Hi Matt. About the RQ 7 shadow replica (actually inspired by AeroSonde): thank you for the "amazing". The fuselage is built with fiberglass made out of a mould, the wings are of styrofoam covered with balsa and Oracover film. Tail booms are actually two graphite arrows. Ruddervators are built with solid balsa covered with Oracover. Propulsion is obtained with an Axi 2820 brushless+ 80 Amps controller and 4S1P LiFePO4 Batteries. It's still a work in progress, anyway, wings are undergoing major modifications at the moment.
Regards

Matt,
the mould is the result of almost one year of work. It was (and still is) my first experiment with moulds, so it suffers from a number of defects, both by design and by construction. With hindsight I wouldn't do it again: a mould makes sense only if one's going to start a series production. Regarding flying behavior: I must admit I flew it only twice (too scared of destroying two years of work), anyway it has a low stall speed, it pulls up a little when increasing throttle and tail surfaces have poor authority when used as rudder. On the last landing the struts that join booms to the wings broke, so now it's waiting some repair.

I'm doing one last test build later tonight, then I'll post it with my AP source. It would be relatively trivial to make it work with the Ardupilot SW.

hi matt

how many batteries do you have in your setup ?
what is your flight time ?
max all up weight ?

im busy with a setup on my mq 9 that is being shipped over at the moment
ill have a complete ardu pilot, dosd, xbee 868 setup .
i need atleast 1 hour flight time.

can you help with some advice please .

thank you

thanks for the reply
what is your mah rating on the 4 cell pack
i intend doing it all on 3 cell system i have a scorpion 40-15 1090kv with 70Amp speedo
i wanted to run 2 * 3 cell 6000mah in parallel for power system
1 * 3 cell 2650mah for dosd and video 1watt 2.4g
1 * 2 cell 1800mah for radio, and ardu pilot

not sure what my MMAUW will be for take off

can share some input ?
please

hey matt are you doing auto landings and takeoffs with yours what setup are you running

are you able to help me with my setup please.

and maybe share your code.

 

thank you 

Hey Matt, I was wondering if you were in Toronto these days, I'm trying really hard to make my quad fly with no success, everything works perfectly: GPS lock, xbee, radio modes, battery cells measurement, ESC calibration, compass, sonar.... I'm stuck at PID's, the copter takes off in a very sluggish way, no matter how I tweak the PID's I always end in a crash, so I thought I might as well pay someone for their time and save money on propellers. (Also save time in balancing them)

Please let me know if you are available. I am at Dufferin and Bloor, but if you want I can take all my gear to you. My phone number is 905 616 8482 (not long distance; Mississauga). As I said, I'm willing to pay for your time. All I want is to have the quad flying.

Please help me out!

 

Esteban Díaz

 

Dear Matt,

I am new in the UAV area. I am building the MQ-9 Reaper which I just got from hobby king. I also ordered the full Ardupilot Mega Electronic Set.

I found the link you made for your pictures and thanking you a lot for that. I do have some questions.

1)      Did you finish your setup for that model?

2)      Could you please let me know where you placed the batteries (4 cell for the engine, and 2 3cells for video and autopilot.)  in the fuselage, since it looks very tight for me?

3)       Could you please share with me your Ardupilot Mega setup.

Many thanks

Avi