Efficient long range UAV

This will be my last devlog before leaving my home

I wont be home for a month or more now so unfortunately progress on this project will be paused. :(

Today i configured my transmitter such that if the aircraft goes beyond range of rx, it automatically comes back home.

This was a huge challenge as i didnt have those fancy transmitters with a screen to configure stuff, i have a flysky i4x that comes with JUST the sticks no configuration.

Fortunately, buying a flysky transmitter saved me As flysky ibus or sbus protocol transmits the RSSI of radio signal as a pwm signal on its channel 14, To be honest i discovered that while calibrating my radio in mission planner, i was surprised and overjoyed to find that this is actually possible with my transmitter.

After finding out and a bit of tinkering later i was able to map RTL on channel 14 and reverse the channel aswell (so it turns on if transmitter disconnects). Honestly this was top 10 flysky respect moments for me.

I will be working tirelessly on my game now so be sure to follow that project aswell.

I also wanna take a moment to thank EVERYONE who has shown me so much love and support since the beginning of this project, And also to hackclub who were able to provide be with the electronics i could only dream to afford.

I have assembled the airframe , everything is quiet sturdy and under the estimate weight limit, i setup the flight firmware for this specific aircraft, and tuned the rates.

Unfortunately due to heavy rainfall near my area and the wing almost entirely being covered with paper, i cant go risk flying it.

Also it gets worse as i will not be home for a month or less . I will be disassembling the aircraft which is quiet easy to do due to my smart design choices.

I have ordered the XPS sheets that were included in my grant, theyll reach when im not at home so making the fuselage has to wait, but that gives me PLENTY of time to design the fuselage in CAD and make it as clean and robust as possible.

On a positive note i took my 450g flying wing out to fly today, it flew quiet well, unfortunately i did manage to crash it as it didnt have a flight computer and these things are quiet hard to fly.

Thanks to stardance tho i do have autonomous flight electronics (which costs $180 btw), i can make an autonomous flying wing that will be able to do long range endurance with help of 4 extra cells i have lying around. So thatll prolly be my next project after i come back home .

With that i will thanks stardance once again for getting me all these electronics

This battery is not human bro.

This took me way too long to make, the most problematic part was to figure out how to get all the cells together without exploding the pack with extreme heat.

I didnt have a spot welder, all i had was nickel strips some cells and a dream, so i used my regular soldering iron and started experimenting on how to solder these packs

In the end i found that “spot soldering” worked best for me, i hope im the first one who invented this, but u basically take not that hot of a soldering iron, and then u sand the surface place the strip and dab the soldering iron on the connection to join them together, do this like 4 times for a single joint and u have quiet solid joints

While making the connections i did mess up and bit and there was some sparking not enough to burn my house thankfully

About the pack, its a 4s4p pack, my first time using 4s configuration, and i am NOT comfortable with the amount of power it delivers, its way too scary gng
Im gonna lock the throttle at 70% cuz i know damm well shit can go wrong real fast with these packs.

I did some test runs with this on my flying wing and this rc plane, using the pixhawk power module at 50% throttle i saw 11A consumption with PLENTY of power, and on my 3s lipo pack it consumed 21A at 100% so we can safely say its not bottlenecking.

Its currently 12000mah, i do have 4 more cells i bought so i can push it to 15000, but ill prolyy do it later cuz this scares me way too much

Im not kidding the sound the motor makes while using this pack is way too wild, i HOPE autopilot can handle everything n nothing goes wrong, that being said i will NOT do the maiden with this, instead ill use my 1500mah 3s lipo for that.

today i disassembled the aircraft cuz im not gonna be able to fly it anyways rn due to rain

Made everything under the wing a LOT cleaner, hid the mess under a sheet of paper, it doesnt look That good, but it looks plenty good rn

I am setup and tinkered in the firmware a bit more, idk why i have this fear of maiden launches that stops me from actually flying my models, i really need to get over that

Currently I have started working on my game too due to this rain, but ill soon go out for a fuselage less maiden.
Pray for me that it goes well.

Ok so i have assembled the avionics, and routed everything in aircraft,
as i expected everything does look insanely ugly now

Thats okay since i will be making a fuselage later which will hopefully
look nice

Currently i have ailerons elevator and rudder working fine with
differential thrust in action, I do need a proper place to mount the
battery aswell, along with a proper place for pixhawk, its just hanging
there with double sided tape rn.

I really wish i had a better looking fuselage this looks insanely ugly rn, hopefully after i confirm it flies then ill work on the fuselage.

