I am looking for a collaboration with a drone company to do a high altitude flight experience. We are starting a small company called Loweheiser, we are developing EFIs for small engines for UAVs. Right now we are developing a throttle body for an RCGF 15RE, and I also want to design one for the 10cc of this same brand. The 10cc is probably the smallest electronic fuel injection engine that has ever been made, At the moment the smallest engines we have worked on are the Saito FG-21 and the FG14, the FG14 has a 7mm throttle body!

Many clients ask me how high the EFI works. I tell them that the EFI can operate at any altitude that a fixed-wing UAV can reach. The absolute pressure sensor of the ECU can measure from 15 to 115 kPa, 15kPa are 60000m so it seems not a problem. We have tested at 2000m because it is the maximum we can reach in a few hours of travel, but I would like to test it in flight with higher altitude.
In my initial calculations I see that a normal plane could reach 10,000m without problems. A plane of about 2m wingspan and about 3kg of weight consumes less than 100w to maintain a cruise.

The 15cc engine has about 1.54Kw. The motor loses power linearly with the loss of density of the atmosphere The density of the atmosphere at 25ºC 0m (sea level) is 1.12720 kg / m3, the density of the atmosphere at -20ºC and 10000m is 0.453337kg / m3, that's 40% of the power of the engine at sea level. it is 600w, even introducing losses of another 50% due to propeller performances and other ineficiencies ... there is still 300w which is more than enough to fly at 10000m

Where can be done this high altitude challenge?
I am looking for a collaboration with a drone company who has experience in flying in an airspace where this test can be done and who can take permission from the concerned authorities. 

Best regard, jlcortex

Hi,
I would like to share our last challenge. I think it is probably the longest flight with a hybrid gas-electric drone:

In December 2015 we published our first record:
https://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/3hr-10min-endurance-test-with-hybrix-quadrotor-by-quaternium

All this years we have been doing small improvements, A lot of small improvements that make a very big difference. With the EFI we have seen lower consumption far beyond what we thought possible. The weight of all the components has fallen, The generator has increased the available power....

We are very happy with the result, but I also have to tell you that it is not the maximum time we can do.

Obviously it is not a flight time that a customer can use, It is not very practical to fly with 16liters of fuel in a 25kg MTOW drone. But it does show that it is possible to fly for 6 hours with a payload of for example 2kg

I hope you like it!

jlcortex

Hi all, 

We have been trying to achieve this goal for a long time. Two years ago we do a flight of 3 hours and 10 minutes with very early model, and our next goal was 4 hours but the guys of Skyfront published a record of 4 hours and 34 minutes. Now we are super happy to announce that we have surpassed this record!!!

We think it is the longest flight ever done with a multicopter (not including thethered drones!)

For those who do not know the project, it is a hybrid quadcopter, it is an electric multicopter that has an on-board generator based on a small 2-stroke engine. The unit that has been used to this flight is a standard HYBRiX in which the original fuel tank has been replaced by a larger one.

I remember that at the beginning there were many doubts about the technical feasibility of this configuration.Today this is the look of our product:

I wanted to thank everybody who was involved in this project.

Best regards.

jlcortex

Hi Guys!

This year we will be at XPONENTIAL 2017 (May 8-11, Dallas). We have a small booth for startups. We are very excited because it is the first fair we attend in the United States.

We long ago decided that the controller of the Hybrix20 was going to be a Pixhawk. Some customers tell us that Pixhawk is not the right platform for our product but we would like to work on those few things that are missing to fit a drone of these features.

The first step has been to ruggerize the enclosure and the connectors. The second step is to adapt the software to the special requirements of Hybrix20. 

While we thought how to do this I would like to show you the box we have built

Jose Luis Cortes

Quaternium

It would probably be more spectacular a test flight of 4 hours but i was very interested in performing this test because it is very near to real use of Hybrix.20. 4 or 4.5 hours are possible for demonstration test but operational flight time is around 3 hours with light payload to 2 hours for heavy payload.

Lately many customers are telling us about electric multi-rotors flying for 2 hours or hydrogen fuel cells with 4 hours of endurance. It would be interesting to see these multirotors with heavy payloads.

I hope you like it guys

Jose Luis Cortes

Quaternium

It's been a while since I published the last update about HYBRiX. We are very excited about how the development is evolving and more than happy with customers response.

