Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by tshado on June 20, 2011 at 2:18pm

HI Ludivico

Congratulations for your DIY solar ariplane LUSA
I hope to hear from you soon and get more informations about your plane

Best regards

Jean-Claude

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Permalink Reply by Ritchie on June 20, 2011 at 2:40pm

Sweet project more information would have most of foaming at the mouths in excitement.

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on June 21, 2011 at 2:31am

help needed here!! http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/i-need-a-pwm-output-controlled

 

pics coming this weekend :)

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on August 1, 2011 at 5:14am

WE DID IT!!!! 142 MINUTES OF AUTONOMOUS, MOSTLY SOLAR, FLIGHT!!!!!

 

There is also a big margin of improvement, since in those 2 and a half hours it climbed from very low to almost out of sight 5 times, it was very windy and the plane was slightly out of balance.

Photos coming soon!

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Permalink Reply by Nick on August 7, 2011 at 8:46pm

Could you give us some more detailed specifications about your plane such as what escs, motors, other parts you used.

 

Thanks,

Nick

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on August 8, 2011 at 3:45am

Sure dude! We used an eco18 esc (hacker rebranded but I think its the same) with a hacked b20 15l + 4:1 maxxon gear planetary reduction. rx is futaba fasst, ardupilot is 2.6 w thermopiles.

 

Fuselage is fiberglass with carbon reinforcements, wing is carbon+balsa+fiberglass on the front part and its covered with oralite indoor.

 

Grade B solar panels with sharp edge (Yes, budget was VERY tight) without glass enclosure (only back part covered with polyurethane foam) are glued on carbon tube, left almost  floating in the wing.

They are connected is a 14s 2p scheme, giving us about 4.5A at 5.3 V under load in an average nice day.

 

Guys I have been so "absent" about details beacuse the plany sadly suffered a crash (my bad! too much university library and too few airfield this year!) and we are working hard to get it fixed in a matter of days! I guarantee you a big update in 10days or so =)

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Permalink Reply by Nick on August 8, 2011 at 10:24am

Thanks, I really want to try this out. Where did you order most of your parts? What was your guys' budget? What was your total weight?

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on August 8, 2011 at 4:06pm

We got the fibers and the resins from shaller composites (idk how it spells, the airframe was actually built by my project mate), the motor+balsa+ding`n`dents from our local hobby supplier and the battery+esc from another sponsor. Panels are from ebay but now there are already better performing things at decent prices so i cant really help there.budget was about 800 euro (1100 usd).

 

Designing the airframe is not an easy task at all, you need to be good with profili2 and xflr5, making such a big plane to fly with under 30W is really hard =)

Since many people are intrested in this project we may release all the documentation with a CC NON commercial license, I`ll discuss this with my firend soon ;)

 

Stay tuned!

Cheers ma friends :)

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Permalink Reply by Ralph Bell on September 9, 2011 at 1:03pm

Congratulations, that is pretty impressive. I was wondering if your solar panels would be more efficient if you could somehow manage to mount them flush. Even though your outer cover is clear, you are probably losing some efficiency to reflection at certain angles. I'm not sure, but just a thought.

 

Keep up the good work. It sounds like with some adjustments/upgrades your flight times will quickly become even more impressive. I look forward to hearing your updates. 

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on September 9, 2011 at 4:04pm

Hi! You are right, the covering is incredibly transapernt but at some angles (sadly, even 25 deg. is enough) the reflections gets very high... Only the guys working on Solar Impulse managed to make a covering film that doesnt have this problem but its a well kept secret. To achieve such a high efficency there was no room for big flat surfaces on the wings and putting them inside was our only bet.

Now the sun in Italy is already pretty lame (do not forget that northen italy is 45N from the equator) so well probably manage to see if our new improvements do work but we`ll have to wait for next year to pull something like 3 hours or more ;)

You`ll be able to see al the details of our project in its public release and share your thoughts with us in a few weeks!

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Permalink Reply by Ludovico Antonio on September 9, 2011 at 8:09am

Ok guys I added a slideshow with some pics in the main post! =) Also, I need hints in how to tune autopilot to fly an extreme light plane, 1.6 kg, in a strong wind considering its 2.3m wingspan. Tnks!!

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Permalink Reply by bGatti on September 9, 2011 at 11:22pm

Ludo,

I notice each of your main Solar cells is shadowed slightly by the wing struts.

I believe if you research Solar cell best practice, that even a little bit of shade on a cell will cause the shaded part of the cell to consume energy and bring down the rest of the cell.

Cells must be placed flush and at the same angle so they don't shadow each other IIRC.

 

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