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I also very very strongly disagree. The advantages of capacitors don’t apply to a efficient airplane. Also they add weight and take away battery capacity. Check out Tom Stanton for some good stuff about using capacitors in rcs
The actually watt hours to weight isn’t nearly as good as capacitors. You don’t need to have high discharge rate on airplanes, so if you wanted more efficient power source maybe li-ions would work
Yeah true. I still don’t really think the benefits of capacitors apply to that in a way that makes it better than lithium based batteries, but definitely cool. My favorite use of a capacitor is the taser disposable camera
@@jstaylo2 i didnt even realise he said vine becuase i to focused on how those are coated in pesticides and not recommended to eat off the tree like that
You guys are actually very entertaining. I wasn't expecting to watch the whole 55 mins. Looking forward for more adventures with your vegan drone engineer pal
You can literally watch and say the same thing about every single one of his videos going back years. You don't know why, but you just keep watching then 25 min later you're like "what did I just do?"
Can't believe I watched the whole 55 minutes! The suspense was palpable. I liked how he talked through some tactical issues that he encountered on the journey and was able to diagnose and fix on the fly (literally!) Amazing project, the bar has been elevated greatly with this successful endeavour!
I know Im late in the comments but this is really entertaining. A road trip through some obscure parts of America with several hobbies thrown in. And potentially criminal activity to keep viewers tuned in (petty theft of produce). Amazing to see the state of solar and autonomous gps navigation, RC flying machines, etc that is accessible to the general population. All that’s needed is curiosity and technical knowhow. I am not expressing myself very well-but I am a fan of your worthwhile activities.
"Here's when things turn south for us." I take most things literally but as you said that I thought something bad was going to happen ln before I realized the plane was turning south. Laughed my ass of lol.
Something to note: if you are in the area again, you could tune into KPSC ATIS to get the current barometric pressure setting every hour. It’s usually at the end of the broadcast.
Holy mackerel. 100 miles round trip is absolutely insane. After watching this video clip I can no longer in good conscience boast about my 6-mile round trip autonomous Litchi missions flown by my Phantom3 Standard. Unless I am mistaken, this 100-mile trip is an unbroken record for any DIY RC craft. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you serve as a consultant for JPL in Pasadena, in your spare time.
FYI at 24:34, you can go under the standard data page and right-click on the moving telemetry map on the right and select "flight planner" in order to show both the telemetry data on the left, as well as the aircraft's position and waypoints on the right. You can also change the units for altitude and airspeed if you want to under the config tab and in planner settings.
My dream build would be a solar powered vtol with LTE telemetry and control. Go anywhere there's mobile service, land for the evening, take off next day and keep flying.
@ doubtful, not because starlink isnt amazing but because you would need a very large rc plane in order to carry the relatively large antenna array for starlink. There is no escaping difficulty of sending a powerful enough signal to reach a satellite vs reaching a nearby cell tower.
This is definitely doable, well, at least the LTE telemetry and control for fpv. I would argue that there will never be a quadcopter that could do this because it would have to be huge to make enough surface area for solar charging. But a slow-flying, large-winged (not delta) design that was heavily modeled for good glide ratio would be very efficient. I've actually spent a lot of time looking at efficiency and controllability for something like this. 100 miles one way and back, etc. Ofc I would have to throw up the fictional thing as well so the FAA wouldn't be mad at me.
Great comments at the end about mission planning. Spot on. The FAA rules for drone flight (vs hobby) pretty severely limit the available airspace and distance and also govern who controls (monitors) from a terrestrial vehicle. Just like flying GA or commercial aircraft you really need to think through routes, waypoints, endurance, and weather. Nicely done.
I think the best friends are people who can dig at each other for literally hours. Honestly a lot of fun to watch you two riff on each other. Oh also the flight was rad.
Ended up watching this in the evening, enjoyed the trip across all those obscure little US towns. Great achievement with the Solar Plane V4. I wonder how far away the nearest store is from some of those town's if you ran out of your favourite beverage and just HAD to have one? :)
There are solar planes capable of that, and they are called pseudo-satellites. It would be EXTEREMELY cool if he would actually manage to privately build and operate such a plane!
I have done little bit of math last week to know how fast the plane has to be so it has sun constantly over the head. It resulted in some 400m/s+. so you need to carry big battery for night
When you landed that puppy I just cheered away like a super bowl touch down. Just caught it in mid air. This was awesome. Job well done fellas. Fascinating for sure.
