Hello Everyone,
I am an aerospace engineering Ph.d student at a university in New York and also the teaching assistant for an undergraduate course in aircraft design which will be partly taught in Puerto Rico. One of the main objectives for the course is that the studens have to design, document, and build radio control airplanes following traditional design formulae. Having following this community for a while, I proposed to the course instructor and also my advisor to attempt to fly autonomously at least one of the student designed airplanes off the coast of Puerto Rico from the island of Vieques to mainland Puerto Rico which is close to 20 miles!! I have been given the approval and my plan is to use the Ardupilot with pre-programmed GPS way points to accomplish this at least semi-autonomously. The idea is to also establish visual contact during the entire flight using a chase boat. I would like to ask the community, whomever has successfully implemented and flown the Ardupilot system including wireless telemetry with the ardustation or otherwise, if you would be interested in being a consultant to the project. If so, leave me a comment with your contact information and I will get back to you with further details. We plan to fly the RC airplanes/ UAVs during the first week of June in Puerto Rico of course, just to give you a time frame. Thanks everyone, Victor.
Comments
Paul
Cheers,
Victor
Click HERE for article on Maynard Hill's project if interested.
Paul
You might try contacting the Acadamy of Model Aeronautics for info on legalities. Even though that's a US-based organization, they assisted Maynard Hill in his trans-Atlantic flight of an autonomous model airplane, which flew from Canada to Ireland. Indeed, the president of the AMA at the time took manual control of the plane for landing. Also, regarding propulsion, that plane flew for 38 hours and 1,900 miles on nitromethane. The plane that made the flight was classified as a "model airplane" in terms of overall size and weight. That overall project might prove good background for your own. Maybe someone associated with it could also advise you on your project. Again, the AMA might have background and/or contacts.
Hope this helps.
Paul
xbee pro with 60mW will be able to get you the range and data to your ground station/laptop with right setup.
Except for paperazi , I am not aware of any other DIY AP that has 2 way telemetry capability for now but you need only downlink for this project IMHO and very much doable , so talk to any one in who matters in aviation and coast guard there to see if they have any concerns& make sure you mention it as school project ), brief the school management and build up their enthusiasm, you need them, At right moment you can involve local media to build some publicity for the school and get some coverage too. May be for some sponsorship , you can put their decals on the side too :)) but for now every thing under wrap may be good idea until you can get some thing flying which should take you around 2 months starting yesterday. Cheers
WIreless communication range increases significantly over the sea due to humidity in air and no line of sight obstructions. SO you should get more then 10 miles with 500 mW.. I have personally noticed the same.
Regards
SID
The other more minor concern is even if we can establish visual contact through a chase boat, could we wirelessly downlink the flight/navigation information to a laptop or send commands? What is the range on a set of Zigbee modules, or would we need something more robust? I assume we would need a range of at least 500 feet to properly maintain communication. As far as the heading accuracy and waypoint navigation I appreciate the heads up, this is something that we'll have to work out. The landing location accuracy is not too important, as long we make it accross the ocean we'll have plenty of space to land.
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