Ecilop Solar (Ecilop-8) is controlled as a quad-copter, 8 rotors are connected pair-wise. There is no onboard battery. To configure controllers inside a building, the user connects an external battery. To restart the controller in sunlight, the user bridges the power leads. The vehicle remains airborne because of ground effect and automatically maintains a horizontal attitude. If the control panel allows mixing of control signals for the multicopter’s different motors, no on-board flight controller need be installed. We utilized a mirror to concentrate solar energy in order to raise the vehicle higher off the ground.
This is not a commercial project and the aircraft is not available for purchase.
Reducing in-flight power consumption requires lowering the rotor disk loading. This means that we need to increase the diameter of the rotors and decrease the rotation speed. In Ecilop-8, the frame carrying the solar panels acts as a screen, thus providing extra efficiency.
Light UAS cannot be used in windy conditions. When bending around various obstacles near the surface, the wind generates intense vortices. If the wind pressure on the surface of an aircraft is higher than its own loading, it will tumble in an uncontrollable fashion (we are talking about a multi-copter with a fixed blade angle of attack). We must evaluate the sum of the drone’s disk loading and the total surface of the aircraft body.
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