Help! Need Help to Build 1524 mm (60") Search And Rescue C-130 J-30 LRF/FPV
- Thread starter Scooter The White Rabbit
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Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
I could help design a radio repeater like that to meet your specs
@Power_Broker Hang on to that thought! I have been sidelined by work of late, and the health of my other half and one of our pups. Busy life sometimes. But I am thinking of going there with maybe a second Guinea Pig like craft, or maybe the FT Explorer. I will note this and let you know! Thanks again!
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
Okay everyone. Da White Rabbit is sidelined with a terrible infection that finally kept me home in bed most of yesterday. Hoping to get in to see a Doc at the VA today.
Half awake "Stinkin' Thinkin'" yesterday, i believe I have my three Proof of Concept aircraft down. FT Simple Storch Recon/Camera Search Plane. FT Guinea Pig (or variant there of) as Emergency Supply Drop Aircraft. If needed, FT Explorer for Data Stream/Operational Extension UAV Loiter Aircraft. Once weatherproofed brightly painted for SAR operations, I believe any RC Group could set up similar aircraft to follow simple guide lines of operation to assist SAR in almost any weather and location. I'll be working on a minimum list of requirements over the next few days to post.
Half awake "Stinkin' Thinkin'" yesterday, i believe I have my three Proof of Concept aircraft down. FT Simple Storch Recon/Camera Search Plane. FT Guinea Pig (or variant there of) as Emergency Supply Drop Aircraft. If needed, FT Explorer for Data Stream/Operational Extension UAV Loiter Aircraft. Once weatherproofed brightly painted for SAR operations, I believe any RC Group could set up similar aircraft to follow simple guide lines of operation to assist SAR in almost any weather and location. I'll be working on a minimum list of requirements over the next few days to post.
jross
Well-known member
Why not settle on the storch or explorer to do both recon and loiter? Thinking swappable components and redundancy of parts.
b-29er
Well-known member
Believe he's looking for some payloads as well, which would make for a very bulky recon aircraft. I'm more curious why not just do a flying wing or modified flying wing? we're looking at these hershey bar aircraft, trying to compromise by having two airframes, one small and efficient and the flying schoolbus, why not just make a larger flying wing? Make it large enough to handle payloads or make the payloads semi-exposed in a fairing under the aircraft. Keep the design simple and efficient, and you can have an airframe capable of covering long distances on low amperage for mowing the lawn, or capable of higher speeds at lower efficiency to get on scene faster, while still carrying a payload.
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
I've looked at another point here. Capability of trained pilots. We may have to consider members of existing SAR groups who don't have a lot or any flight experience. A trainer plane or easy flyer would work better. The other point is repair/build experience. Anything to make it easy for a group to get into flying and working Air SAR into their SOP, such as easy trainers, like the Cub or Storch. And basically the Guinea Pig is a large twin motor trainer W/O trainer wings.
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jross
Well-known member
@Brett_N suggested that and I agree. Something like a Drak/Mini Drak or Chimera as examples. Ritewing builds some large wings capable of flying fast and slow. A Volantex Ranger can hold tons of gear too and is a potential out of box solution for a loiter plane. Guys are flying 100 km and back on them. Plane like that can loiter for two or three hours.
While trying to build suitable aircraft from scratch is enviable, I keep coming back to modifying OOB solutions.
The more I think about the whole thing, the more I think most SAR volunteers will struggle to handle a trainer reliably. What you envision would be a new branch of SAR. Aerial operations. The ability to do what you want to accomplish, from a stick point of view, is enormous. I speak as someone who flew my first plane, a Tiny Trainer, successfully on Boxing Day of 2018. I've since built and flown an Explorer and Mini Arrow but I'm still sketchy at best. I don't think I'll be confident enough for at least a year to be able to do what you want from a pilot. You need people that are at least as interested in flying planes as they are in SAR. Planes are the least of your worries.
