As we are rapidly approaching the official release of the Albatross line of aircraft, we thought there would be no better way of saying thank you than by giving away a free airframe to someone in the community. As such we have decided a design contest is in order for the best paint scheme, with the winning designer receiving a free airframe incorporating his/her design.
We'll do our best to get the livery as an added color scheme option but thought this would be a good way to engage the community as we get ready for the release and getting this aircraft into your hands.
The contest is open as of this posting and will finish on November 10th. The designs must be possible from a production and manufacturing perspective (painting/vinyl). There must be an emphasis on orientation and visibility (i.e., contrasting colors), meanwhile maintaining an appealing and good looking aircraft. In that, we are excited and can't wait to see what you all come up with and to get the airframes out to you.
** We are looking for a color scheme that is highly visible, and good with orientation. Conventional aircraft paintjobs are preferred, but we will consider everything. We will accept ANY format. We encourage every design, no matter your artistic ability! If you need to print out the templates, color with crayon, and email us a picture, we don't mind, after all it is the design that counts! So send us your Illustrator, PNG, BMP, JPEG, MS Paint, or even hand drawn design, we will gladly take it into consideration! Ideas can either be emailed to us via the email provided below, they can be uploaded to this blog, or any other contest related posting we have made on other websites.**
Let the designs begin, we look forward to seeing them!
The Applied Aero Team
Previous Links:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/exciting-news-from-the-applied-aeronautics-team
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/applied-aeronautics-and-the-albatross-uas
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/introducing-the-albatross-uav-project
http://appliedaeronautics.com/
Email:
Info@appliedaeronautics.com
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Yes Ricky Ng as he ca;;s himself. He did a 300% hijack increase on me.
Hi Guys, do you perhaps have a direct email contact address? Please send it to info@aerialpix.co.za
Hey Dan, It is not really a volume issue, we could manage that. It is currently a cost per unit issue. We need the cost inline with with everything we have been trying to achieve all along. Everything was in line regarding cost, until the final days of ramping up production, when our manufacturer decided they would like to renegotiate.
In the spirit of transparency and answering quite a few questions we thought it would be good to write this update. Rather than showcase some of our other products we have been developing and readying for production, we've been silent finalizing the production ramp-up of the airframes. We currently have several planes in our possession from prototypes to production quality airframe. Everything is designed, tested and operational. We are still ironing out a few wrinkles in production with one manufacturer who builds the most intricate and expensive piece of the airframe. Over the course of development, flaws were fixed, manufacturing procedures were modified, internal structures were redesigned, use of materials were refined, and several other refinements took place. This caused a false sense of expenditure, so our manufacturer increased our price. In the spirit of sticking with our initial price goal, we absorbed that and kept moving forward. As we are moving forward, we are ready to deliver the final product in large quantities, however again, our manufacturer will not deliver unless we renegotiate another new price, or increase our volume substantially. (This is despite our numerous contracts, invoices, and signed agreements). We are working to resolve it in a timely manner, as we know that not only are you all waiting anxiously, but we are as well. As mentioned, everything from design, development, and testing is complete, and when we say we are at the end of the road, we are. We have some serious logistics to work out and find the path that enables us to deliver what we have aimed for all along, as this has been our mission from day 1. We will not cut quality to make this happen. We set target prices that were built upon not estimates but actual costs and we are doing our best to adhere to those. Once we have this final and honestly unexpected piece of the puzzle resolved, we are looking forward to showing you our other products we have been developing. We have a great team here behind the scenes, who are working diligently towards a resolution. We do have a backup plan in place that will be addressed on our end if a resolution is not met in a timely manner. We are pushing hard to get this done as has been our goal, and we won't stop until we do. You all are really going to like the plane, we've done some fun and incredible things with it and we want to see what the community can achieve. Please, bear with us this week. We'll keep you all apprised as we get this finalized. When we have the green light for this last piece, you'll be the first to hear.
On a lighter note, we do have plenty of pictures to show, this hiccup has just taken precedent at the last second of release. We appreciate all the support. We'll get this done.
-The Applied Aero Team
Hi Guys, any update on the release date? How about some more pictures!
Hi Dan, friend request sent.
Thank you! Happy new year to you as well. Not to worry, ask away. Yes, the nose gear is steerable.
Thanks again Dan and the rest of you who are patiently waiting!
We wish we could have done a full development log showing every step of the design process and every iteration. It would really put in perspective the work that goes into bringing a high quality airframe to the market at a reasonable price. It also would help with our resistance to post an availability date, as it would also shed some light and hopefully share an understanding of the situation. We are still aiming for "soon " and it will be here in a timely manner, trust me it is VERY close.....