Thats brilliant - well done mate, you've put a load of work into this and its been amazing to tag along for the ride to watch this progress. Thanks for the share of your video
But he ate the apple, he did not throw him away when he realized that it wasn't quite ripe. I had a problem a while ago, I had forgot the key to my student apartment. I must drive the whole way back to my parents with the train, grab the key and drive back (with the train and walking a while), this takes 4 or 5 hours. In this situation I had the Idea that my parents could use a drone to send me the key ... the wight of the key is basically nothing. I had to wait less than 1 hour till the drone would reach my position if the speed would be 35km/h. This would be very nice in such a situation. I know that the safety is important and I would not get the right to fly over a not private area her in Germany. Possibly someday there will exist something like a drone-flight-right on limited areas, with a easy way to add the own drone to a flight-plan and a route ... like a street in the air for drones ... with a automatized air traffic control system.
Dude I love your channel! I've been flying RC since the late eighties but I've been out of it for the last 12 years due to a health problem. Thanks for giving me something to watch!! The hobby has grown by leaps and bounds technologically you are a freaking boss at this stuff I see you're successful with your UA-cam channel I'm sure you will be extremely successful in the future at any other endeavors you partake God Bless
Of all the things you've done, Daniel, this one impresses me the most. I've just followed along on Google Earth with a second screen using the Mission Planner as reference. This is why you're the only person I support on Patreon!
This is the kind of stuff we did in engineering school 40 years ago with FAR larger and more primitive equipment. For one navigation project, I tried to design a system using a surplus cruise-missile gyro, a desktop with 40 whole MB of power, several car batteries, and an entire sailboat.
Well it'd have to be perpetual day, but yeah it could fly forever in fair weather and perpetual day. or you could just make it so fast that it outruns the nighttime!
A very quick estimate is like this: There are 4 time zones across the continental US so the plane could experiences 4 hours of noon time with maximum sun light, flying west bond. You may be able to add two hours on both ends so lets say 8 hours of decent sun light. Assuming 30miles/hour ground speed. It will probably barely reach more than 300 miles on a very good day at this point. It will be closer if the (efficiency x speed) can improve by 10~20 fold.
Definitely an entertaining duo... Another successful flight/mission. I’m pretty sure I have watched them all. Glad to see you have worked out a lot of the kinks. I’m sure V5 will be awesome once you apply everything that you have learned. That home point altitude difference will get you every time. One of those things that is very easy to over look.
I'm always amazed how good the runcam split footage looks in your videos. I guess slow fixed wing aircraft keep the video compression from falling apart - in contrast to 5-inch quads. If the runcam split would work that well in quads people would not be on this constant quest to find a replacement for the discontinued gopro hero session.
Great video - thoroughly enjoyed it! Planning a similar mission and learnt alot from following your endeavour. But what I like the most is that you're honest about making little mistakes and despite your experience worrying about the thousands of settings in arduplane - like accidentally adding a wp with default altitude :) Thanks man!
Can you set it up so if the panels are producing more power than the Mppt can handle, can you use the rest to increase speed until it is at least using all available power? Just a thought.
The MPPT can only handle its rated power and since the solar panel power goes through the MPPT if its already at the 75w max power then the power distibuted between charging the battery and the load can only add up to 75w, if a more powerful MPPT was used then it would be possible. The plane stayed at a relatively stable voltage for the whole time so I'd assume it didnt have much excess power.
Problem with the setup is the current limiting charger is supplying not only the battery but also the motor controller. You can you a diode arrangement to allow the panels to directly supply the motor controller and the batteries can make up the difference. There will be a small voltage drop across the batteries and therefore some loss (heat). There are other more complex arrangements that can be done but the is the simplest so long as solar cell voltage doesn't ever exceed motor controller Max input voltage.
This video just found me. I worked in the 1960s with Bob Boucher who later founded Astro Flight. As you may know they made one, if not THE first solar powered drone aircraft. Great work on your part for the coordination of visuals in the video.
What an achievement! Congratulations! I look forward to your future projects. I would love to see what the next generation of RC Solar Plane will be like, perhaps with bomb-ass components like air-speed, better compass, laser altimeter (if that is a thing?) and external antenna to help minimize disconnects. Also I would be interested to see some practical applications for these types of autonomous vehicles like forest surveying, monitoring climate change effects over time, or something like that. Finally, it would be really interesting to see you take an older plane (like maybe this one once it's reached end-of-life) and just send it off on a mission without following to see if it could do a mission on its own. Assuming you could do that in a safe way.
