Posted by Jason Robert on December 1, 2008 at 2:04pm
Hello everyone. I am a new member to your group and I love what you have done here. I am hoping to build a Drone that can go out and provide some fishing assistance to my fishing charter buddies. They want a birds eye view of the waters to look for tell tale signs of so good fishing areas. So the big issues are loiter time and inflight control. Some of these charters last over 10hrs so that is a very long time first and then we need to be able to send the Drone to different areas based on the results it is gathering. I need to send a live video feed to the boat as we are flying. Does anyone know how to do this and if your autopilot will do this? Thanks for your help.Jason
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
jason ,
10hrs flight time is not crazy , the company i work for produces large gas burning uavs . with the right engine our large uav can loiter for 20hrs . we have a smaller 50cc sized aircraft that should be able to fly 9 to 12 hrs at a time . all this can be done . its mostly a question of will . and as far as video down streaming , how far are we talking? our uavs are equipped with a generator and a cloud cap AP. feel free to send me a massage if you want to talk.
wayne
Wow, thats quite an ambitious idea, I do all my testing out to sea as I live right on the clifftop and I can vouch for it being a very hostile area for a uav, one where I would not use a flying wing and certainly not one of 16 footspan! Remember, the more wing area, the more drag, more drag=more power=more fuel etc,etc, what you will have to find is a ballance, but any wing with a span of 16" will need serious amounts of power, especially upwind, I had to modify some small Japanese four stroke glow engines to run on regular pump gasoline to get the required endurance, electric motors are not up to the task so save your money!
Replies
10hrs flight time is not crazy , the company i work for produces large gas burning uavs . with the right engine our large uav can loiter for 20hrs . we have a smaller 50cc sized aircraft that should be able to fly 9 to 12 hrs at a time . all this can be done . its mostly a question of will . and as far as video down streaming , how far are we talking? our uavs are equipped with a generator and a cloud cap AP. feel free to send me a massage if you want to talk.
wayne
Or you will be spending as much as a boat for a single aircraft.
Very interesting UAV task though.
Camera would have to be flipping good to pick anything out from a height that could relay video back any distance.
I'm immediately thinking why not put cameras on bouys at fixed points and have them transmit back. You could easily run them on solar power.
Guess its a function of area to cover.
Perhaps then fish finding radar on lots of bouys making a wide area picture.
Can those radars talk to each other??? If so ditch the poles and several boats could make a wide area picture.
I bet somebody here is clever enough to make that happen.
G