Moderator Comment by Varga András on February 28, 2010 at 12:06pm

FutureWeapons Skylark UAV
Uploaded by kyfran414. - Videos of the latest science discoveries and tech.

Moderator Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on February 28, 2010 at 1:37pm

Skylark lands on inflatable bag filled up probably by CO2 pellets. Probably the only way for rocky fields. This is FAR from simplicity, and flight preparation of course requires folding the bag. So from civilian point of view, when one mission was not where you wanted, you should repeat it quick while the lighting is good, yet it is not overly simple with inflatable bag.

Second, I don't know where do you see this simplicity as obviously you need very good quality wing mounting, very good quality fiberglass between the pod and the fuselage, at the end you will find in practice you just cannot get ANY hotliner + attach a large pod and fly, the wing structure will be failing in the worst place.

It might look as easy as fitting PET bottle on a scotch but is not working even for Cularis (well it works, but only once).

Comment by simonl on February 28, 2010 at 2:01pm

Aha! Deep stall and an airbag - woohoo! Anyone tried deep stall with an EasyStar?

Thanks Varga :-)

Comment by simonl on February 28, 2010 at 2:45pm

Good points Krzysztof. I guess I meant it "looks" simple!

Comment by Greg Fletcher on February 28, 2010 at 7:01pm

Kinda asymmetric, or is it just me.

Comment by Tom Yochum on March 1, 2010 at 9:29am

Reminds me of the BV 141:

Comment by Tom Yochum on March 1, 2010 at 9:30am

link

Moderator Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on March 1, 2010 at 11:27am

I think you would appreciate luft46.com.
If the WWII would have endured only a few month more... the outcome would have been whole lot different. ;-)

Moderator Comment by Varga András on March 1, 2010 at 11:33am

No, it's not assimetric, the photo is a bit tricky. The recon pod hangs from the fuselage and is not besides it .

Moderator Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on March 1, 2010 at 12:00pm

Deep stall requires full-plate elevator and sufficiently low wing loading or sufficiently voluminous airbag plus important dihedral.
All is good, but modifying estar elevator... making if popping...


Let me share a story with you.
My UAVs often take-off as a kind of RC truck loaded with useless electronics toys.
Once upon a time I induced oscillations in pitch (I swear it was intentional) and the battery from the nose felt off at 80m thrown up at very nice parabola, as in the books. At this stage I was trained enough to look all the time at the small object, because the larger wreckage you CAN find in the grass, if the scotch tape can hold things together. So I watched with a professional calm at heart as one more costly flightpower lipo landed in front of me making a small hole in the ground. It was 3rd lipo supposedly lost in stupid, hasty way and I didn't even said ouch - you cannot call yourself and idiot more than once per day, it stops being self-convincing. In the corner of my eye I quickly realized something funny happened to EasyStar. Because it lost 250g ballast from the nose, its COG ended somewhere 30mm behind wing's trailing edge. The result was immediate half-loop, then slow few (4-5?)m/s descent to the ground maintaining unbelievably stable upside-down posture (remember no battery on-board at this stage), landing on wingtips and rudder. 0% damage. Battery was literally returned to 'good shape' (whatever it means) by twisting. The runway was repaired by a single kick.
A clean job.

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