b-29er
Well-known member
I think you're going down a rabbit hole if you're pursuing zero-time or low-time pilots flying an aircraft with over 8 grand of high-end electronics and potentially a droppable payload over public land. This isn't a DJI, you're not going to be able to take your hands off. This is a fixed wing. Every second you fly, you're facing down a timer, if you don't make a decision, you have x seconds until you find the treeline, until you run out of range, etc. You can't let go of the sticks, and whoever is flying this needs to make the correct decisions in terms of power management, in terms of navigation and maneuvering, before they run out of battery, out of altitude, or out of time. I don't mean to sound dramatic, i'm just saying i wouldn't trust someone i pulled off the street to be able to make those decisions without some flight time and familiarity with systems.
While i can understand wanting to keep things simple, i don't think having a trainer airframe is going to help once you start interfacing a flight controller. Which is what is going to need to happen because you would rather have an airplane try to RTH autonomously than brown out and fly off uncontrolled into the wild blue yonder. Any flight controller you may want to use that incorporates an RTH functionality, a datalink, etc. is going to have stabilization of some kind. The only real thing you gain out of having a trainer airfoil is dihedral, and that is not super valuable when the flight controller levels the aircraft and stabilizes for wind.
What i do know is if you can train 2 pilots and 2 payload ops, you're going to have a lot more luck in your endeavors being able to find one pilot and 1 payload op at a given time than 2, and a 2-ship operation is going to wind up requiring more personnel at a given time, and incidentally add a massive delay between locating the person and being able to reach them with a payload.
b-29er
Well-known member
I'd say an out of box aircraft would be very viable to get people trained. When i was at college for a SUAS Specialization degree, we were given an E-flite apprentice as a part of our class, first class (fall semester) we would learn how to fly, second class (spring) we would incorporate a Pixhawk and get it flying autonomously, takeoff, pattern, landing, all with a mouse click. I would say that has a great value. Get people familiarized and flying LOS, then FPV with a buddy box, then full autonomous. You build them up quickly to the skillset they need to fly a general FPV aircraft with flight controller, then start to work them up to whatever airframe they are going onto from there. No matter what, the aircraft is going to be inconsequencial if the plan is to try flying a zero-time pilot on it.
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
Add to. The FT Explorer was chosen as a radio relay aircraft. I don't see a lot of situations were this maybe needed. Mountainous regions with many hidden valleys and crevasses where ground spotters and line of sight radio systems will be of little help, yes. So the main two platforms I'm thinking for RECON are trainers like the FT Simple Cub/Storch. Easier transition from line of sight flight to FPV. ECD (Emergency Cargo Drop) aircraft liken to a FT Guinea Pig IN CASE the victim is going to be out of ground support reach for any extended length of time. Break down.
1. RECON 100% use. FT Simple Cub/Storch (Trainers)
2. Emergency Cargo Drop 25% to 50% use. FT Guinea Pig. (Cargo Plane)
3. Radio/Data Relay 10% use. (Depending upon local terrain/season) FT Explorer. (Long Loiter)
The key aircraft is RECON. The other two are add-on's when needed. Simple to build/fly, easy quick to set up and launch. If set up as needed a small team of two or three people could walk into an area, launch and Recon ahead of the ground teams. Or set up a ground station at the command post and operate from there.
Note: The R-D-R (Radio/Data Relay) could also be used to relay ground teams transmissions to command.
I'm just putting together a proposal program and testing its ability to be of assistance to SAR Operations. The base system has to be flexible enough to adapt to any location or conditions. If the local group is more tuned into flying wings, then by all means don't dump them for the planes I suggest. Use what you have to the best of your ability to get the job done.
1. RECON 100% use. FT Simple Cub/Storch (Trainers)
2. Emergency Cargo Drop 25% to 50% use. FT Guinea Pig. (Cargo Plane)
3. Radio/Data Relay 10% use. (Depending upon local terrain/season) FT Explorer. (Long Loiter)
The key aircraft is RECON. The other two are add-on's when needed. Simple to build/fly, easy quick to set up and launch. If set up as needed a small team of two or three people could walk into an area, launch and Recon ahead of the ground teams. Or set up a ground station at the command post and operate from there.
