Blogs

You may remember our previous posts of Guppy, Hornbill and Kiwit. Well, we now have a fully composite UAV, called SurVoyeur, in production.  This aircraft is a sub 4.5kg electric, able to carry up to 600grams payloads for up to 45minutes. It is also a fully autonomous system, with full autolaunch and autoland in harsh terrain. It has been extensively flown here in Namibia, mostly on land surveying missions, photographing up to 150hectare in one flight. We have fitted it with a Samsung 20Mpixel camera, giving us down to 2cm ground resolution on the resulting georeferenced ortho-images.

It is fitted with a Hacker A30-12XL motor and a 12x8 folding prop. 2 Lipo packs are used, 4 cell 5Ah each.

Takeoff in no wind is in 8 meters ground run, climb out at 7meters/sec @ sea level.

We have also fitted the FLIR TAU-2 IR camera and the FLIR QUARK IR camera and are currently busy with flight trials with a view to using the system as a further aid to the Ministry for Conservation here, for anti-poaching efforts.

Here are some pictures showing the path walked to get to the above result......

First the fuselage plug primed then painted :

And a bunch of wings cut and ready for vacuum bagging:

All these parts were designed on a CAD system with a full 3d Model created for all parts. Molds were made for fuselage, horizontal and vertical stabs ( and for the V tail stab) and for the many small parts that go into such a project.

Here are the horizontal and vertical stabs:

And the Vertical Stabs:

The Vertical Stab Molds:

Many Parts:

Here is a PDF of the system, for info.

survoyeur.pdf

And some videos:

SurVoyeur%20autolaunch.avi

SurVoyeur%20autoland%201.avi