T3

Motorway aerial mapping Pteryx UAV long range

Hi everybody. A mission report follows... This one is 3 months old.

Motorway aerial mapping Pteryx UAV long range from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.


Aerial mapping with Pteryx UAV
motorway construction site length 20km
(40km round trip)

A short report of a custom mission flown by Pteryx UAV.
Normally you are expected to use pre-programmed missions flying over a square area using rotary mission selector mounted on the fuselage.

This time we demonstrate a case when the client has supplied a list of 200 fixed coordinates. Around 30 of them were used for defining round-trip route hoping to map the motorway construction site in Poland.

We have used a light compact camera and unusual payload of batteries that allowed more than 1.5h of autonomy (it could have been more but was estimated to be already an overkill). We have used only 50minutes of endurance in presence of 20km/h head-wind which is close to practical limit for photomappping.
This was 'flying for business' and everything was set-up in such a way we can repeat such kind of mission many times.

The takeoff and landing was in manual RC mode because we wanted to have a nice landing video, there was 2min of manual control during the whole flight.

As a recovery a parachute landing is possible, plus the system is designed as having multiple failsafe conditions.

We were lucky to find a parallel road so we were able to maintain visual contact during the flight, which otherwise was 40% over forests, 50% over fields mixed with trees and 10% over public roads.

Flight altitude 200m above (varying) terrain level.
Air traffic control was aware of our activity.

pteryx.eu
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Comments

  • About the questions I asked above.. or are they trade secrets?
  • Ouch....fine.... :(
  • T3
    Ah so we got some twisted misunderstanding here. So it appears in what we all do, on diydrones, we all know that a mistake can make our hobby and starting businesses really difficult.
  • Apologies Krzysztof, my reply was to radman and his joke about drug running. I don't doubt everything you did was by the book.

    I like what you have done. The photos that were taken, when stitched together does the program take into consideration altitude at the time of when it was taken and scaled appropriately? The final image looks really impressive. Any chance of a 3d model being produced?

    I am inspired, and sorry I didn't make my comment more clear, didn't mean to offend (if I did).
  • T3
    'Hey, it's a real world use, who said anything about legality :)? '
    The flight was made according to superior Polish Law.
    We did more than necessary, notifying ppl that theoretically didn't care by the law.
    The flight was over inhabitated area. The airplane IS QUALIFIED as flying model in polish law. Albeit long ranged. The ATC was notified and gave permisison AS IF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN PARAGLIDE OR BALLOON FLIGHT.

    The plane was DESIGNED to fit as many definitions of low-hazard flying objects as possible, besides being safer for long range flight than most RC models.

    The terminal dive speed of this thing is some 100-120km/h, so even intentionally, this is not far from colliding with a fast riding man on a bicycyle.
  • Moderator
    @rad man... now that you are "back", why not try to keep your comments to those that don't tend to give a negative tone to the community, huh?
    .
  • Hey, it's a real world use, who said anything about legality :)?
  • *cough* drug runner *cough*
  • @Krzysztof Bosak;
    if you dont like your new design, find me :P
  • T3
    @Carlito Do u fell dificulty to roll your plane because of the low CG relative to the wings? Does it have ailerons?

    No, the platform is sufficiently agile with rudder only, and robust to side windgusts.
    The platform has much more positive roll stability than EasyStar, so in fact it turns when you hold the rudder.
    You are piloting it like a real glider: some rudder entering the turn, then back and hold a little of it.
    Because the wings are clean there is more endurance and faster assembly, also more durability.
    Should the plane had less positive roll stability, we would have opted for ailerons just because of the cirtical few seconds after manual takeoff if anybody wants it. For automated flight it gives no benefit to us to have ailerons.

    Pteryx has some 40-50% larger turn radius than EasyStar, partially because it flies 10km/h faster.

    @Ersin
    New website is already ordered...
This reply was deleted.