That being said, we simply can not keep up with a full log due to the shear number of things we have going on, and the work it takes perfecting this overseas, while being here in the States.
Our goal is to eventually provide rough parameter files, etc, however we are also humble in the fact that eventually someone will do it better than us! We are also trying to get an endurance flight in, which is providing difficult with the several airframes we are test flying. Everytime we get one dialed, the newest iteration of airframe comes in, and it is time to devote our time to that. Our priority is quality and finding the best power package for conventional flying, before proving endurance figures, configurations, or parameters. (meaning a good climb rate, good power to get out of a situation, meanwhile good endurance. Of course we can squeeze out more endurance with a finely tuned power system, but they are really lousy for conventional flying).
Yes, as the prototypes are currently flown, we have a transmitter in one outer compartment, utilizing ppm out, and all the servo connections connecting through the connector, it then goes to a pixhawk mounted in the lesser-used area in front of the motor, and aft of the larger portion of internal volume, with the gps and compass mounted under the fiberglass canopy. This allows for batteries (16a of 6s) to be placed on the top shelf forward of the pixhawk, and slightly in front of CG (not much, in-fact about 30% of the batteries weight is behind cg, so there is very little effect) and an entire payload (or batteries if you want) on the front shelf.
The connector its self currently has one output for each servo (1x flap l, 1x aile (both Y'd in the wing), 2x tail) and one ppm and power input/output for the rx. For redundancy purposes, each servo currently uses its own power and ground, but it is possible to share power and ground, resulting in many more open pins for other components. As it currently is, we still have plenty of pins for another transmitting and receiving device, as well as more utility type servos (or spoilers and electric wheel brakes). In its current form, we a UHF transmitter in the wing, and telemetry in the fuse leaving the opposing wing compartment empty at the moment. The options and configuration of the the connector are really limitless, and it is very possible to make many more connections. This being said, the cable (which I dubbed the umbilical) is the life of the airframe, from flight controls, to radio link. Therefore we designed a snap on clip which makes it almost impossible to accidentally
disconnect or vibrate apart. (We tried, ending up pulling and ripping wires, and the connector never came apart.)
Our original goal was to make assembly as seemless as possible. Just the other day we decided to time a one man assembly, and were pleasantly surprised when we stopped the clock at 13 minutes after working at a casual, in no hurry, pace. No-tool assembly will be incorporated on the pro, but it is not cost effective, nor worth the sacrifices, to go with this approach on a semi-hobby grade airframe. Other than the connector, the harness acts like a servo extension, simply plugging into the other servo leads. Of course, with safety in mind, it is a good idea to put servo locks, or simply heat shrink connectors in the wing to ensure they do not come apart, now that attention has been shifted to the all in one connector.
As a personal note, I tend to transport and store the airframe fully assembled, except for the outer wings. If you own a truck it is sure to fit in the bed in this configuration. However, I am also flying this several times a week. When the airframe is released, we plan on providing dimensions and instructions for an Albatross specific DIY at-home stand, which stands it up near vertical and takes up much less room. We are currently utilizing this rack so that, as mentioned previously, all you have to do is remove the outer wings for transport and storage. Of course, if you have a smaller vehicle, a 13-15 minute assembly is not all that painful for such a large airframe.
Sincerely,
Justin from the Applied team.
Hey Dan. Sorry about that. We pulled it quickly to fix a few things and were going to add more details and give it its own thread but while we were putting that together we thought it would be better to prepare a development recap blog next week or so (we are waiting for one thing to show up). As for the technical details, Justin should chime in here but just to answer your pro model question, it is actually a different airframe altogether although it currently resembles this line but it is still in design phase. That being said, you will see three different Albatross models at the launch available.
Anytime! There are compartments on the outer parts of the center wing (I circled them in the photos below - [this was an earlier prototype, you can see the landing gear is not recessed in this wing]). Given the length of the center wing (105cm) this proved to be more than enough distance to keep components, transmitters, etc far away from each other without having to go into the outer wings. We’ve added tubing from each compartment (disregard the tubing size in the photos, we already enlarged it!) to the center of the wing to make changes easy and the center output which sits directly on top of the fuselage so the area of multiple connections ended up being at this location where we have experimented with an all in one connector going to the autopilot to keep things simple (see the attached photo - leads are not labeled in this photo but in the versions we've been testing they are). That is however still in its prototype stage but has been working very well for us.
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