Star Wars nerds: what’s the best way to evade an Imperial scout trooper on a speeder bike? If you answered “obviously, a speeder bike of your own,” you’re obviously a Star Wars nerd. It’s pretty much the toy we’ve wanted since we first saw Episode IV: A New Hope, but now, thanks to the power of a drone-style quad rotor—and the brains of Make: contributor Adam Woolworth—not only can you build your very own flying, remote-controlled 74-Z Speeder Bike, you can see what its action figure rider sees in first-person.
“I like always having some strange project on the work bench and this one was next in line,” Woolworth says, “an attempt to build a version of the Imperial Speeder Bikes from the movie that I could ‘get into’ and fly around myself.” We’re definitely into the result. Manuvered by a 3DRobotics PixHawk controller, a combination camera/video transmitter from Spektrum, FatShark Dominator video goggles with a security camera DVR, an original Star Wars Speeder Bike from Hasbro’s 1990s Power Of The Force figure series, you could be recreating the Endor forest chase scene in, well, as long as it takes to learn CAD, construction, and basic aviation techniques. Here’s to hoping George Lucas is out there reading this: we want one (in a box). Thanks.
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