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FLYING Leaf Blower RC airplane Mk2

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A leaf blower just became a working RC jet, and it actually flies.

Peter Sripol has spent years building scratch-made aircraft out of foam board and household parts, but his second crack at a leaf-blower-powered plane is the one that finally worked. Released on November 13, 2019, “FLYING Leaf Blower RC airplane Mk2” shows Sripol swapping out his original gas-powered blower for a lightweight electric unit, essentially turning a Home Depot tool into a giant ducted fan. The result is a foam airframe that takes off, banks, and cruises under nothing but leaf-blower thrust.

• The Mk1 attempt failed because the gas-powered blower was too heavy relative to its thrust output to sustain flight.
• For the Mk2, Sripol mounted an electric, battery-powered leaf blower to function as an oversized electric ducted fan (EDF), pulling air through the intake and firing it out the exhaust for total propulsion.
• The video passed 2.3 million views within two weeks of release, drawing attention across RC and DIY communities for the plane’s maneuverability and its EDF-jet-like sound.

Fixing the Mk1’s Thrust Problem

Sripol’s first leaf-blower plane never got off the ground the way he wanted. A gas-powered blower has plenty of raw air-moving power, but strapped to an airframe it’s dead weight fighting against itself — too heavy for the thrust it produces to overcome. That thrust-to-weight mismatch is the same math that governs any RC build, whether it’s a foam board glider or the kind of purpose-built electric platform seen in the Jetson One personal aircraft. For the Mk2, Sripol solved it the obvious way: ditch the gas motor entirely and go electric and battery-powered, cutting weight while keeping the blower’s core intake-and-exhaust design intact.

Turning a Household Tool Into an EDF

An electric ducted fan works by pulling air through an intake, accelerating it with a spinning fan, and firing it out a narrow exhaust nozzle — which, as it turns out, is functionally identical to how a leaf blower moves air. Sripol leaned into that overlap, mounting the electric blower to a foam board fuselage and letting its stock intake and high-velocity exhaust do all the propulsive work, with no separate propeller or turbine involved. The rest of the build was standard scratch-build fare: foam board wings, servos, and a receiver bolted onto an airframe designed around the blower’s shape and weight.

Crashes Before the Clean Flights

Getting the plane airborne wasn’t a one-take success. Sripol went through multiple crashes and balance problems during testing as he worked out where the center of gravity needed to sit relative to a blower-shaped fuselage that doesn’t behave like a normal RC motor pod. Trimming the airframe eventually got him there, and the video’s back half shows sustained, controlled flight loops that would have been impossible with the heavier Mk1 setup.

Enthusiasts flagged the same detail over and over: strapped to a wing, the leaf blower doesn’t sound like a leaf blower anymore — it sounds like an EDF jet.

Factors Driving Viral Content Success

The appeal wasn’t subtle — a hardware-store tool turned into a flying machine is the kind of build that travels well outside the usual RC crowd. Within two weeks the video cleared 2.3 million views, with RC hobbyists and general DIY viewers alike zeroing in on how maneuverable the plane looked given its improvised propulsion. It’s the same instinct that fuels interest in oddball flight builds generally, whether that’s a scratch RC project or something closer to actual long-range flying, like the kind of trip covered in Flying 240 Miles In 22 Minutes.

Sripol’s channel has built a reputation on exactly this kind of stunt — take an object nobody thinks belongs in the sky and prove it can fly anyway — and the Mk2 leaf blower plane is one of the cleanest examples he’s put out. Whether a Mk3 shows up, and what household appliance gets strapped to foam board next, is anyone’s guess.