You can always land like this( purposely and during emergency) no need to worry about landing gear drag and weights, Of course water proofing is the challenge.
I understand Curt ,Thanks for the info. hope it does not turn out to be so pricey that non of the DiyDroners can think of it. May be non marinesed and no CF ver can be made too from same mold. Just plain FG. Good work. Do you have link/video to new version of the airframe?
Morli: it's a blended body flying wing, very low drag, and thus a very efficient glider. Our latest prototype airframe is about 1.5 lbs lighter than the airframe shown in the youtube movie and glides just that much better. We are seriously considering the addition of spoilers to try to steepen the glide slope on approach. But that would be one more thing to marinize, and at sea, you have plenty of runway. It's land operations where you are trying to get into a tight field where spoilers would be really nice. I guess this is what you get when you optimize for low drag and high efficiency. :-)
We don't have an airframe cost nailed down yet, right now these are lovingly hand crafted one at a time in the USA so don't expect mass production pricing. There is a lot of carbon fiber and kevlar cooked in as well. These are built to be bullet proof (well not literally) in a marine environment. For example, during one recovery in heavy seas (after landing), the recovery boat momentarily went up, the aircraft went down, and when the wave disappeared from under the recovery boat, it slapped down on top of our wing ... that's the sort of abuse we are built to withstand and pop back out in one piece.
When we flew our drones at Point McGoo Naval Air Station, we didn't bring MARS with us so we did sea recovery. The avionics would stay mostly dry but every nook and cranny of the air frame had to be decontaminated for both the water and the salts. I would take a week or more to clean up a drone and get it flyable again. Oh those were the days when a $2,000 tachometer meant nothing to just throw away alone with about $12,000 worth of other parts and around a hundred man hours for each drone dropped in the sea. Couldn't get the wing to see the value of MARS. Go figure.
Agreed, water protection is difficult. Water wants to come in from in between wires and the insulation.
It would however, be much less significant on the surface of water, with low pressure. Now a aircraft that can go into water and continue to work underwater would be awesome.
Thanks Curt. Interesting link. Malolo does not want to land :). It reminds be of Nima's model ( Search).
By look of clientele I would not dare to ask how much would the airframe cost.!
Marinization is always a challenge. Water wants to get into anything, and you have to think about linkages, wing servos, motor shaft, access hatches, cooling, secondary protection if you primary seal develops a leak, etc. Everything gets bigger and heavier and harder to engineer when you have to water proof it. But it's certainly doable with an appropriate amount of thought and effort. Here is the ATI "Resolution" (AKA Malolo) airframe doing a water landing. The Resolution is an 8' composite flying wing. Electric powered. Can be hand or catapult launched off just about any vessel and has bout 60-90 minute range depending on payload and battery. The Resolution is designed to land in the water and then be recovered with a small boat.
By the way ... 3 weeks at sea and I never fully got used to the rocking of the ship. I never puked, but it was always a battle against feeling less than 100% ... and it was 10x harder to do anything at sea ... imagine working on your laptop and having to constantly hold it with one hand to keep it from sliding off the table. :-)
We were on a NOAA research ship so the outside decks were off limits after dark (safety issues) but that meant after the sun set you couldn't go outside for fresh air and a chance to see the horizon. But all in all we had lots of fond memories of that cruise and we learned a lot about open-sea UAV operations which is a *lot* different than trying to operate off land, or even around fresh water.
Comments
We don't have an airframe cost nailed down yet, right now these are lovingly hand crafted one at a time in the USA so don't expect mass production pricing. There is a lot of carbon fiber and kevlar cooked in as well. These are built to be bullet proof (well not literally) in a marine environment. For example, during one recovery in heavy seas (after landing), the recovery boat momentarily went up, the aircraft went down, and when the wave disappeared from under the recovery boat, it slapped down on top of our wing ... that's the sort of abuse we are built to withstand and pop back out in one piece.
It would however, be much less significant on the surface of water, with low pressure. Now a aircraft that can go into water and continue to work underwater would be awesome.
By look of clientele I would not dare to ask how much would the airframe cost.!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xChvYP6Xr-A
(http://www.atiak.com)
By the way ... 3 weeks at sea and I never fully got used to the rocking of the ship. I never puked, but it was always a battle against feeling less than 100% ... and it was 10x harder to do anything at sea ... imagine working on your laptop and having to constantly hold it with one hand to keep it from sliding off the table. :-)
We were on a NOAA research ship so the outside decks were off limits after dark (safety issues) but that meant after the sun set you couldn't go outside for fresh air and a chance to see the horizon. But all in all we had lots of fond memories of that cruise and we learned a lot about open-sea UAV operations which is a *lot* different than trying to operate off land, or even around fresh water.