So Much For our Idea

We were thinking that we could roll our Schoolgirl UAVs with some great NEU 1915/1.5Y motors to swing our huge props in a dual-motor configuration. I am sure it would work, but I think we will put it into a pusher configuration.

We kind of knew that the motors were big. I got a pair of these 2.7kW beasts from the guys down at Esprit Model in Palm Bay,FL. They are another great supplier of rc stuff. Esprit Model is good about not advertising that they have hard to find stuff and then them being out of stock. Better to know, than to get an email two weeks later saying that they cleared your payment but that you will not get anything for four weeks.

So I got these beer cans. I mean the motors are as big as beer cans. Not an issue, they look great and have built in fans to help with air flow (heli version). I just think that motors are way too big for our school girls. The kevlar skin that we used is way too dense for the skin application. The carbon fiber equivalent material was great and the other airframe came out pounds lighter. I thought I could pay the piper by just putting down more power. It is not going to work that way. We will have to put it in a pusher configuration.

That is one of the cool things about the school girl. We can run with two under-wing motors, as a puller or a pusher. The changes do not effect the airframe much and really are about moving some power wires in the fuselage. It is really convenient. I hope the balsa kits come out well, it should be a great sport flier.

Business Opportunities in Central Europe or Brazil

Buzz Labs is looking for business contacts in Central Europe or Brazil. We are seeking interesting applications of UAS and UGV in most places or partners to help develop certain aspects of technologies for related projects. Our business is about developing technologies to support unmanned systems in general or how to achieve certain commercial or scientific requirements.

Maximizing our understanding of networking and aviation knowledge is allowing for fascinating new insights into what is possible even with the current states of technologies. We are most interested in multi-spectral image analysis, distributed pico-computing, alternatives to radio control, streaming technologies,power systems and system configuration.

Central Europe and Brazil are great stable markets that we would like to become a bigger player in. Please feel free to contact us with questions or ideas.

info@fatmanflying.com

Motors, motors, motors

Did anyone else ever notice that anything truly important must be said thrice for men to notice? Girls, girls girls, XXX, I have a million examples. Just an aside, but interesting to note. That may be why no one ever reads DANGER, and stays away, Or don't click.

This week I have been fighting the forces of evil all week. I know the buzzlabs.us site is not a work of art. It is a work in progress. Yeah, yeah need more pictures. Let's get one step at a time. I found several distributors of NEU motors whose website said, yeah they are in stock. Seems that they need to update their site? WTF still are not online with inventory status... or are not advertising things correctly. If you don't have it, just say so.

Anyway, there I was thinking I had the NEU motors in hand 1912/3Y jobs. however, it seems that there is no such thing as in stock with these guys. They are supposed to be the best. I have been reading that the heli guys dig the X-Era motors from NC too.

I called Dave at X-Era. He was friendly and very helpful. I will keep up with his 4035 3y 400kv motors. He is actually sizing a motor for us to swing these huge props. I am actually pretty curious what he will come up with. The NEU calculator came up with the 1912 line of motors because of the three bladed props. I will post what he says when I get back his response.

If anyone knows of any 5-6 bladed props that would be good to know too. I heard on the boards that Dario makes them. It is my opinion that I can slow the prop down enough by adding blades to lower our planes and reduce the current draw by adding voltage. I would love to get our current draw to 20A at 9s (33.3V) our batteries would last for a lot longer. I think maybe Bolly Props down in Oz may have them, but three bladed jobs though.

The "Fat Man" Is Still Grounded, He Is At the Pub So We Won't Worry Just Yet

Yeah, this kind of sucks. After a year of construction and planning, we find out that there is an international weapons treaty that says that you cannot sell certain weight vehicles internationally that have autonomous guidance systems capable of free flight beyond a certain range. Ok, I get it. Who wants Tom, Dick or Harry building a 150lb (70kg) pop rocket and flying it half way across the planet to make a real mess.

When you think about it, they are just setting rules to make it hard for the forces of evil. I have no interest in being one of the "dark side." My master tells me so. Ok, no more Star Wars references, but I make no promises. If anyone knows more about the "". Or what the real rules are about any of this, please let me know. There is no interest in using this device for any government purpose. I want to pull banners at the beach or to do small scale spraying of crops.

Another question that would be great to hear some explanation of and/or some reasonable listing of what can be discussed between international unmanned vehicle (UAV/UAS/UGV) colleagues. I would hate to blip someone's radar because I was talking about a simple guidance system idea at the pub. Yeah, yeah this is a real problem, I am more likely to be drinking a pint than trying to sink a 40' put on the back nine of Pebble Beach.

I am pretty sure that this is a messy topic and probably best left well-enough alone. However, if there is a chance to get this sorted and get the Fat Man to fly as more than a giant-scale RC plane that would be freaking awesome. Any qualified help is appreciated, I know that the FAA has been pretty draconian in their official guidelines.

Chebuzz Paparazzi Tiny 2.11 Autopilot Setup

I will start posting my adventures in setting up a Chebuzz Paparazzi Autopilot. It does not seem to hard, but there are always hitches to these things. I have the equipment, I will post some pictures tonight or tomorrow.

I bought an "everything you need" kit witht he Xbee Pro 2.4GHz modems. I had some questions from the Chebuzz guys, and I will gladly post their responses to the blog as they come in.

One of the things that I would like to cover here is the construction of some airlock boxes for the Tiny 2.11. That way there is no cable tension on the devices themselves and we will have some nice boxes to mount inside the fuselage. It is not very professional to just stick boards into fuselage, there can be all kinds of issues if they are not properly secured.

Wicked Hard

Having never scratch-built an rc plane with mixed-materials it is pretty tough to get it right. Yeah, I suck, but this is more than that. Over the last two years my co-conspirators and I have tried about every technique to repeatably build airframes. We have come full-circle now and say that a normal composite construction system is probably our best chance to make a good quality product with the least effort.

Try to epoxy carbon fiber and Aluminum together, you will get sticky fingers and big globs of epoxy everywhere. It will eventually fix the pieces, however we find that we cannot get a great bond this way. You can scuff and sand all you want. The epoxy does not do more than touch the surface of either part. Meh. It works and you can do it, do not get me wrong. The difficulty involved is a bit more than I think is necessary. We are running some experiments now with some almost ready to fly (ARF) models. Sacrificing a few models to the Gods seems a good start, and par for the course.

At least they already have all of the places for servos, spars and wire harnesses precut and in a reasonable place. Why reinvent the wheel, we have our own wheels but need to practice a construction technique. It is a well-documented idea in the composites industry. Essentially we make negative molds that allow us to control composite gauge in the best places and create bumpy sheets of composite. These sheets are bonded and reinforced as needed. Finally, they are covered with a material so that they may be painted or have decals applied.

I will include some pictures a bit later when we get closer to a final product. We noticed that alignments are still an issue. Aligning six pieces is really easy compared to aligning and balancing forty pieces. That is really silly in my opinion. We tried a bunch of techniques to make airframes consistently. Maybe next time I will talk about some of our creative failures. None were failures, but some took a lot more work than others or cost a small fortune.

We are trying to be Orville and Wilbur-like not like that other guy. The Wright brothers got off the ground for less than $2000 and their main competitor was funded by the Army and had something like 50x their budget. He even built a special barge to take off from and that never worked either. It is time to get a good rugged system in place so we can go into nearly serial production of the airframes.