This was really cool! We are so lucky to be in an age of technology with things like this. I just got into RC planes this year and now I really want to get a good FPV setup for my planes. I live on the Oregon coast and the landscapes here are amazing. thanks for an awesome video im sure it took some work editing all this.
this is probably one of THE best videos i ever saw on youtube. watching it a second time now. i love stuff like this bit sadly there is not much that is similar to this
I think this might have been the 1st rctestflight video I ever watched. It's interesting how you thought about a youtuber when you 1st come across them, compared to when you have been watching them for years, like that 1st impression compared to after you have got to know them, in as much as you can get to know someone just by watching their videos.
Electrical engineer here. Ground != negative but neg is often tied to grnd for 0v reference. Worth remembering in future as you could easily blow something thinking the two terms are interchangable.
Anyone monetized on UA-cam, with a drone video posted for any purpose at all, should expect a friendly message from the FAA to stop doing so immediately, until licensed as a commercial drone pilot. This is true even for drones under 250 grams, which this bird obviously is not. They typically don't demand removal of videos posted prior to the warning, but they could. And yes, line of sight is still a thing, with or without a license.
You guys were just north of where I live. I’ve seen those farms many times. Very cool production, and very awesome experiment! Really glad I found this channel.
first off, props to your channels success, i love watching your adventures. now, i want you to take one of your self powered planes and i want to see just how high you can go under its own power. or, make a newly designed self powered airplane ocket that is meant to only go up, not travel horizontal distances and see just how high you can self propel under solar energy. i think it could be a good illustration of why we dont have electric solar space ships or an example of what it would take to be acheiveable
AWESOME Daniel! I don't watch many hour-long videos, but I do if it's yours. BTW, I disable all compasses in Arduplane. They're more trouble than they're worth and fixed wing aircraft do just fine without them from my experience. Also, the synthetic wind calculation in Arduplane (and hence synthetic airspeed) is amazingly accurate, even without an airspeed sensor.
Weird... I just built my first quadcopter and started practicing flying a few months ago, and had an FPV dream of a long-distance fixed wing flight that ran out of batteries and slowly landed at a school. The end of this video brought back the memory.... I haven't even started doing FPV yet, and have never flown a fixed-wing model, so when I woke up, I was like "WTF?"... but my dream had a mountain in the background, and there are none around here. In the waking up period of "I've gotta go get my drone, where the hell was that school?" and "Was that a dream?" It was the inexplicable mountain that sorted it out.
I'm really looking forward to the moment, you beat the "night-problem", because then you can make simple waypoint missions across the whole country. That will be awesome :D
From monsanto to phantom limbs lol twas great experience watching you do this I would love to see a new and improved design in the future thank you very much.
I'm very sad I only recently discovered your Channel. Your channel is very entertaining, and you're very intelligent and talented. Amazing work man, keep it up!
Could you possibly do a video explaining the legal FAA requirements (such as where you can fly and when a UAS needs to be registered)? It is honestly quite confusing.
A uas now has to be registered for any airspace you flying in along with having a certificate of passing a safety test, I'd, and a reciet of registration for said uas. Each uas for the hobbyist need to be registered and have its registration number on the exterior of the uas that is visible. And with the faa final ruling all new uas needs to have a remote identification system and gps that tells the feds and public what the uas is who is flying it with the pilots information, takeoff point, and controller point. To make money from uas you'll need to take a part 107 test and get listened for it and keep a log book like an actual pilot.
Dude, please do more of these videos! Bring some smart ass friends and interview them. Podcasty? Need a bro for handling the wheels. Anyways, loving the videos. Discovered your channel yesterday and am now binge watching all of them in random orders, mostly the ones you match my interest in solar/egineering + aviation. Been thinking lately to build an RV to cruise New Zealand while flying one of these!
SimpliSafe is award-winning home security that keeps your home safe around the clock. It’s really reliable, easy to use, and there are no contracts. Visit simplisafe.com/rctestflight to get 30% off your system + a free camera!
@spider plays_YT Disagree.
I also very very strongly disagree. The advantages of capacitors don’t apply to a efficient airplane. Also they add weight and take away battery capacity. Check out Tom Stanton for some good stuff about using capacitors in rcs
The actually watt hours to weight isn’t nearly as good as capacitors. You don’t need to have high discharge rate on airplanes, so if you wanted more efficient power source maybe li-ions would work
Yeah true. I still don’t really think the benefits of capacitors apply to that in a way that makes it better than lithium based batteries, but definitely cool. My favorite use of a capacitor is the taser disposable camera
Is that a runcam split on the front? If so which one? Cheers
"I'm always concerned when this plane drops in altitude because that's the reason it crashed last time."
A drop in altitude can do that to you.
Lol...
