Flying using the sunlight: a 4-year solar-powered remote-controlled aircraft

Many of us have initiatives that finish up spanning a number of several years and several iterations, and gets revisited each and every time inspiration strikes and you have forgotten just exactly how much do the job and annoyance the former round was. For [Daniel Riley] AKA [rctestflight] that job is really a photo voltaic driven RC plane which up to now spans 4 many years, 4 versions and thirteen videos. It can be a treasure trove of information gathered by tricky practical experience, covering carbon fibre design strategies, photo voltaic energy administration as well as the difficulties of testing within the authentic world, amid others.

Photo voltaic Aircraft V1 had a nine.5 ft / two.9 m carbon fibre skeleton wing, covered with transparent film, along with the fragile monocrystaline solar cells mounted inside of the wing. V1 knowledgeable a number of crashes which shattered all of the photo voltaic cells, right up until [Daniel] found out that the wing flexed below aileron input. In addition it did not have any form of solar charge command. V2 additional a next wing spar into a somewhat extended nine.83 ft / 3 m wing, which authorized for more solar cells.

Solar Aircraft V3 was upgraded to utilize only one hexagonal spar to save lots of pounds while still keeping rigid, plus the photo voltaic cells were more sturdy and successful. [Daniel] did many screening to uncover an best solar charging set-up and found that using the photo voltaic array to charge the batteries instantly within a well-balanced program basically works equally nicely or far better than an MPPT cost controller.

V4 can be a departure through the sophisticated carbon fibre style, and uses a simple foam board flying wing which has a stepped KF airfoil rather. The craft is much scaled-down with only a 6 ft / 1.83 m wingspan. It performed extremely very well, holding the battery thoroughly billed during the complete flight, which sad to say resulted in a crash just after modifying the autopilot. [Daniel] suspects the principle reasons with the enhanced efficiency are greater excellent solar power panels plus the actuality that there's no more movie masking the cells.