For those of you not familiar with the project we are a university team competing in the 2008 UAV Outback Rescue Challenge, for more information about our team visit our site: www.aessuav.org



On May 10th we attempted our first bottle drop from 400 feet. The bottle had an aluminum tab attached to it which was held by small servo at the center of gravity of the UAV. We took off under manual control and gained… Continue

On Saturday (April 5th) we flew the airplane for the first time with the autopilot since it got the new wing. But before we went out to the RC airfield we had to physically install the autopilot in the fuselage, which went well. We then performed all of the flights necessary to tune the autopilot in HIL (Hardware In the Loop) simulation mode.

Using HIL simulation allowed us to all to get a better of idea… Continue

Sorry about the lack of updates, we will be updating more frequently now. The first update being that we completed the new wing and completed the first flight with the new wing and it performed very well even in windy conditions. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the actual flight but here are some pictures of the new wing on the airplane. This new wing is significantly stronger allowing us to carry our large payload, it also has less drag… Continue

For those of you who have not heard of this project, I am a member of the Missouri University of Science and Technology UAV Team (www.aessuav.org) and we are building a UAV to compete in the 2008 Australian UAV Outback Rescue Challenge. We are currently in the processes of integrating all of our electronics that will go into our UAV (you can find previous blog posts about our progress on our site). I'm not sure if our project would really fit… Continue