I'm not scared of it dropping in altitude. I am more scared of it rapidly deaccelerating while it touches a massive 8000 mile diameter sphere.
@@ColinRichardson
Just fly a bit to the left to avoid it.
@@MatthewK863 I don't believe Tesla's Starman would agree.
@@MatthewK863
Getting into the air is the challenge, getting back on the ground is free.
I'm loving this episode of Two Engineers Discover Where Food Comes From And Make Fun of Each Other's Accents :D
parmsib yea that was hilarious. I really lol.
.... Make fun of each other and nobody got offended. Just like humor is suppose to be done.
-Grab an apple off a vine …😂🤦🏼♂️
"An engineer and a flight test op walk into a bar"
@@jstaylo2 i didnt even realise he said vine becuase i to focused on how those are coated in pesticides and not recommended to eat off the tree like that
You guys are actually very entertaining. I wasn't expecting to watch the whole 55 mins. Looking forward for more adventures with your vegan drone engineer pal
*Hell yeah, this is the life!*
How to pronounce vegan: vegan
hell yeah!
You can literally watch and say the same thing about every single one of his videos going back years. You don't know why, but you just keep watching then 25 min later you're like "what did I just do?"
Whatttt??? Macakiux jajaja, amo tus videos, y lo menos pensado que tenía era encontrarte aquí. Me gustaría construir algo como este avioncito.
"So basically you prefer form over function." That's how you start a brawl in a bar full of engineers 🤣
I feel like you mean a bar full of technicians😂
"Is it working well? Good question Banj let's look." Made me laugh
Hahaha, yes me too
Bro... I happened to read this comment at the moment it happened in the video and it tripped me out!
Nurk is considering super long range FPV with scaled back anxiety
You sound like a XIV century paper press manufacturer...👍👍👍🤣👏👏👏
You could use a clip on mobile antenna for the radio... Cool mission planner!
I can't believe we're at a point where hobbyists have autonomous drone technology
Hobbyists invented the technology. Companies and governments assimilated it.
Imagine hobbyist build up an entire army with drones.
@@keyboardwarrior1946 and pouring acid on people during big gathering that'd be hilarious
@@w花b WTF BRUH?
@@datalorian I think Sperry Co. developed autopilot from ship's navigation.
"Apple fresh off the vine."
Nobody tell him.
I scrolled to the read the comments exclusively because of that statement 😂
I use mixed metaphors a lot. The last one was "beat my trumpet".
I saw this comment literally as he said it
Geeses
Since when did apples grow on vines
Can't believe I watched the whole 55 minutes! The suspense was palpable. I liked how he talked through some tactical issues that he encountered on the journey and was able to diagnose and fix on the fly (literally!) Amazing project, the bar has been elevated greatly with this successful endeavour!
I know Im late in the comments but this is really entertaining. A road trip through some obscure parts of America with several hobbies thrown in. And potentially criminal activity to keep viewers tuned in (petty theft of produce). Amazing to see the state of solar and autonomous gps navigation, RC flying machines, etc that is accessible to the general population. All that’s needed is curiosity and technical knowhow. I am not expressing myself very well-but I am a fan of your worthwhile activities.
"Here's when things turn south for us." I take most things literally but as you said that I thought something bad was going to happen ln before I realized the plane was turning south. Laughed my ass of lol.
No you were right the first time. The plane was turning West. He was apprehensive about the headwind they started flying into.
Benj (?) is the most chill guy ever
Yeah he is
I'm sure he said Banj a bunch of times but I'm not used to his 'merican farmer ack-cent.
I know life gets in the way but we could use allot more of your content. Even if the behind the scenes construction and geek programming. 👍👍👍👍👍👍
Yeah put more programming videos
@VideoSevicesVB @@alirezas.m1498 Thats awesome idea I don't care if it's boring and gets no views, i want to see the process please!
rctestflight2 please
@@kbytfs yes, pls!
Yeah I would like to see how the waypoint missions are planned :)
"There's no big government out here to move that rock out of the road."
"Why do you say it like it would be a bad thing if the rock wasn't there?"
Yes. Amazing.
Something to note: if you are in the area again, you could tune into KPSC ATIS to get the current barometric pressure setting every hour. It’s usually at the end of the broadcast.
21:38
"Can you close your eyes and drive from the screen?"
But... how would he see the screen?
Because the screen is in our hearts.
LMFAO, it's funny that everyone knew what he meant though...
"Pugs are selectively bred to be footballs."
So many great quotes in this one. You need a regular sidekick!
Australian here. Can confirm that you both sound American.
And you sound like you speak English.
