Comment by ArileyS on May 26, 2012 at 3:09pm

Very cool. Did you have the prototype machined from EPO blanks or what service/process did you use?

Comment by wayne garris on May 26, 2012 at 7:15pm

they machined it . Here is who is making it http://www.airborne-models.com/ they will be molding these if everything works

Comment by James masterman on May 26, 2012 at 9:28pm

Looks nice. When do you expect it to go into production ( ie. when can I buy one!).
If I can get 1 hr flight times, carry fpv gear and ardupilot and deal with wind, it looks like my perfect airframe.

James

Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on May 26, 2012 at 11:06pm

Well done Wayne that's no mean feat to get to this point, very impressed.

Comment by wayne garris on May 26, 2012 at 11:07pm

james,

  Thanks , it has an rg-15 airfoil for good wind penetration and with the cfd work i did i estimate the drag to be about .8 lbs @ 60 mph . it features a pan and tilt for a small video camera in the nose and a spot for a vertical looking digital pocket camera and doors that open under it for an unobstructed view powered by a cheap retract servo .

here is the time frame 

~june 15 receive  prototype and begin  test flights

~ june 20 begin kickstarter project

~sept 19 kickstarter project ends ,order kits from factory , order ships in 100 days

~nov 27 order ships 

~dec 18 container arrives 

after that i will be shipping them asap

Good news , I just received word we were able to get the price down to $180 usd ! im going to change my original post to reflect.

Comment by Carl La France on May 26, 2012 at 11:34pm

I like the forward looking camera lenses cover to protect the camera on landing and the drop down belly cam What type of propulsion system  and finished flying weight are you  aiming for with all the goodies installed ? It looks like

a plane for the masses  and should be very forgiving to fly Excellent

Comment by wayne garris on May 27, 2012 at 12:03am

here are some specs http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/techpod-epo-foam . i use a Epower 10 and 3 s 5000 mah

for 45 minutes safe flight with camera gear -osd -tx with its predecessor . my original techpods had room for  11 inch prop this has room for a 12 and its much slicker so flight time should go up some . I found my previous protos to be highly stable and hands free when trimmed yet not suffering from as much crosswind roll and up pitching in headwind associated with your "trainer" type with dihedral and high CL foils . I gave it 2.5 deg washout for drag reduction and tip stall prevention . finished all up ? under 4.4 lbs ;-)

Comment by Andrew Rabbitt on May 27, 2012 at 5:14am

Nice work Wayne!  I hope your flight testing goes well.

Did you do any correlation work between XFLR5 and your CFD work?  How well did the XFLR5 calculations you originally did on the old Techpod correlate with the real-life flight characterstics of the first prototypes?

BTW, $40k for tooling and the first run sounds quite steep to me.  I have been guestimated locally here in Melbourne, Aus up to circa $25k for EPO tooling, but perhaps it's due to the size of your beast, which to be fair, is quite large! :)  I think the guys I talked to sub-contracted their tooling to China though.

Comment by wayne garris on May 27, 2012 at 11:11am

andrew ,

    xflr5 uses aethena vortex lattice  method , its best suited for lift and moments of low Rn airfoils , it doesn't do drag well or high Rn. i have used it over the years with many planes and find it very close to test flights . predicted speeds and stall point are always very close to test data .

   SWF  uses navier stokes. its better suited for drag estimation in low Rn ranges . mostly because of the calculation time . an xfkr5 run may take  20 min to iterate 30 calcs at 30 different AoAs , SWF takes 10 hrs for 1 iteration at 1 AoA . I found it very accurate but very time consuming . and yes i did find correlation where things are known to be accurate .

 ill throw you a PM about the tooling . the 40k also includes the dome and other parts all packaged in a box ready to go .  

Comment by Andrew Rabbitt on May 28, 2012 at 5:12pm

Thanks Wayne.  I knew CFD was computationally intensive, but I didn't realise that they would take that long!  I am playing with OpenFOAM to hopefully eventually do some runs on my airframe designs, but so far the pre-processing is a steep learning curve.  I'd buy SWF if I was made of money - I may still do if I can monetise it somehow.  I presume you consult with it or work in a CFD environment?

re: the tooling, I guess you're getting a bunch more than I first thought so $40k isn't so bad in that case.  I'm interested to learn how you get on with your commercialisation. Do keep us all informed.

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