Powered Sail Plane Design for UAV

Hi

 

The picture below is of the sunseeker powered glider that has been developed by a small team of glider enthusiasts

It has solar power all over its wings and the propeller is at the rear of the craft pushing the plane.

It is rather a different design and I was wondering if any one has seen a UAV design simlar?

This design has several advantages the main one being the prop is clear of any camera view and being a glider/sailplane it can go silent when needing to take images where silence is golden.

sunseeker171717.jpg

 

 

It is a design I would like to model on and try out one day and see if it can do what the full size version can do.

Powered take off and landing

The tips of the wings drop during taxiing to support the plane

The solar panels charge a series of batteries. but the designer says he gets 30 mins out of the battteries.

 

 

Can anyone see any problems with this design?

 

thanks

 

Peter

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Replies

  • That's a good question. In my sleep dazed state when I wrote this I omited the site of the real craft.

     

    http://www.solar-flight.com.

    There is a series of videos of it on flight, the motor I was thinking is in the rear of the main body judging by the pictures. My first thought was that torque on the fuselage must be huge no matte where the motor is placed, but seeing it fly, they must have overcome that somehow.

    But when I saw the motor, it could well be in the tail.

    Now that I look at it again I think it is in the tail.So the torque on the fuselage must be quite a significant force to contend with?

    P

     

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