Good evening to All.
The fifteen plus years of my involvement with airmodelling, has sometimes brought me in strange paths, mysterious driveways, beautiful agony. The journey to Ithaca continues with great passion for research, construction, testing new technologies. In this journey I meet people who inspire me, support me, eventually becoming ... Friends with a capital F. I think that even if I had a second life, this is how I’d like to live it again…
When Dimitris showed me his work of creating an unmanned aerial platform for Precision Agriculture and related mapping applications, I thought ... Oh man… that guy is ingenious! And I wanted to share that creation with him. The effort was finally started among 4 friends with a 5th already helping us on building the airframe, six months ago, we named our team "UcanDrone" and only God knows where all this will lead us, but... he also knows just how much we love it.
A team member suggested this ship should be called Phoreas, which means “carrier” in English, and so we did. It was originally designed as a low drag motorglider, carrying an FPV camera and another one for GIS or other specialized applications, as well as an autopilot. We necessarily had to involve with mold making for the fuselage, motor mount and boom. Everything is handmade, new techniques for me and the team, but we’re steady learning more and more each day. Dimitris’s prototype algorithm shows the health of the Plants by a percentage greater than 95%, directing the owner of the plantation at correct decisions. APM autopilot, developed by an open group of genius people who love what they do, transforms that plane on a fully autonomous and Safe aerial platform, since it not only controls the airspace on which it will be flown, but also corrects the flight behaviour from stalls etc… Nice stuff.
Phoreas as a model plane and Dimitris’s work on Argiculture, was originally presented this year at the annual conference of ASPRS (American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing) in Baltimore U.S.A. on March 27th. The road is difficult ahead of us, but our passion will eventually overcome any obstacle.
Specifications:
* Wing Span: 2.400m
* Wing Area: 53.4dm2
* Flying weight: 2700gr (with Autopilot and FPV gear)
* Wing Loading: 50.5gr/dm2
* Flight Time: >1 hour with the Recommended Power Setup (2 x Lithium-Polymer 4s 5000mah Batteries)
For the whole 2013 year, we will keep Phoreas on a Beta form, until everything is ready for the production of the most delicate plane on which we All were involved so far... For more information, please visit this link...
Many Thanks Everyone,
Gadetsakis Apostolos (aka DeltaMan)
UcanDrone – Airframe Department
Comments
Some photos of the stabilators below... Rectanguler carbon tubes are used. 6 mm are glued inside the foam cores, while another 4 mm one is responsible to join the two halves. A small, 2 mm screw with a tiny nut inserted in a piece of plywood on the other side, secures them both in place.
Carbon edges in these pics are badly cut, sorry... It was from the test tails... That specific part on our plane, the hinging of the stabilators on the Fin that is, is very important and we like to give extra attention on it. More spars have been ordered to finalize and photograph that part. When I have more info, I'll post it here of course.
Good Eveving everyone.
I'm sorry for being absent the last days, but we had the Greek Easter here, with all these family meetings, Lamb roasting etc, so we were kept a bit far from our PCs... :)
Joe, thank you very much for posting on our Thread. As James said above, it is an Honor for us builders like you!
Blue markings on the Kevlar fuselage above, came from the pencil I used to mark the fabric with the pattern, in order to cut it on the right dimensions. We have decided to place a carbon strip on the two halves's joining, so All you'll see is carbon on the seam and kevlar for the rest of the surface. Our goal now is to Not paint at all after the piece comes out of the mold...
Below you can enjoy some pictures of the 4th (!) effort we had on building the Motor Mount's mold, after destroying prototypes and molds many times...
That motor mount seen here is Hollow of course, came out of that mold and was primed and ready for paint... it was used on the plane flying on our lattest "Phoreas with new GCS" video. The thin green plastic film is the PVA used...
Right out of the mold.. an alleggerita version with the lighter Kevlar (170T) only 240gr!
Hi Joe, im aware of Nampilot-SuVoyeur and admire your profesionalism. Your kind words is an Honor for us!
For the airfoils, we played a lot with sailplane airfoils like RG or SD's, Some 4digid NACA's for lift 44xx, mixes etc. but for our last all-arounder we concluded at eppler family cause it keeps the good character of the wings overall shape and flight envelope but still keeps a friendly speed-manuverability for a semi-rookie pilot like my self.
Like you, we prefer to cut our cores with our CNC, than making molds.. That way we have the freedom to rapidly prototype new ideas, or make a custom wing on demand.
Here is the xflr tests with the RG
And a sneak peek from our Fuse drag tests with the eppler
Good luck to you too!! We will be happy to have any suggestions and tips from you in the future!
James
Hi Guys, Nice plane and interesting work you are doing. Out of interest, what is the wing profile you are using? Looks Clark y'ish or maybe Z, but the leading edge seems sharper?
I have been testing a number of wing profiles lately for our aircraft - SurVoyeur - you can see my blogs and also on Utube what we get up to...
Great fun!
Good luck
Joe
The Nampilot.
Namibia
Back online!!
Phoreas just before another mission! after passing the whole team
Oh, by the way... Our Official site is Down since late last night due to some network problems by the National Telephony company.
We are sorry for the inconvenience... :)
Some pictures of the First "acceptable" fuselage Mold we have so far, and the first three fuselages that came out of it... The last photo shows a 4th fuselage too... Fuselages come out of the Mold as One piece right now, meaning that two halves are joined Inside the mold...
Even starting on the Kit version, wings have All spars glued in place from us, and moving surfaces (Flaps & Ailerons) are already Cut. Our flaps & ailerons are part of the airfoil, so we need to have them made here, on our workshop, leaving you with One trouble less... :)
After that, the whole wing is Ironed with fine quality shrinkable film. The 3rd part of the wing (outer panel) is Not glued in place, but we will provide instructions for people to glue it with the appropriate dihedral.
Good afternoon Dani. It's six thirty in the afternoon here... :)
Here are some pictures of the wing we currently make... There is a female 12 mm carbon tube using VEC technology (weaving pultrusion) in the center Spar and two smaller 4 mm carbon tubes going over and bottom of the wing...
Root on the wing is meant to be shaped as the side of the fuselage is... This is a test wing.
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