Note: The R-D-R (Radio/Data Relay) could also be used to relay ground teams transmissions to command.
I'm just putting together a proposal program and testing its ability to be of assistance to SAR Operations. The base system has to be flexible enough to adapt to any location or conditions. If the local group is more tuned into flying wings, then by all means don't dump them for the planes I suggest. Use what you have to the best of your ability to get the job done.
clolsonus
Well-known member
I'm jumping into this thread *way* late so sorry if any of this was already suggested and I missed it. Here's my advice (I mean this in all positiveness!) Resist the urge to design a plane, resist the urge to design your own flight controller or communication board. Resist the urge to design a boat, or write a computer program, or develop a web site for all of this! Focus on building your first prototype with as much off the shelf stuff as you can cobble together quickly. Be flexible in with your requirements. You want to move forward quickly at the start. Your first prototype might only be 80% of what you want (maybe only 50%) but it gets you in the air doing stuff, gaining valuable experience, learning what works, what doesn't, what needs extra attention, what is easy, what is hard. From there, build your second prototype to improve on a few things that didn't work out as well in the first. Maybe now is the time to design your airplane, or maybe you realize an 8kg beast is a pain to transport and hard to launch and land in areas you would go to actually do work. A lot of people get to this point and decide to focus their energy on shrinking down the gear so they can use a smaller airplane. 6 months or a year from now you might want to design something yourself from scratch, but now you know exactly what you need, you know exactly why the off-the-shelf stuff isn't quite good enough, and now you are going beyond what the average person could just buy somewhere.
So anyway, that's my advice. If you want to develop a complex system to do a SAR task, build your first one as quickly as you can out of commodity parts and ready to go items. If you are lucky, 6 months from now you could be on iteration 2 or 3 and feeling like you are starting to have some things figured out and working. If you want to design a cool plane, design a cool plane. 6 months from now you have a couple iterations of a cool plane.
Oh here's a bonus tip! (From my been there done that file ...) Please steer away from flying wings. Flying wings fly great as hobby planes, I have nothing against flying wings when they are light and fun. The problem is that when you load up your wing with gear and batteries it get heavy and really hard to launch. You'll want to make the wing bigger so you can put more stuff in it and suddenly you realize it's too big to hand launch reliably. So now you are spending the next 6 months designing a cool launcher (which probably doesn't work 100% perfectly every launch ... which means you've had to pause your project a couple times to build another flying wing.) Oh and your heavy flying wing is now fast with a high stall speed and needs a huge area to land (with a really flat long glide slope.) And I'm not saying you can't make a flying wing do all of this if that's what you really want, but your stress levels will always be high.
Oh, so when you do design your airplane anyway (like I would do too) please be really careful designing it for impressive brochure numbers. You might want to fly at 50 kts, for 90 minutes, carry 'n' kg payload, etc. etc. The problem is that you can quickly end up with a plane that has very little margins. You might hit your target specs, cruise at 50 kts, but stall at 35 kts (which would make launch and landing extremely difficult and risky.) Consider a slightly less capable airplane, but one that is pleasant to launch, fly, land. Sometimes you just do what you have to do despite the risk or stress, but for 99% of what I do, I'd take 25% slower cruise speed and less range in return for something that is easy and reliable to operate.
Personally I want to build a fully autonomous foam board plane someday relatively soon. I built the simple storch, but it just felt a little too small and constrained for packing with avionics. Right now I'm flying to full size X-UAV's for work and I *really* like them as a general purpose work horse. I can hand launch them easily. I get > 1 hour flight time without breaking a sweat (longest flight is 77 minutes still with some battery to spare.) The talon isn't perfect for everything, but if you are hunting for a all around work horse as a project starter, you could do a lot worse ...