Lmfao.. 🤣
My friends from England say that to me, also. "You're just so American!"
Well, I am, so what do they expect, lol? I suppose they're right.
Second that! Aussie here
Ok
i just watched 2 dudes in a car for an hour lol
Ever heard of Top Gear Polar Specials
Best season ever!
20 mins in before I came across your comment, didn't realise it was an hour long.
Holy mackerel. 100 miles round trip is absolutely insane. After watching this video clip I can no longer in good conscience boast about my 6-mile round trip autonomous Litchi missions flown by my Phantom3 Standard. Unless I am mistaken, this 100-mile trip is an unbroken record for any DIY RC craft. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that you serve as a consultant for JPL in Pasadena, in your spare time.
Look up spirit of butts farm
Föew ovet the atlantic
The phantom 3 will get a 14 mile round trip easy if you don't loiter.
Listening to you driving around the country side following a drone is better than most podcasts.
FYI at 24:34, you can go under the standard data page and right-click on the moving telemetry map on the right and select "flight planner" in order to show both the telemetry data on the left, as well as the aircraft's position and waypoints on the right. You can also change the units for altitude and airspeed if you want to under the config tab and in planner settings.
My dream build would be a solar powered vtol with LTE telemetry and control. Go anywhere there's mobile service, land for the evening, take off next day and keep flying.
That would be so awesome!
With SpaceX starlink worldwide internet that could be possible one day for sure!
@ doubtful, not because starlink isnt amazing but because you would need a very large rc plane in order to carry the relatively large antenna array for starlink.
There is no escaping difficulty of sending a powerful enough signal to reach a satellite vs reaching a nearby cell tower.
Look up the Airbus Zephyr
This is definitely doable, well, at least the LTE telemetry and control for fpv. I would argue that there will never be a quadcopter that could do this because it would have to be huge to make enough surface area for solar charging. But a slow-flying, large-winged (not delta) design that was heavily modeled for good glide ratio would be very efficient. I've actually spent a lot of time looking at efficiency and controllability for something like this. 100 miles one way and back, etc. Ofc I would have to throw up the fictional thing as well so the FAA wouldn't be mad at me.
This was extremely entertaining. I watched the entire thing. I'd definitely watch more long missions ft you and Banj road tripping.
Great comments at the end about mission planning. Spot on. The FAA rules for drone flight (vs hobby) pretty severely limit the available airspace and distance and also govern who controls (monitors) from a terrestrial vehicle. Just like flying GA or commercial aircraft you really need to think through routes, waypoints, endurance, and weather. Nicely done.
I think the best friends are people who can dig at each other for literally hours. Honestly a lot of fun to watch you two riff on each other.
Oh also the flight was rad.
Timing of your uploads are often perfect for lunch time here in the UK. Will enjoy this one I am sure :)
yep
That's right!
lol meanwhile me living in western united states seeing this uploaded at 4 am
Ended up watching this in the evening, enjoyed the trip across all those obscure little US towns. Great achievement with the Solar Plane V4. I wonder how far away the nearest store is from some of those town's if you ran out of your favourite beverage and just HAD to have one? :)
I didn’t know “The Odd Couple” was set for a tech reboot.
Solar plane ep. 20 - circumnavigating the globe non-stop
"and we are following the plane by car, for safety"
Being able to fly 24/7 would be awesome. Fly above the clouds and there'd be no limit as to where you can go.
@@SolarWebsite You couldn't fly above the polar circle, though :P
There are solar planes capable of that, and they are called pseudo-satellites. It would be EXTEREMELY cool if he would actually manage to privately build and operate such a plane!
I have done little bit of math last week to know how fast the plane has to be so it has sun constantly over the head. It resulted in some 400m/s+. so you need to carry big battery for night
When you landed that puppy I just cheered away like a super bowl touch down. Just caught it in mid air. This was awesome. Job well done fellas. Fascinating for sure.
Good on you for inviting your friend to go see the world and broaden his experiences.
Thats brilliant - well done mate, you've put a load of work into this and its been amazing to tag along for the ride to watch this progress. Thanks for the share of your video
"did you STEAL an APPLE?!?!?!?"
@50:00
Bro mood
I loved the lack of response
But he ate the apple, he did not throw him away when he realized that it wasn't quite ripe.
I had a problem a while ago, I had forgot the key to my student apartment.
I must drive the whole way back to my parents with the train, grab the key and drive back (with the train and walking a while), this takes 4 or 5 hours.
In this situation I had the Idea that my parents could use a drone to send me the key ... the wight of the key is basically nothing.
I had to wait less than 1 hour till the drone would reach my position if the speed would be 35km/h.