My batteries are dead and it JUST rained so i cant go out today, maybe tomorrow i can go for a maiden

Okay so my back doesnt hurt today

I worked on the wing and installed the ESCs, tested the motors using pixhawk and they both respond properly

I do have a little concern as the ESCs are getting slightly warm, i did remove the rubber like i did on my older ESC, that doesnt seem to make it any better, the ready to sky esc i used earlier didnt have this heating problem, idk whats going on, i hope it js doesnt end bad

The good news is that i installed servos and their linkages to the alerons, i will have a flaperon configuration for nice low effort flaps.

Today the aircrafts weight is 560gs without the battery, so im assuming this will be around 750-800 grams with the 1500 3s lipo

Istg i hate soldering these thick wires, its js so tedious

Istg my back is GONE atp

so i covered the entire wing in paper
turns out yesterday the weight was so high due to wet glue all over the wing, once it dried.

So i js covered the entire wing in paper, and its quiet sturdy, Also i fixed the servos inside the wing aswell, it looks very flush, but im sure all that is going to go down the drain once i start installing the esc.

This is an insanely tedious job, im just dreading the fuselage part idk how im gonna mke that

The support ive been receiving is INSANE it really motivates me to work on it more so thnx yall

LOOK AT MY BACK THO GOD DAMM IM FKIN CROOKED

May lord have mercy on my back damm
But the wing is 80% dont, along with the elevator, i have designed everything in most modular and easy t transport as possible.

I didnt use my construction method all the way on the wing as it was adding a ton on unnecessary weight on the wing, and the center part does not even need to be that structurally strong so i just let it be exposed, and honestly it looks way better.

ALSO MORE ELECTRONICS ARRIVED , today my battery, ESC, and the receiver arrived, i was finally able to see the pixhawk control the servos, for some reason ESCs do get warm when i try to use them but i hope itll be fine.

tomorrow the thing im most dreading about, the fuselage and wiring the servos through the wing i will be doing, its most tedious job ever but we gotta do what we gotta do.

Im quiet proud how sturdy the frame is tho, the way i made it its absolutely perfect, and it looks like a kit istg. i love working on this project.

OH and again HUGE shout out to stardance for getting me all this electronics i will never forget this favor from y’all ever, this is genuinely a core memory of mine now

Okay dang my back hurts
But REAR STABS ARE READY, They are made as perfect, modular and easy to transport as possible.

I centered the servos and installed them after lining the entire wing using my custom build process

The carbon fiber tube is slid on on site and then clamped to the rear assembly using zipties, this is a little wasteful, but you can also use screws and bolts if youre rich enough.

Im quiet proud of the lining job, this rear assembly is one of my best pieces of work ive ever manufactured,
I cant wait to see this baby fly

Unfortunately no updates on into the cosmos today cuz i was way too excited to work on this project.

Oh and shoutout and a huge thanks to hackclub this would NOT have been able to be possible if not for them.

MORE ELECTRONICS ARRIVED TODAY

I have made the rear assembly with a beautiful and modular connector that uses zipties to hold onto the carbon spar (i will also add ductape for more rigidity)

And i designed the mount of how the BLDC motors are going to hold on the wingspar.

ALSO THE SERVOS ARRIVED YAYAYAYAYA, I can finally finish the rear assembly with electronics and all.

Unfortunately my gluegun exploded (literally)
So i have been set back by a bit but i think im good

Heres a graphic for more accurate depiction of how it looked when the gluegun exploded

Ok so i just designed and cut out the rear elevator

It looks queit decent, i used 6mm old circular dowels tgat were laying around the house to make it more sturdier, the elevator came out perfect im quiet satisfied by it. Also shout out to this foam, its holds its shape quiet well and its not soft like my old one.

Im js waiting for my electronics to arrive, its gonna be christmas soon when all the electroncis do arrive

Oh and i will be using the rounded wingtips for everything in aricraft to increase endurance as much as i can. At speeds this aircraft will be running on, i dont expect the vortex to touch the trailing edge of the wing so yeah thats good

OKAY SO MY DAD GOT ME EPS BLOCKS FINALLY

I cut out the airfoil profile twice (i had one 50cm section laying around already) now i finally have the wing structure ready, now after this ima be designing the modular part for the wing that lets it detach and attach to the 10mm carbon fiber tube that i ordered.

Cant estimate the RTF weight of the aircraft yet, but without battries im trying to hit around 550g, things are looking pretty decent now

EXCEPT THE FACT THAT I ALMOST BURNT MY CLOTHES. Bro i gotta make a better hot wire cutter instead of doing it by hand, i accidentally left the wire touching my pants and i made a lil hole in them. its cool tho

FOLLOW ME FOR MORE COOL DEVLOGS

Ok so i measured and the 2m wing wont fit in my car, really sorry for that, But I will be making the wing 1.5m long, this will reduce the endurance a bit but i wont be sending it to intercity missions just yet so 1.5m will be fine.