Here's one of my talons with an 8000mah 4S battery, a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera, with a flying weight of 7 lbs. It launches with not much more than a flick of my wrist:
Sorry for the long message, my fingers are in a typing mood tonight!
Curt.
So anyway, that's my advice. If you want to develop a complex system to do a SAR task, build your first one as quickly as you can out of commodity parts and ready to go items. If you are lucky, 6 months from now you could be on iteration 2 or 3 and feeling like you are starting to have some things figured out and working. If you want to design a cool plane, design a cool plane. 6 months from now you have a couple iterations of a cool plane.
Oh here's a bonus tip!
(From my been there done that file ...) Please steer away from flying wings. Flying wings fly great as hobby planes, I have nothing against flying wings when they are light and fun. The problem is that when you load up your wing with gear and batteries it get heavy and really hard to launch. You'll want to make the wing bigger so you can put more stuff in it and suddenly you realize it's too big to hand launch reliably. So now you are spending the next 6 months designing a cool launcher (which probably doesn't work 100% perfectly every launch ... which means you've had to pause your project a couple times to build another flying wing.) Oh and your heavy flying wing is now fast with a high stall speed and needs a huge area to land (with a really flat long glide slope.) And I'm not saying you can't make a flying wing do all of this if that's what you really want, but your stress levels will always be high. Oh, so when you do design your airplane anyway (like I would do too)
please be really careful designing it for impressive brochure numbers. You might want to fly at 50 kts, for 90 minutes, carry 'n' kg payload, etc. etc. The problem is that you can quickly end up with a plane that has very little margins. You might hit your target specs, cruise at 50 kts, but stall at 35 kts (which would make launch and landing extremely difficult and risky.) Consider a slightly less capable airplane, but one that is pleasant to launch, fly, land. Sometimes you just do what you have to do despite the risk or stress, but for 99% of what I do, I'd take 25% slower cruise speed and less range in return for something that is easy and reliable to operate. Personally I want to build a fully autonomous foam board plane someday relatively soon. I built the simple storch, but it just felt a little too small and constrained for packing with avionics. Right now I'm flying to full size X-UAV's for work and I *really* like them as a general purpose work horse. I can hand launch them easily. I get > 1 hour flight time without breaking a sweat (longest flight is 77 minutes still with some battery to spare.) The talon isn't perfect for everything, but if you are hunting for a all around work horse as a project starter, you could do a lot worse ...
Here's one of my talons with an 8000mah 4S battery, a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera, with a flying weight of 7 lbs. It launches with not much more than a flick of my wrist:
Sorry for the long message, my fingers are in a typing mood tonight!
Curt.
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
I'm jumping into this thread *way* late so sorry if any of this was already suggested and I missed it. Here's my advice (I mean this in all positiveness!) Resist the urge to design a plane, resist the urge to design your own flight controller or communication board. Resist the urge to design a boat, or write a computer program, or develop a web site for all of this! Focus on building your first prototype with as much off the shelf stuff as you can cobble together quickly. Be flexible in with your requirements. You want to move forward quickly at the start. Your first prototype might only be 80% of what you want (maybe only 50%) but it gets you in the air doing stuff, gaining valuable experience, learning what works, what doesn't, what needs extra attention, what is easy, what is hard. From there, build your second prototype to improve on a few things that didn't work out as well in the first. Maybe now is the time to design your airplane, or maybe you realize an 8kg beast is a pain to transport and hard to launch and land in areas you would go to actually do work. A lot of people get to this point and decide to focus their energy on shrinking down the gear so they can use a smaller airplane. 6 months or a year from now you might want to design something yourself from scratch, but now you know exactly what you need, you know exactly why the off-the-shelf stuff isn't quite good enough, and now you are going beyond what the average person could just buy somewhere.
So anyway, that's my advice. If you want to develop a complex system to do a SAR task, build your first one as quickly as you can out of commodity parts and ready to go items. If you are lucky, 6 months from now you could be on iteration 2 or 3 and feeling like you are starting to have some things figured out and working. If you want to design a cool plane, design a cool plane. 6 months from now you have a couple iterations of a cool plane.