This would be very nice in such a situation.
I know that the safety is important and I would not get the right to fly over a not private area her in Germany.
Possibly someday there will exist something like a drone-flight-right on limited areas, with a easy way to add the own drone to a flight-plan and a route ... like a street in the air for drones ... with a automatized air traffic control system.
Bangi really wanted one!
"It's not hitting the ground so that's good". Truth.
Dude I love your channel! I've been flying RC since the late eighties but I've been out of it for the last 12 years due to a health problem. Thanks for giving me something to watch!! The hobby has grown by leaps and bounds technologically you are a freaking boss at this stuff I see you're successful with your UA-cam channel I'm sure you will be extremely successful in the future at any other endeavors you partake God Bless
Yeah I get that feeling too, anyone with this much energy, inventiveness and out and out smarts definitely deserves good things in their life.
Of all the things you've done, Daniel, this one impresses me the most. I've just followed along on Google Earth with a second screen using the Mission Planner as reference. This is why you're the only person I support on Patreon!
I love the way you keep upping the ante on the solar plane. Congrats for another successful flight!
I can not belive I have just watched two guys in a car following an RC plane for 55mins and loved it
Not even RC, just C
@@wires22 Not even C just
"I've never had an apple fresh off the vine.." Priceless. Keep up the good work, lads. Love the vid. Subscribed.
This is the kind of stuff we did in engineering school 40 years ago with FAR larger and more primitive equipment. For one navigation project, I tried to design a system using a surplus cruise-missile gyro, a desktop with 40 whole MB of power, several car batteries, and an entire sailboat.
Just like the good old guidance systems from ICBMs! I love your username, by the way.
Could it theoretically fly literally across the continental US if the weather was decent? Very cool stuff.
Well it'd have to be perpetual day, but yeah it could fly forever in fair weather and perpetual day. or you could just make it so fast that it outruns the nighttime!
@@serbianspaceforce6873 Yeah, it’s kind of hard to get one to be efficient enough and fast enough at the same time though lol.
A very quick estimate is like this: There are 4 time zones across the continental US so the plane could experiences 4 hours of noon time with maximum sun light, flying west bond. You may be able to add two hours on both ends so lets say 8 hours of decent sun light. Assuming 30miles/hour ground speed. It will probably barely reach more than 300 miles on a very good day at this point. It will be closer if the (efficiency x speed) can improve by 10~20 fold.
@@serbianspaceforce6873 You need a plane that is breaking 1000 miles per hour to stay in the sunlight.
A big battery can help...
"i'm vegan" "oh well maybe you _do_ eat hay"
Definitely an entertaining duo... Another successful flight/mission. I’m pretty sure I have watched them all. Glad to see you have worked out a lot of the kinks. I’m sure V5 will be awesome once you apply everything that you have learned. That home point altitude difference will get you every time. One of those things that is very easy to over look.
I'm always amazed how good the runcam split footage looks in your videos. I guess slow fixed wing aircraft keep the video compression from falling apart - in contrast to 5-inch quads. If the runcam split would work that well in quads people would not be on this constant quest to find a replacement for the discontinued gopro hero session.
Great video - thoroughly enjoyed it! Planning a similar mission and learnt alot from following your endeavour. But what I like the most is that you're honest about making little mistakes and despite your experience worrying about the thousands of settings in arduplane - like accidentally adding a wp with default altitude :) Thanks man!
Dude that was VERY impressive. I'm such a tech geek that I watched this video in its entirety. Very well done - Kudos to you.
Can you set it up so if the panels are producing more power than the Mppt can handle, can you use the rest to increase speed until it is at least using all available power? Just a thought.
The MPPT can only handle its rated power and since the solar panel power goes through the MPPT if its already at the 75w max power then the power distibuted between charging the battery and the load can only add up to 75w, if a more powerful MPPT was used then it would be possible. The plane stayed at a relatively stable voltage for the whole time so I'd assume it didnt have much excess power.
@@conorstewart2214 but couldn't he have a bunch of excess power that isn't getting produced because of the 75w limit?
Very impressive my friend. I've very much enjoyed watching your stuff over the years.
"There's hay and cows eat hay and that's what you eat..."
"I'm vegan"
"man it's really going"
and then he signs off by saying what does vegan even mean apart from pretentious? HAHAHA
goat!
Problem with the setup is the current limiting charger is supplying not only the battery but also the motor controller. You can you a diode arrangement to allow the panels to directly supply the motor controller and the batteries can make up the difference. There will be a small voltage drop across the batteries and therefore some loss (heat).
