Comment by Robert Dielenberg on July 11, 2011 at 4:42am

That's correct. We are only using the Telemaster as a test platform to prove the technology. With a high performance wing, folding propeller (cowling around engine for streamlining) we should be able to easily exceed 20+ hours. Aerosonde did a huge amount of work on their engine. That's a much bigger investment than we can afford; we will achieve the same results for much less!

Comment by MarcS on July 11, 2011 at 5:18am

OK, the Aerosonde motor is definetely too much... Scaneagle on the oher hand uses a quite similar motor like you do (3W 26cc I think) just outfitted with a smaller carburetor...

I´m just sceptical if you really win efficiency (fuel consumption per flight hour in the end...) in going up fast and gliding down. Your engine system is definetely heavier (starter + more powerful for climbing).

 

Comment by Alexey Burlakov on July 11, 2011 at 5:55am

I tend to agree with MarcS. While ability to take vibration-free photos is good, stopping-and-starting engine doesn't seem to me the optimal power-consumption scheme.

 

Unless you intend to use termals as source of power, constant-running engine on it's best-efficiency rpm and carefully chosen prop will allow you to fly longer on cruising speed than iterative start-stop climb-glide pattern.

 

Prop optimized for high-speed cruise will probably cause problems on take-off but this can be solved in several ways.

Comment by Paul Mather on July 11, 2011 at 7:15am

I think their remote start system is really slick. There's clearly a market for that in the R/C world...AP R/C doesn't seem like the right place for it but what do I know?

 

Still a very cool system.

Comment by Robert Dielenberg on July 11, 2011 at 7:39am

Don't forget you have to couple the engine off scenario with good image taking. We've also had a lot of experience with gyros and vibration. Not good. But when the engine is off you get good gyro readings. Has anyone else flown an MVVS? They're pretty good on fuel consumption and very smooth. Engine on/off in flight is very smooth. Running an engine continuously will not give us the image quality we want; on a good glide ratio wing with engine off we'll get excellent images that with high pixel count can be calibrated for different heights using the GPS. You can climb high quickly and glide down a long way. There's clearly a great benefit in that strategy. And we still haven't talked about the other markets that could use an engine starter on a small petrol engine ...

Comment by Paul Mather on July 11, 2011 at 7:46am

I'm certainly no expert on electronic hardware...software is more my thing. But a gyro is a dead-reckoning system. So wouldn't 5 minutes of hellish shaking throw the dead reckoning off whack....and then when the motor's off everything will be good, but it won't remember where flat and level was... I know in my playing with my ArduIMU board (this is the first production board from Jordi with the wrong filters installed) I get over saturation lights all the time just with minimal movement.

Comment by Robert Dielenberg on July 11, 2011 at 7:51am

That's true. What we do is recalibrate the gyro using accelerometers. It's tricky, but we got reasonable results. To this you add GPS data and horizon data from the infrared horizon detector. So it's all about data fusion.

Comment by Paul Mather on July 11, 2011 at 7:58am

Cool, what about telemetry data? :)

I'd be happy to add support to my GCS: http://code.google.com/p/happykillmore-gcs/

Comment by Alex Lee on July 11, 2011 at 8:57am

Didn't the fella who passed away a few weeks back use a super tuned carb in his plane that flew across the Atlantic? I'm sure he didn't stop and start the engine, he just used a better engine and carb. His plane wasn't that  big, perhaps 2 meter and it transmittied all sorts of data as it was flying.

Comment by Alex Lee on July 11, 2011 at 8:59am

Here's the article Link

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