This one should be easy if you have any of the current crop of Kickstarter VTOL airframes, of course I will award less points so you might not win.
The task is simple.... (not)
Auto take off
Autonomous hover for at least 1 minute after take off
Transition to winged flight and fly no higher than 120m
Then circle radius 80m for as long as you can. (This makes the circle 500m a turn)
This of course points to the current delivery drone mania. To get noticed by Amazon try for greater than 24km about the distance their machine can deliver (apparently)
We will make this a six month contest as its hard. On the plus side its building time in the Northern Hemisphere.
For extra points some sort of silly cargo that makes me smile. Super bonus points added for an autonomous vertical landing as well. (All landings to be vertical)
If you can make a multirotor fly that far then all well and good, but I will be looking for the least amount of power used in event of a draw.
The longest distance wins.
Good luck, I look forward to May 2nd 2016 and the fruit of your labors.
Glittering prizes TBA
Let the pointing out of my Swiss cheese thinking commence...
Comments
Love it! Much better than the cookies I was going to drop with that bird.
Its May the 2nd but I note a plea on the previous page for an extended May the 2nd so I understand it might in fact be this coming Friday......
Ok, maybe not my final entry, conditions were far less than perfect, with 20-30 km/h cross wind. Procyon just flew 30km with 1kg payload. I think it will do 50km with more work and calm winds.
If you are in urgent need of a steel rod, I can deliver it fast!
We need one more week (or two :))
Earlier on it was stated couldn't be gas, had to be electric. Otherwise I'll enter my gas heli too.
Just to be clear... payload weight is undefined. Longest distance wins. So... is an aircraft carrying 100g for 100 km going to beat another that carries 1000g for 50 km?
We are working on it, it sould be ready just in time...or not :D
Oh boy, this snuck up fast. Only a couple weeks left. Am I the only one to have posted an entry?
Just got my new larger electric heli flying on Friday. So far 1kg of payload, haven't gone the distance yet, but it's hovering on 60-70A, and flying at 15 m/s at 40-50A, with 40 Amp/hours of battery on board. And that was the very first flight, have some things I can do to improve it.
@Randy, there are control surfaces (elevons) on the wings, 4 servos, and after transition it is not a multicopter any more. Firmware is PX4-Tailsitter-4-motors
In fact we broke this one this week, but we learned a lot, even if we made some mistakes.
The first mistake was to build it with styrofoam, the next one is in progress, 100% with EPP foam.
The second mistake was to forget there is always wind here, and in the wind there is a new "kite effect":
In loiter the aircraft take an angle around 45°. Wind increase the lift, and the total current was only 8A in loiter, with olds AC2830, prop 10*5 and a 4s 5Ah battery. Weight is (was) 1.5kg RTF
Aircraft was always moving back or climbing, and we were not able to move it down, i had to cut the throttle and the four wings broke.
So thats a very new problem, we have to much lift :D . It is probably only a firmware issue, we though we have to increase the max pitch angle in stabilize mode to fight against the wind and reduce lift.
@Sylvain,
Le Vetole ... j'aime le nom :-)