There are other more complex arrangements that can be done but the is the simplest so long as solar cell voltage doesn't ever exceed motor controller Max input voltage.
This video just found me. I worked in the 1960s with Bob Boucher who later founded Astro Flight. As you may know they made one, if not THE first solar powered drone aircraft. Great work on your part for the coordination of visuals in the video.
Don't try this at home!
Me: Yes I'm totally going to build that and do it at home
I mean... I would...
@@goldenpiston8449 Was thinking the same thing.
That's pretty easy to build a big plane and do this. Getting it efficient is another story
I live in the UK I would have to find a way of compressing a week's worth of sunshine into a single day to try this at home haha
@@MABFR01 Well where I live any unmanned aerial vehicle off 100 grams needs to be insured and have a license
0:15 ‹‹AWACS››
"all planes,commence operation to destroy aigaion"
I am not accustomed to AWACS references being made by computer gaming nerds.
Wait a second, yes, I am.
What an achievement! Congratulations! I look forward to your future projects. I would love to see what the next generation of RC Solar Plane will be like, perhaps with bomb-ass components like air-speed, better compass, laser altimeter (if that is a thing?) and external antenna to help minimize disconnects.
Also I would be interested to see some practical applications for these types of autonomous vehicles like forest surveying, monitoring climate change effects over time, or something like that.
Finally, it would be really interesting to see you take an older plane (like maybe this one once it's reached end-of-life) and just send it off on a mission without following to see if it could do a mission on its own. Assuming you could do that in a safe way.
Amazing result. 100miles in a circular route too. Headwind tailwind all of it. Superb!
Hahaha, I'm at part where you guys are bantering about how you each talk 😆😆 enjoying the video. Cool tech you guys
"still solar power, it was just converted into hydrocarbons by plants millions of years ago. still counts"
Oil? That stuff comes mostly from unicellular organisms way before plants became a thing.
@@programagor what about coal?
This was really cool! We are so lucky to be in an age of technology with things like this. I just got into RC planes this year and now I really want to get a good FPV setup for my planes. I live on the Oregon coast and the landscapes here are amazing. thanks for an awesome video im sure it took some work editing all this.
28:10 GO COUGS! I see that storage shed all the time, lol.
Id love to see more videos with your friends. Y'all make an entertaining combination.
this is probably one of THE best videos i ever saw on youtube. watching it a second time now. i love stuff like this bit sadly there is not much that is similar to this
That nice Vegan fella that's never seen a tractor is the most millenial millenial to ever millenial. Nice of you to explain how cattle guards work.
The apple off the vine killed me. And the confusion on center post irrigation.
lol we got ourselves a city boy!
"can you close your eyes and drive from the screen?"-rctestflight
Use the force Benj
I think this might have been the 1st rctestflight video I ever watched. It's interesting how you thought about a youtuber when you 1st come across them, compared to when you have been watching them for years, like that 1st impression compared to after you have got to know them, in as much as you can get to know someone just by watching their videos.
Electrical engineer here. Ground != negative but neg is often tied to grnd for 0v reference. Worth remembering in future as you could easily blow something thinking the two terms are interchangable.
"and your Gold ETFs will do you no good"
Good thing there is so much gold in the banter!
"Flying the Solar Plane V4 over 100 miles and following it in the car."
FAA: stares in Part 107 exception for recreation fliers... ;D
Lol
FAA ??? Who and what is that??
No one noticed the airstrip he flew over, either. Doesn't seem to be marked, so probably just a crop duster's operation?
Anyone monetized on UA-cam, with a drone video posted for any purpose at all, should expect a friendly message from the FAA to stop doing so immediately, until licensed as a commercial drone pilot. This is true even for drones under 250 grams, which this bird obviously is not. They typically don't demand removal of videos posted prior to the warning, but they could. And yes, line of sight is still a thing, with or without a license.
I can't believe I almost finished this and I haven't finish my school work
its only an hour
Same here gonna postpone though as I always do
Be cool, stay in school
Procrastination is the key to failing successfully.
@@voodoovince8001 nice
Needs intermittent lidar altitude checks for barometer adjustments. I love this series . Great job .
That was really impressive, 160 miles !!! no way. Great video and wonderful explanation.
"Good Sir, do you mind running in front of my carriage to knock the stones out of the way." 🤣
"I get concerned when the plane drops in altitude. That's how it crashed the last time." ...No way!
That was incredible and such a great engineering feat. Done really safely in the great part of the world too, well done.
