I designed and made autonomous solar power airplane.
- Unlimited range! *
- Autonomous flight with zero human intervention including flying waypoint missions and automatic landing.
- Tiny battery (around 5 minutes of flight time on battery only)
- 1.4 m wingspan
- Onboard rotatable camera with video transmitter for ground station
- Depron construction wth carbon fiber spar reinforcements
- KFm airfoil
- 24 solar panels connected in series. No MPPT controller.
* Yeah sure, not unlimited obviously. The point of this project was to make a plane that will fly just on solar power and made with low cost materials. The solar panels produce just enough power to keep the airplane in the air with little extra to spare (10-15% for climbing or fighting wind). My plane was flying for 1 hour with a battery that has a charge only for a couple of minutes, landed with battery at 100%. It requires best summer sun otherwise the PV power is little lower that needed and the battery is slowly drained. My solar airplane is not efficient. Main reason for that is poorly constructed wings. KFm airfoil produces a lot of drag, so motor has to consume a lot of power just to be aloft. But still it managed to produce needed amount. I am happy with that
I was initially inspired by Daniel from rctestflight on youtube who made solar airplane back in 2019. My airplane was done in 2021. My plane has some similarities with one Daniel made. One key difference is that I decided not to use MPPT controller and carefully calculate the power and solar requirements to make is possible to connect PV straight to the battery. This way the plane becomes cheaper and simpler to build, but the penalty is reduced efficiency.
