles
Aircraft Design
Robotic Functions

Whether you are assembling your very first pre-made kit or custom-coding an autonomous flight system from scratch, you have found your crew.

Subscribe now, grab your tools, and let’s build something amazing together.

Brought to you by Paladin Automation LLC.

https://paladinautomation.com/

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17 episodes
Avg 28 min
English

Episodes 17

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S3 · E5
Today · 28 min
Structures and Materials: Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The central concept in this lesson is feedback. A structural movement can change aerodynamic loading in a way that either opposes the movement or reinforces it.
S3 · E4
Today · 28 min
Structures and Materials: Aerospace Materials and Composite Structures
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The theme of this lesson is that materials are not universally good or bad. They are suitable or unsuitable for a particular combination of loads, temperature, environment, manufacturing methods, inspection needs, and cost.
S3 · E3
Today · 29 min
Structures and Materials: Failure, Fatigue, and Damage Tolerance
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The central idea of this lesson is damage tolerance. Rather than assuming that a structure will remain perfect forever, engineers ask what damage could occur, how it might grow, how much capability would remain, and how the damage would be discovered before it became dangerous.
S3 · E2
Today · 26 min
Structures and Materials: Loads, Stress, Stiffness, and Deformation
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! By the end of this lesson, you should be able to explain why a wing bends, why a thin panel can buckle, why a hole can become a critical detail, and why aircraft structures are tested under carefully chosen combinations of loads.
S3 · E1
Today · 27 min
Structures and Materials: Aircraft Structural Purpose and Architecture
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The wing must support the aircraft in flight. The landing gear must absorb touchdown forces. The fuselage must carry passengers and cargo while connecting the wings, engines, and tail. In a pressurized aircraft, the cabin must also contain air at a higher pressure than the atmosphere outside. All these jobs overlap. A piece of exterior skin may provide an aerodynamic surface, help resist bending, contain cabin pressure, and transfer force into neighboring structure. The idea that ties this lesson together is the load path: the route through which a force travels inside a structure.
S2 · E4
August 30 · 28 min
Aircraft Performance: Maneuvering, Loads, and Flight Envelopes
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson explains load factor, G forces, turning flight, accelerated stalls, maneuvering speed, gust loads, structural limits, and the flight envelope.
S2 · E3
August 30 · 29 min
Aircraft Performance: Range, Endurance, and Mission Energy
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Every aircraft carries a limited supply of usable energy. For most airplanes, that energy is stored as fuel. For electric aircraft and many drones, it is stored in batteries. For gliders, altitude and rising air provide much of the usable energy. For rockets, propellant carries both fuel and oxidizer, making the energy and mass trade even more extreme.
S2 · E2
August 30 · 32 min
Aircraft Performance: Takeoff, Climb, Cruise, Descent
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! A flight is not one continuous, unchanging condition. The airplane behaves differently on the runway, immediately after liftoff, during climb, at cruise altitude, during descent, and in the landing approach.
S2 · E1
August 30 · 32 min
Aircraft Performance: Thrust, Power, and Flight Condition
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson introduces the core language of performance: thrust required, thrust available, power required, power available, airspeed, groundspeed, density altitude, and the basic idea of excess thrust or excess power.
S1 · E8
August 23 · 31 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Compressibility and High-Speed Flight
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson explains Mach number, the speed of sound, shock waves, expansion waves, transonic flight, critical Mach number, drag divergence, Mach tuck, sweep, high-speed inlets, and nozzle flow.
S1 · E7
August 23 · 34 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Real Airflow and Aerodynamic Testing
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson explains how engineers deal with real airflow. We will cover boundary layers, laminar and turbulent flow, transition, separation, Reynolds number, wind-tunnel testing, flow visualization, computational models, flight testing, and uncertainty.
S1 · E6
August 23 · 31 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Aerodynamic Surfaces and Controls
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson explains flight control surfaces, how they work, why an aircraft needs more than a wing, and why the systems that move them are as important as the surfaces themselves.
S1 · E5
August 23 · 30 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Wing and Aircraft Geometry
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This lesson explains the major parts of wing geometry and how designers use them to shape aircraft behavior.
S1 · E4
August 23 · 31 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Drag and Aerodynamic Efficiency
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In the last lesson we learned how a wing creates lift: camber, thickness, angle of attack, pressure differences, and the turning of airflow all work together. But lift does not grow without limit. Push the angle of attack far enough, and something dramatic happens—the smooth airflow that was generating all that lift falls apart. That event is the stall, and understanding it is essential because most aviation accidents in small aircraft happen near a stall. This lesson explains what the stall really is, why it happens, how designers manage it, and how aircraft use movable surfaces called high-lift devices to fly safely and slowly for takeoff and landing.
S1 · E3
August 23 · 14 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Wings and Lift, Part 2 - Stall and High-Lift Devices
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In the last lesson we learned how a wing creates lift: camber, thickness, angle of attack, pressure differences, and the turning of airflow all work together. But lift does not grow without limit. Push the angle of attack far enough, and something dramatic happens—the smooth airflow that was generating all that lift falls apart. That event is the stall, and understanding it is essential because most aviation accidents in small aircraft happen near a stall. This lesson explains what the stall really is, why it happens, how designers manage it, and how aircraft use movable surfaces called high-lift devices to fly safely and slowly for takeoff and landing.
S1 · E2
August 23 · 17 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Wings and Lift, Part 1 - Airflow, Pressure, Momentum
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Lift is not a vague miracle. It is a force produced by a pressure difference over the wing, which itself comes from the wing's shape and angle of attack. A cambered airfoil produces lift at zero geometric angle; a symmetric one needs positive angle. Either way, the wing turns airflow, creating circulation and a pressure imbalance that yields an upward-directed component of aerodynamic force.
S1 · E1
August 22 · 32 min
Aerodynamics and Flight: Forces and Motion
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! This segment explains what the four forces are, how they change, and how they work together to determine an aircraft’s motion. It also introduces airspeed, density, altitude, and energy—the ideas that make the difference between an aircraft that merely flies and one that performs a useful mission.

Showing 1–17 of 17 episodes