Posted by Bret McDanel on March 30, 2009 at 3:18am
For various personal amusement and search and rescue applications, I am looking for an airframe that has a reasonably long flying time, something on the order of 1-4 hours, with bonus points for higher :)I want something easily portable, fast to set up and tear down, can glide/autorotate to safety if there is a failure.I had thought of a few different types of frames that might achieve this, either a ram air parachute or a hang glider airfoil type wing, and only have the motor on to gain altitude, just glide for some of the time, while looking over a given area.For the hang glider airfoil the Cyber Defense Systems cyberbug is similar to what I was thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4klLBxGfdcWhat are peoples opinions of these types of airframes? Would a different airframe meet the initial design goals and provide better characteristics?I am particularly fond of those types of airframes because they are more portable (fold and go) and do not have large fixed wings that make them more bulky during transport, however I am open to all suggestions.
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I should have added that the payload of the system has to support a few pounds of equipment, between cameras, telemetry systems, fuel/batteries, and possibly other misc gear (radio repeater for example), as that is critical to selecting a proper airframe.
Replies
if you don't like the idea of fixed wings, have you looked at gyroplanes/gyrocopters ?
http://home.att.net/~imsofaman/wba.htm
Thanks