closing this thread

MarioSpeedwagon August 20, 2015 at 9:24pm

Sorry, I'm on board with what Jordan said. It's a little frightening that you don't have experience with any aspect of this project, and you're planning to begin with a large scale aircraft.

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John Church August 20, 2015 at 4:51pm

Hmmm... needs to float... Are you firing up an island delivery firm? I could swear that there have been full-scale conversions posted here. I recall someone adding Ardupilot, but pilot still in control. That still doesn't address your long range telemetry and control though.

Jordan Campbell August 20, 2015 at 3:59pm

I think you might have been a bit hasty posting this request for a complete build without doing some research yourself

Wanabigaplane August 20, 2015 at 3:44pm

A place to start.......

http://www.seeop.com/production_aircraft/p10b/index.html

Ben August 20, 2015 at 2:50pm

Can you tell more about your project ? It looks like you're serious about it and don't consider it a simple theoretical exercise ?

It's clear that doing something like this in any country is as illegal as can be. An aircraft this size will trigger alerts on all radars along its way and in many countries it will be considered as a terrorist drone carrying a bomb and will be downed probably with massive media coverage.

I would be interested to understand the objective and the country, what's the payload, is it for civil, humanitarian, military or other purposes, I hope it's not drug smuggling :) ?

Aside from the legal issues, you probably underestimate the complexity, especially if you don't have experience with rc sized autonomous planes or with full size planes. The learning curve is steep and goes through several crashes.

I don't want to discourage you and maybe your objective is a very good one, but at this moment it looks completely surrealist. Maybe are you a journalist or writer trying to put a figure on how a terrorist could plot a remote bombing ? Just joking...

Martin Z August 20, 2015 at 2:29pm

You are looking into definitely a gas powered machine, highly illegal by FAA BTW..

Michal Rus August 20, 2015 at 8:23am

my suggestion, if it's really necessary to carry 40kg payload, you have only few VTOL options left, most are military grade, expensive and max calculated range around 600km at 100km/h cruise speed. And obviously this is only theory. So look here :

http://saab.com/air/airborne-solutions/unmanned-aerial-systems/skel...

http://www.schiebel.net/Products/Unmanned-Air-Systems/CAMCOPTER-S-1...

Or coaxial experiment here http://coaxhelicopters.com/coax-unmanned/

Generally you will achieve better price/value ratio with fixed-wing drone such as Arcturus etc.

Ben August 19, 2015 at 10:03pm

It's not the usual type of drone found in this forum, for this type of performance it will take something looking like a full size aircraft. Probably a fixed wing aircraft with wingspan of 8 meter and gas engine.

I don't think an electric propulsion would be currently possible for that range, nor a quadcopter type.

Have a look at light aircrafts like this one which can easily reach 1000 km, knowing that you'll need something smaller and cheaper.

Or a better example would be this one : it's a one-seater with a range of 278 km (with 19 liters of fuel). If you replace the pilot (100 kg) with fuel and the payload, you'll get 278 + 278 * ((100-40) / 19) = 1155 km. The price is around $45.000, of course an autonomous version would be more expensive.

But this is just thinking out loud to give an idea of the size and price, in practice the main barrier will be legal, I think you'll need a lot of authorizations and certifications to build or fly something like this.

The best is to check with large drones manufacturers.