Oh here's a bonus tip!
Oh, so when you do design your airplane anyway (like I would do too)
Personally I want to build a fully autonomous foam board plane someday relatively soon. I built the simple storch, but it just felt a little too small and constrained for packing with avionics. Right now I'm flying to full size X-UAV's for work and I *really* like them as a general purpose work horse. I can hand launch them easily. I get > 1 hour flight time without breaking a sweat (longest flight is 77 minutes still with some battery to spare.) The talon isn't perfect for everything, but if you are hunting for a all around work horse as a project starter, you could do a lot worse ...
Here's one of my talons with an 8000mah 4S battery, a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera, with a flying weight of 7 lbs. It launches with not much more than a flick of my wrist:
Sorry for the long message, my fingers are in a typing mood tonight!
Curt.
No-o-o-o worries Curt! I bought and built a FT Guinea Pig kit for several reasons. Easy to fly, build, repair cargo bird. That's my start point.
I do however have a few data questions. You've been into this a while so certain "Jar-gone" needs refreshing to me mind.
@b-29er ahhhh?
1. DJI ? 2. LOS ? 3. RTH ? Please? Little help here.
For everyone! Attention! Attention!
Prototype Proof Of Concept. Cheap off the shelf... EVERYTHING! As @clolsonus Curt pointed out. This is a only a test. Off the shelf electronics and birds with little kitbashing is preferred. Such as... AUTO-PILOT is OUT during beginning trials. The most complex item I may use will be a POWER HUB to assist in smoothing out the power between batts, esc's, motors, servos, camera's. 2.4G radios for PRELIMINARY TESTS. Baby steps people. Baby Steps.
Using my built Guinea I plan to install the standard twin motors with ESC's (May upgrade to Flite Test Radials). I have upgraded to 3-blade 10 X 5 props W/2-inch spinners. 6-channel 2.4G receiver, 4-channel flight controls. Specialty gear list. Power Hub (w/On-Screen-Display), two camera's (FPV-nose, Ground Scan-Belly). Navigation/Anti-Collision Lights W/Landing Lights. (Cheap kits, I'm using two for ease of connections One in wing, one in fuselage. Servo Y-connector between.) Channel 5-6, at least one for cargo door release. I may use the other to start with for Landing Lights ON/OFF. Battery Monitor and Down Plane Locator Beeper. Paint scheme: Bright A$$ White and Florescent Orange! Like a 1960's test plane! Because... well... this is a test after all.
During Maiden Flight Trials: 3 person ground crew. Pilot, Ground Scan Observer, Line of Sight Observer. The GSO is like a combination Bombardier an Navigator. Plotting the ground scan directing the Pilot. The LSO assists the GSO while keeping an eye on the bird whenever/wherever possible. Looking out for other air traffic and such. Baby steps.
jross
Well-known member
DJI - Makes the Phantom, Mavic, Spark and Inspire quadcopter drones.
LOS - Line of sight
RTH - Return to home
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
I'm jumping into this thread *way* late so sorry if any of this was already suggested and I missed it. Here's my advice (I mean this in all positiveness!) Resist the urge to design a plane, resist the urge to design your own flight controller or communication board. Resist the urge to design a boat, or write a computer program, or develop a web site for all of this! Focus on building your first prototype with as much off the shelf stuff as you can cobble together quickly. Be flexible in with your requirements. You want to move forward quickly at the start. Your first prototype might only be 80% of what you want (maybe only 50%) but it gets you in the air doing stuff, gaining valuable experience, learning what works, what doesn't, what needs extra attention, what is easy, what is hard. From there, build your second prototype to improve on a few things that didn't work out as well in the first. Maybe now is the time to design your airplane, or maybe you realize an 8kg beast is a pain to transport and hard to launch and land in areas you would go to actually do work. A lot of people get to this point and decide to focus their energy on shrinking down the gear so they can use a smaller airplane. 6 months or a year from now you might want to design something yourself from scratch, but now you know exactly what you need, you know exactly why the off-the-shelf stuff isn't quite good enough, and now you are going beyond what the average person could just buy somewhere.