Also im switching to Clark Y airfoil as its more famous and has a lot of reading material online, the build process has started, i have bought the electronics i need im js waiting for them to arrive now.

I cant wait to get my hands on the pixhawk and then take it to fly

This might be the best day of my life, i got the funding approved for my project got 180 in my HCB, now i can finally start building the project, I have ordered the pixhawk board i just need other electronics and materials.

Tomorrow ill be going out to buy 30mm EPS sheets from my local vendor, and then ill start posting time lapses of me building the wing

Made the wiring diagram in figma and added where the electronics are going to be placed around the aircraft.

Made a real life inspired Aleron servo link for this project.
I had printed the old servo links out, they worked fine but the problem was they relied on adhesive to work, and on my aircraft i had used transparent tape over paper as reinforcement so it had 0 hold to it, hence i decided to model a real life inspired servo link with ziptie like behavior, this one doesn’t rely on glue but on the strength of your control surface to hold on, so this ones a lot better and a lot cleaner, the only downside is that it requires a bit of support material to print but that’s okay as aesthetically it looks a lot better, i might make a version that doesn’t require support material if you don’t care about aesthetics so lmk abt that.
also this versions step and 3mf file is aslo available on the github

Made the templates for airofoil, servo horns, motor mount, and the rib template in cad aswell, the rib and airfoil templates have to be traced on cardboard, cut out and have their edges sanded to work properly, motor mounts should be printed twice and there are already way more servo horns than you might need.

Even printed these out on my Anycubic Kobra 2 neo to speed up the build process as soon as i get eligible for building

What if life-saving supplies could reach places of distress without roads, traffic, or human pilots? This project presents a long-endurance autonomous UAV designed to deliver payloads upto 300g using an energy-efficient airframe, autonomous flight planning, and low-cost hardware and really low cost maintenance, most parts of this build are easy to find and the build processes that are used in this aircraft are personally developed worked and tested in real life by me personally.

Built from the ground up as a practical engineering platform, the aircraft demonstrates how modern autonomous systems can make aerial logistics more accessible, affordable, and adaptable for real-world challenges.

The build uses cheap/easily available parts, and every dime serves a purpose in this project, ive linked the github (currently unfinished) on my project page aswell, please check it out and if yall like it then drop a like aswell.

in the images attached, i have made out a flight plan for how it would go in real life, ive ran CFD sims on the aircraft and made a wing profile of 45cm out of thermocol of the SD7037 airfoil to test its stall characteristics to have a better idea about the cruise speed estimation, this testing was done by me sitting in a car with this airfoil outside the window and strapping a MPU gyro to read the angle readings and telling my dad to speed up or slow down.

Currently dont have a pixhawk board, but thought learning to plan a mission wont be that hard, installed mission planner, and now am trying to get a hang of things in this, ill have a servo attached to the AUX port of the pixhawk and ill plan it so the plane reaches X m/s amount of gps speed before dropping the payload and then before X-C m ill drop the payload so that the landing of the payload is as precise as possible here C is the drag coefficient, ill also have to take into account the paracute ill be making out of old plastic bags and how much they will reduce the speed.

Made some realistic changes like adding 2 motors instead of one, estimate weight is around 1.7kgs and ill be using 12 inch fiber props in this build, the battery will be made up of either 3000 or 5000 cells if i manage to get my hands on them, the rear stab LOOKS small but its enough for this build providing 1 vbar ratio, this with differential thrust the aircraft will have insane yaw authority, which can be increased to even more by just moving the thrust motors a little outward on the wing, i have added the pixhawk ESC and my motor models to the document aswell

Changed the entire design from a flying wing to a conventional UAV type design 2m wingspan and 18cm chord length with a SD7037 airfoil payload capacity of around 500g, there’s a dedicated space for the payload, the entire aircraft will be built out of lightweight pharmocol carbon spars and my own special building techniques that uses trash to reinforce the aircraft.

Ive ran CFD sims on this aircraft aswell and im satisfied by the results for now

Starting out as a flying wing UAV design, uses efficent flying wing type airfoils and will have max payload capacity of around 500g, this aircraft will be mostly responsible for delivering medicines to remote areas without stopping, it’ll use a bomb dropping type mechanism with a parachute strapped to the package.

Main aim of this project is to finish everything in as cheap as but as perfect as possible, in india expensive tech doesnt work out, so im making something that people can actually use