You guys were just north of where I live. I’ve seen those farms many times. Very cool production, and very awesome experiment! Really glad I found this channel.
first off, props to your channels success, i love watching your adventures. now, i want you to take one of your self powered planes and i want to see just how high you can go under its own power. or, make a newly designed self powered airplane
ocket that is meant to only go up, not travel horizontal distances and see just how high you can self propel under solar energy. i think it could be a good illustration of why we dont have electric solar space ships or an example of what it would take to be acheiveable
Strange time to upload a video.
100 miles is amazing. Incredible work.
Time doesn't exist.
OMG 100 miles with a solar plane is crazy!!! I love this project.
Times like this, you need a cabriolet!
If you put all the antenna on the outside of the SUV, it’d look like an FBI surveillance platform!
AWESOME Daniel! I don't watch many hour-long videos, but I do if it's yours.
BTW, I disable all compasses in Arduplane. They're more trouble than they're worth and fixed wing aircraft do just fine without them from my experience.
Also, the synthetic wind calculation in Arduplane (and hence synthetic airspeed) is amazingly accurate, even without an airspeed sensor.
Weird... I just built my first quadcopter and started practicing flying a few months ago, and had an FPV dream of a long-distance fixed wing flight that ran out of batteries and slowly landed at a school. The end of this video brought back the memory.... I haven't even started doing FPV yet, and have never flown a fixed-wing model, so when I woke up, I was like "WTF?"... but my dream had a mountain in the background, and there are none around here. In the waking up period of "I've gotta go get my drone, where the hell was that school?" and "Was that a dream?" It was the inexplicable mountain that sorted it out.
I'm really looking forward to the moment, you beat the "night-problem", because then you can make simple waypoint missions across the whole country. That will be awesome :D
The craft would only need to travel at 462 m/s or ~1660 km/h to outrun the sunset. Just wait for a tailwind an it should be fine.
21:40 "Can you close your eyes and watch the screen" so much genius yet so much stupidity ;)
Your videos are awesome!
Greetings from Russia!
I wish i was watching this channel 2 years ago. The eastern waypoint is where I live. Very cool to watch footage of places I go.
Damn man.. This was an awesome Vid. I was amazed how you kept talking throughout and it never got boring or pointless. Really enjoyed it.
Lol at fake disclaimer at the start.. Just like when I start all my car videos with "somewhere in Mexico"
Hahaha I thought the same thing!
I love going on trips to Mexico in my drift cars...
Fake disclaimer?
@@introvertairways yep
@@alperkaya3334 That's not a fake disclaimer. it says they followed the la and don't repeat it without contacting the FAA or whatever
Former Coug here, I'd recognize that exact barn anywhere XD
Banj: I've never had an apple fresh off the vine
Me to myself in my head: and you never will because they grow on trees
From monsanto to phantom limbs lol twas great experience watching you do this I would love to see a new and improved design in the future thank you very much.
I'm very sad I only recently discovered your Channel. Your channel is very entertaining, and you're very intelligent and talented. Amazing work man, keep it up!
Could you possibly do a video explaining the legal FAA requirements (such as where you can fly and when a UAS needs to be registered)? It is honestly quite confusing.
A uas now has to be registered for any airspace you flying in along with having a certificate of passing a safety test, I'd, and a reciet of registration for said uas. Each uas for the hobbyist need to be registered and have its registration number on the exterior of the uas that is visible. And with the faa final ruling all new uas needs to have a remote identification system and gps that tells the feds and public what the uas is who is flying it with the pilots information, takeoff point, and controller point. To make money from uas you'll need to take a part 107 test and get listened for it and keep a log book like an actual pilot.
This is so damn inspiring I've gotta say. Hats off to the both of you.
*says lots of fancy engineering stuff
Me having no idea what it means: I like your funny words airplane man!
Daniel, that was very cool. Enjoyed watching and listening to all the interaction!
I love watching Logic fly his planes
You'll probably never see this, but the town at 49:05 is called "Matt-uh-wah," with a soft "t" that almost sounds like a "d."
Thank you for helping him! I was telling him through my screen, Matt - ah - wa! Lol
Uh love that video... also the part where you say: ...and cows are what you eat. i immedeately got an ad for some vegan food :D
"What does vegan mean other than pretentious?"
That killed me.
Truest part of the video
I had to rewind that part a couple of times. lmao
kinda cringe tho
Dude, please do more of these videos! Bring some smart ass friends and interview them. Podcasty? Need a bro for handling the wheels. Anyways, loving the videos. Discovered your channel yesterday and am now binge watching all of them in random orders, mostly the ones you match my interest in solar/egineering + aviation.
Been thinking lately to build an RV to cruise New Zealand while flying one of these!