So anyway, that's my advice. If you want to develop a complex system to do a SAR task, build your first one as quickly as you can out of commodity parts and ready to go items. If you are lucky, 6 months from now you could be on iteration 2 or 3 and feeling like you are starting to have some things figured out and working. If you want to design a cool plane, design a cool plane. 6 months from now you have a couple iterations of a cool plane.
Oh here's a bonus tip!
Oh, so when you do design your airplane anyway (like I would do too)
Personally I want to build a fully autonomous foam board plane someday relatively soon. I built the simple storch, but it just felt a little too small and constrained for packing with avionics. Right now I'm flying to full size X-UAV's for work and I *really* like them as a general purpose work horse. I can hand launch them easily. I get > 1 hour flight time without breaking a sweat (longest flight is 77 minutes still with some battery to spare.) The talon isn't perfect for everything, but if you are hunting for a all around work horse as a project starter, you could do a lot worse ...
Here's one of my talons with an 8000mah 4S battery, a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera, with a flying weight of 7 lbs. It launches with not much more than a flick of my wrist:
Sorry for the long message, my fingers are in a typing mood tonight!
Curt.
Hey @clolsonus Curt. I have to agree on the "Flying Wing" issue. Heavily suggested, yet when I look into them, only highly experienced pilots can fly those birds with accuracy. "Baby Steps." Flight Controllers are a great boon to RC, (here it comes) BUT... expense.
Yes, I understand and promote EXPERIENCED PILOTS from RC Groups becoming part of Air SAR Operations. And SAR Group people who are also into RC adding Air RC SAR into their Operational Profiles! My goal is to assist current SAR Operations in finding victims faster, getting aid to victims faster. If Air RC SAR can improve SAR Operations, then I have done it.
(New acronym: ARC SAR-Air Radio Control Search And Rescue)
And Curt, try the FT Guinea Pig for your fully autonomous DTFB project. If your worried about stability, try dihedral cutting the main wing like the Cub is done. This will mock the wings on the SC-7 Skyvan. That could help a ton for stability. She carries 5 lbs. and that's above standard avionics. Being twin motored, you can also add differential thrust which can add wonders to her flight envelop.
clolsonus
Well-known member
Agreed, the guinea pig would be a good one to try. My flight controller is the same foot print as a beaglebone black (maybe 2.5" x 3.5"), but I also need room to get my fat fingers in there. For my next foam board project I may try to do something purely for fun (no autopilot). I am thinking about designing a 200% guillows f-24 with a 50" wing span which would be similar size and flight characteristics to the simple storch. But the Fairchild F-24 is curvier than I remember it from my childhood modeling days so I need to figure out how much of the shape I want to try to capture in foamboard vs. just keeping it simple in order to get something built.
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
Looking at pics on the internet, the two major differences twix the F-24 and the Storch are the fuselage aft of the main wing flows down into the tail from the trailing edge, and the landing gear set up. I'd buy a FT Storch kit (Reference) then using the parts scratch build a F-24 version. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) version of customizing. LOL
Scooter The White Rabbit
Active member
This is a wonderful aircraft I must admit. And priced between $3 K to $5 K for what you get as a production craft isn't bad either. Being all electric, FPV, auto-pilot mapping system integration, 3-axis gimbal camera unit, VTOL/Hover/Fixed Wing flight modes... seems a perfect purpose built craft. It would be hard to match it with a DTFB designed craft and off the shelf components in an effort to lower costs.
jross
Well-known member
I posted it more as an example knowing price might be a clincher.
Somebody here created a VTOL Explorer. Maybe a Bronco? There has been a 3 and 4 prop version if I recall correctly. Would be super handy for SAR. Perhaps something to work on down the road.
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