Ryerson grads trying to break a world record- electric duration flight

Started by Frank v B, June 13, 2022, 09:31:34 PM

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Frank v B

Those of you who remember Travis and Bill from Ryerson, they are trying to break the record for flight duration of an electric plane.  They are trying to keep it aloft for weeks.  The current world record for an unmanned aerial vehicle is 25 days, 23 hours and 57 minutes.

The test flight was scheduled for 6:30 this morning (assembly started at :30 am) and planned to last 4 hours.  I do not know the result so far but have asked current Ryerson Temac trainee William to update us.  He was helping with the effort.

William gave me the following information:
wingspan- 6.3 meters (19.5 feet.. yes, FEET!)
power system- 800 watts (one horsepower) for take-off.
battery capacity- 45,000 mah. 6S
Cruising power- 100 watts
solar panels on the wings to recharge batteries in the daytime.

The event was scheduled to be held at the Tottenham Aerodrome- glider airport

Good luck to our students of flight.


Frank

Here is the video of the test flight.  You may recognize Bill at the transmitter and Travis launching the plane (left wing).  They fly with us regularly.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2019/10/07/ryerson-students-try-to-set-solar-aviation-record/
"Never trade luck for skill"

msatin

You never fail until you stop trying

sihinch

Love it!!! Yes! You Guys are Pioneers!

Good luck. If you ever want a camera chase-plane you know where to come! 😂

bfeist

Fantastic work. It would be interesting to review data on how much spare charging capacity there was vs the cloud cover for a given day. It might also be possible to have the plane seek out less cloudy areas to fly in based on weather radar data, etc. I'm also curious what the optimal altitude is given the prop / airfoil vs wanting to be above clouds for better charging.

A very interesting project.

Ben

WilliamK

Some updates for everyone, 

We were able to get two diagnostic flights in; one on June the 13th and the other yesterday June 15th. 

The first flight was a shakedown since we haven't flown since September last year, testing out some updated firmware for our autopilot (ArduPilot), tuning some control parameters.  We took off at around 5:30am, a little behind schedule and landed at 10:30am from the field at Great Lakes Soaring Club that the owner Mike has very kindly let us use.  In addition to the autopilot updates we were able to do some performance tests, trying to examine the electrical power that is required to fly.  Last year we realized that the amount of power drawn from the aircraft is too high to reasonably make it through a full night. 

The second flight was for more performance testing and examining effects of minor modifications.  We took off at 2:41 am and landed at a little after 6 am.  This time we swapped out the propeller we used last year for one which wind tunnel tests demonstrated better efficiency.  We also added a stretch of tripping tape to the surface of the wing, since we have a theory that there is a laminar separation bubble forming on the upper surface.  We intended on testing the effect of this trip tape in a more controlled fashion using the large wind tunnel at Toronto Metropolitan University (Ryerson), but unfortunately the tunnel is under repair. 

Ultimately for this second flight we did two different performance tests; a loiter test similar to the first flights, and then a descent test.  The descending test is tricky to do well, since you need to ensure the throttle is cut while the autopilot maintains a descent rate as steadily as possible.  Despite the weather being calm on the ground our tests were unsatisfactory because of fairly high South winds (6-8 m/s).  Because of the winds, and our aircraft autopilot needing to maintain a minimum ground speed, the throttle varied quite a lot.  Variable throttle muddies the waters in trying to determine power draw. 

There's a lot more work to be done analyzing the data, but I think even despite the adverse weather it will help inform our future plans.  After some catch up sleep of course...

A big thank you to TEMAC, and enthusiastic TEMAC members for the interest and support. The training from Frank and Graham has been incredibly useful to myself and my colleague Maya, thank you!

William

Here's a link to a video taken of CREATeV using a DJI:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NUXhKw8CX6Wkj4wuyQWvMYLoronRkJ8N/view?usp=sharing
Takeoff:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qNMI5frSNruGuRxxRwNYQ0bTUsNGh-j7/view?usp=sharing
Landing:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pt3WJLqaJBuuDSfygqfH6cyZqv6pQ9yy/view?usp=sharing

bfeist

Thanks for the additional detail. Excellent work! One thought that came to mind reading through your description is that you could add an airspeed sensor and feed that into ardupilot rather than depending on GPS groundspeed. That might address the throttle instability issues you mentioned.

WilliamK

Hey Ben, 

Right now a couple hours of cloud are fine in during the daytime as long as its not in the morning.  At the moment due to some regulations we've limited it to line of sight and below 400 ft altitude.  If we were to go beyond those limits there would be some logistical/regulatory challenges.  CREATeV has been designed for this low altitude; the propeller selection, low power antennas, wing design.  It takes more power to fly at those higher altitudes, but if you get above the clouds it can be worth it. 

We have a couple airspeed sensors on the wing, the issue is the controller wants to maintain a certain minimum ground speed which is tricky with the winds. 

Thanks for the questions!
William