TaigaCam, ROBUST plane for aerial photography

Don't do this at home with other planes! ;-)

In the first episode motor, rudder and tail servos are not yet installed.

Plane is home made, there is no ready kit available.

- Wingspan 150 cm
- Length 120 cm
- Empty weight without batteries 1.3 kg
- Maximum load with batteries is about 1.2 kg
- Maximum takeoff weight is about 2.5 kg
- Flight speed is about 50 km/h, maximum about 80 km/h
- Flight travel with one 2100 mAh battery is about 7 km, flight time is approximately 8 minutes.
- In plane there is space for 4 batteries, so flight time is more than 30 minutes
- Space for autopilot, batteries and payload is about 30 x 7 x 5 cm.
- Wing is made from EPP foam, it is made with CNC hot wire cutter
- Fuselage is made from EPP foam and PVC pipe or fishing rod
- Price of the plane frame without servos and motor is less than 100 euros
- Price of the plane with good servos, motor and wires, but without batteries and remote control is about 395 euros in Finland, in other countries much, much less...
- The building time is about 8 hours

Plane homepage in Finnish: http://sites.google.com/site/taigacam/

@Krzysztof, I dont agree. I have made about 200 flights with Cropcam. I have spent much more time repairing the plane than flying! We are researching forests, and we have no good starting and landing places. According to the regulations we must see plane all the time, so the starting place must be maximum 1 - 1,5km away. We must operate from clear cuttings, small stands and open peatlands. In all these there are stumps, rocks and individual trees. Plane hits them very often.

Parachute helps, but not always. In this picture there is typical place. Nice landing with parachute? Look aileron. Something has hit it, and servo horn has broken. Of course I didn't have this kind of spare parts with me, so the session is over, and I must come back in the next day. If the weather is good, not rainy or too windy, etc... This place was about 100 km from my home.

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Comments

Alpo Hassinen May 18, 2011 at 10:47pm

@Krzysztof, I dont agree. I have made about 200 flights with Cropcam. I have spent much more time repairing the plane than flying! We are researching forests, and we have no good starting and landing places. According to the regulations we must see plane all the time, so the starting place must be maximum 1 - 1,5km away. We must operate from clear cuttings, small stands and open peatlands. In all these there are stumps, rocks and individual trees. Plane hits them very often.

Parachute helps, but not always. In this picture there is typical place. Nice landing with parachute? Look aileron. Something has hit it, and servo horn has broken. Of course I didn't have this kind of spare parts with me, so the session is over, and I must come back in the next day. If the weather is good, not rainy or too windy, etc... This place was about 100 km from my home.
Alpo Hassinen May 18, 2011 at 10:07pm

Ramon: TaigaCam homepage in Finnish is in the address http://sites.google.com/site/taigacam/ Unfortunately it would take several days to translate them with my poor English. But probably Google Translate helps.
Alpo Hassinen May 18, 2011 at 10:01pm

Michael: In fuselage there is space for 4 batteries. I always use 3 or 4 batteries, depending on the payload and centre of gravity. Flight time is easily that +30 minutes. I use 2100 mAh 11.1V batteries, because they are always available.
Ramon dime May 18, 2011 at 4:29pm

would you be willing to share the disign.
Michael May 18, 2011 at 1:40pm

"A simple catapult would do the job."

I'm not sure I understand. Do you use 22 minutes of power just gaining altitude? If that's the case wouldn't a long bungee work just as well?
T3

Krzysztof Bosak May 18, 2011 at 1:19pm

"What do you think it would take to get your flight times from 8 minutes to 30+ minutes?"

A simple catapult would do the job.

There are additional benefits. Why do you think all those military drones have such a huge launcher? If ANYTHING goes wrong, you are absoluty sure the mess of wires, fuel and electronics will land OUTSIDE the base.
Michael May 18, 2011 at 12:58pm

Brilliant!!! What do you think it would take to get your flight times from 8 minutes to 30+ minutes?
Alpo Hassinen May 18, 2011 at 12:10pm

Joe, you are right. House and ventilator didn't like my tests ;-) I had to make new take.
ken May 18, 2011 at 7:50am

@krzysztof That depends on what one defines as a successful mission. If all you care about is the imagery at the end of the day, well yes then success is dependent on a synthesis of many things where any crash (damaging or not) will be considered failure. But I like this build a lot because I would like to experiment with a drone many times. If I don't have to worry about repairs to an air frame, I can spend my time (and money) developing other things or just having fun. The more I experiment (with hardware or developing software or collecting data) the more crashes will happen. If you are building a contest machine than only one mission will really matter, but if you want to use a drone day after day then it is very nice to have a robust plane.
Johanna Claussen May 18, 2011 at 6:06am

Nice video! I like the approach of a very robust plane because it enables un- (or not so well) trained pilots to use the plane for taking images without destroying it with a hard landing in the end ot the mission.

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