For the past few weeks we have been working on finishing our MVP. it has a new look, new frame, more fuel tank capacity, quick release arms...

There are 2 versions, one  with 25 inch propellers and the other with 30 inch propellers. Some people seemed concerned about stability issues with big propellers, but I have to say that we are not detecting any issues and both configurations work really well.

In fact, last weeks we had very windy weather here and it is not a problem with Hybrix. It is very stable also with wind.

We are using Pixhawk as a flight controller and making it ruggedized! Aluminium enclosure and military connectors. It looks pretty awesome. We have done some RTL landings and automatic modes seem to run smoothly. We have solved all problems with vibrations.

Next step is to install a long-range system for 25km that we have been previously testing on Spidex and start carrying out some serious missions!

I want to share our last experience with HYBRiX, a lapse time of a 3hr and 10min endurance flight test. As far as I know it is the longest flight time for a hybrid fuel-electric drone, and I have to say it is not a lab test, but the same configuration we will start selling very soon. We are really excited about this! Please comments ;)

This is the crazy project that kept us busy lately at Quaternium: a hybrid electric+gas multirotor with range extender, inspired by Hybrid cars, such as BMWi3.

Our goal is to overcome the endurance limitations of an electric multicopter, while keeping the multirotor platform we are so enthusiastic about. This VTOL UAV has 2.5 hr estimated flight time with payload, and around 4 hours endurance otherwise.

These are the product specs:

HYBRIX 20

Why are we working on this?

As you all know, the drone market is only starting. We believe there will be many more  industrial applications emerging soon. With this new project, we seek to go beyond current technology limits and explore new possibilities of application.

What do you think about it? I’d love to hear your comments on this!

jlcortex

www.quaternium.com

The sUAS market for surveying applications are dominated by fixed-wing aircraft instead of multicopters. The reason is obvious, the multicopters have very short flight time and can not run long flight plans.

I'm not sure that this will go on for long. There are already many multicopters exceeding the hour and half flight time(only experimental flights without payload). Right now there is technology to stay one hour with a reasonable payload. Part of the "secret" is that the payload represents a small portion of the vehicle weight, which in practice is equivalent to using a larger multicopter.

The advantages of multicopters with respect to planes to do this kind of work where you have to move to an area where, almost certainly, you will not find a meadow of green grass is obviously the launch and recovery. Multirotors no need catapults, nor any parachute and not need landing strip, the roof of a vehicle can serve.

We are working on a very special model, it is a quadrotor with 1280mm diagonal for 27-29 inch propeller and a takeoff weight of about 12Kg. Though not proven, estimate flight time will be about 1 hour with 2 kg of payload.

Printing huge multicopters. All parts of this multicopter but arms and frame plates has been printed in PLA. it have about 112 hours of printing:

Pixhawk. Watch this! Pixhawk size compared to the frame:

(ADDED PICTURES 2-SEP-2014)

Best regards,

Jose Luis Cortes

Quaternium.es

I am designing this TX mod to use Droidplanner with big phones or tablets. I am planning to use for photogrametry with multicopters and planes.

I use mavlink telemetry through gitsly/openLRSng (https://github.com/gitsly/openLRSng)
I think it is a great solution because it is only one antenna for controls and telemetry, very simple and clean solution.

Telemetry stream through openLRSng is slow (19200bps maximum) than I've tried it works perfectly except because droidplanner failed to load the parameter list probably due a timeout, All the rest seems to work perfectly.

I connect my Note with 20cm OTG cable, i have build a custom module cover to fit into a FTDI adapter:

Droidplanner seems well made software, very quick, very intuitive.
My sincere congratulations to droidplanner team

Hope you like!!!

jlcortex

quaternium.es/

A long long time since I published last time, I'm drawing something fun and I thought you would like to see it!

It is a small frame all cnc machined from delrin sheet for 5" propellers. It seems a crazy project but i have a friend flying this kind of multicopters and it is really fun!

It is not originally thought for Arducopter but I recently purchased some Ardupilot 2.6 and i am seriously thinking to install one of them here.

Dimensions (center to center)

right to left = 165mm

front to back = 145mm

HD camera: Mobius

Ipad size comparison:

It is only a design exercise with a wingspan of 1640mm, and a lot of space for electronics and batteries and very easy access to electronics. Last image shows 6 x 5000mAh/3S.