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I'd like to fly my plane 100km. Partly to earn the cool badge, but mostly to see if I can.

The airframe is a Bormatec Maja airframe which is made from EPP, has a wingspan of 2.2m and an empty weight of 2kg.

I've been tuning it over the last several months to get the best efficiency I can. I've tested dozens of different setups such as props, motors, PID settings, C of G positions etc by flying a circuit in auto mode. By post-analyzing the telemetry data in Excel I can look at the wattage (and speed, pitch etc) for each lap to see what effect the particular setup had on efficiency. I found the AVERAGEIFS function invaluable to pull data from the telemetry csv file and calculate the average values per lap.

The two biggest breakthroughs were finding the best C of G (20% improvement) and best motor and prop combo (50% improvement in several steps, thanks to Reto Buettner and his expertise for helping achieve the last 20%).

Some of the smaller details I've been working on include:

• Fairings (seen below in front and behind the wing mount).
• Swapping the protruding telemetry antenna for a smaller monopole one (rfdesign.com.au ).
• Filling gaps, like the hole left by removing the antenna, the flaps hinge gap, around the aileron servos etc.

To calculate the maximum range I used a formula that calculates how adding weight affects speed, drag and power consumption. The manufacturer says the Maja can carry a payload of 1.5kg which allows me 4 x 5000 mAh (1.6kg of batteries, AUW of 3.6kg). I calculated a maximum range of 85 km if I run the batteries down to 20% reserve. (I don't want to wreck my batteries but the range becomes 102km if I run them down to 10%.)

I've done one round of flight testing with 4 x 5000 mAh on board and the results were slightly better than my calculations. At an airspeed of 13 m/s it consumed 89 W (8.2 A @ 10.9 V). Extrapolating that out gives a maximum range of 89km. Just short of the ton, but still worth a crack.

Both the manufacturer and another experienced Maja pilot expressed concern about making it any heavier, but I'm tempted because my calculation for 5 batteries (AUW 4.0kg) is a range of 103km. My experience with 4 batteries was good so 5 doesn't seem out of the question. I’m still undecided whether I should go for 5 or look for further improvements with 4.

I've got three more small things to try.

• The EPP surface isn't very smooth so I want to cover the wings (I've got some CP Laminating Film - 1.7 Mil on the way).
• Doing something about the white plastic rods used to hold the wings on. They're very convenient, but I'll find something that doesn't stick up like that. I'm not sure that I'm brave enough to trim the coroplast trim to the wing.
• Moving the Pitot tube to the wing so the tubes and brackets don't cause drag.

I think I’ll make an attempt with 4 batteries anyway. I'll happily land with 20% reserve if it looks like my 89km calculation is correct. But if conditions are very good I might get lucky.

Any other suggestions for how to improve the range appreciated.