This is somewhat offtopic to the OP's question but I've been wondering about something mildly related for some time.
What sort of price range would I be looking at for a homemade long-range drone (I assume a plane) that could fly fairly high for a while and carry 10kg+ of weight?
I ask this as someone completely ignorant of aviation; I'm not sure what sane values of "fairly high" and "fly for a while" actually are.
For "fairly high" I'd say "can it be high up enough to be hard to see and hear from the ground?" (Binoculars are fine; camera zoom lenses win everything and trying to fight those would be stupid.)
For "fly for a while" I'm curious if I'd be able to fit enough gas (I don't expect batteries to work for this) to run for 20 minutes, or even an hour or maybe more.
I'd be interested in what a cost gradient for 10kg, 20kg, etc would look like.
This is just a "how much would it cost to carry things around" back-of-my-mind question I've been mentally noodling for a while.
I don't honestly need super-specifics; back-of-the-envelope ballpark figures would be great. (I expect Amazon will nail drone delivery in practice; not trying to plan business ideas or anything.)
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Also - what's out there that can fly for an hour+, and which is reasonably "positionable", as in something I can get to hover in place for short periods? (ie, a plane needs to fly straight to stay in the sky, so that doesn't work)
I completely disagree with the other reply to your post.
Keep in mind you said drone and not quadcopter. You could very easily buy a ready to run flying wing [1] with a 30 minute flight time out of the box for just $90. A flying wing is more more suitable for gas or jet A powered motors as the natural lift of the airframe shape keeps it up in the air and balanced. This design scales up linearly (see the B-2 bomber.)
I've hypothesized that a dirigible filled with helium or hydrogen could potentially stay up for days or weeks if you had a full carbon composite airframe with a well sealed mylar skin. Lift capacity wouldn't be as great but it's still a fun thought exercise.
Basically all civilian fixed wing aircraft have an order of magnitude less thrust than what they'd need for flying straight up. Wings are an awesome piece of tech!
I'm mostly finding drones with multiple rotors and batteries thus far, not much that's like a more traditional "is a plane, has an engine" type of approach, which I suspect will net me a fair bit of flight time.
This is really just a thought experiment - I saw the thread and decided to throw the question out there as something I've been mildly curious about for some time. "Could I load up a bunch of stuff into something that looks like a (big) model plane, head down to the local park, hit 'go' and have it land near a friend's house in a couple hours?"
I'll admit I was kind of expecting $10k, although that is duly disappointing to learn nonetheless.
The FAA doesn't care about range but is pretty excited about altitude (keeping it low), being away from airports, and being under direct human observation/control or if doing first person video with goggles having some kind of backup.
The FCC is who gets annoyed when long distance folks do the "CB linear" attitude and basically ignore all power regulations to get range.
Most of the civilians doing research and "production" flights currently are more likely to be violating various DEA laws with somewhat more draconian penalties than the FAA or FCC would every enforce anyway. 10 Kg of coke is going to be problematic to talk your way out of.
My experience with traditional RC planes is anything liquid fueled is audible for at least half a mile unless you go to some effort, but electric assist gliders, although huge and highly visible, are nearly inaudible maybe 10 feet away unless you're doing something dumb (running the prop tips supersonic to get more thrust, etc). A glider would also have much better range. Lets just say you should be wearing hearing protection when tuning a 0.40 sized RC airplane engine without a muffler, and probably while a muffler is installed too. Its a lot louder than you'd expect based on experience with yard work equipment (other than a chainsaw... A chainsaw is a pretty good comparison...)
My multicopter sounds like a weedwhacker in operation, and I can easily hear the 5volt beeper go off 30 feet away when the battery voltage drops too low. I donno maybe 50 feet away you wouldn't notice it? This is a 210mm sub 250g build, I'm sure a monster sized aircraft has monster sized noise to match.
Comments
This is somewhat offtopic to the OP's question but I've been wondering about something mildly related for some time.
What sort of price range would I be looking at for a homemade long-range drone (I assume a plane) that could fly fairly high for a while and carry 10kg+ of weight?
I ask this as someone completely ignorant of aviation; I'm not sure what sane values of "fairly high" and "fly for a while" actually are.
For "fairly high" I'd say "can it be high up enough to be hard to see and hear from the ground?" (Binoculars are fine; camera zoom lenses win everything and trying to fight those would be stupid.)
For "fly for a while" I'm curious if I'd be able to fit enough gas (I don't expect batteries to work for this) to run for 20 minutes, or even an hour or maybe more.
I'd be interested in what a cost gradient for 10kg, 20kg, etc would look like.
This is just a "how much would it cost to carry things around" back-of-my-mind question I've been mentally noodling for a while.
I don't honestly need super-specifics; back-of-the-envelope ballpark figures would be great. (I expect Amazon will nail drone delivery in practice; not trying to plan business ideas or anything.)
--
Also - what's out there that can fly for an hour+, and which is reasonably "positionable", as in something I can get to hover in place for short periods? (ie, a plane needs to fly straight to stay in the sky, so that doesn't work)
I completely disagree with the other reply to your post.
Keep in mind you said drone and not quadcopter. You could very easily buy a ready to run flying wing [1] with a 30 minute flight time out of the box for just $90. A flying wing is more more suitable for gas or jet A powered motors as the natural lift of the airframe shape keeps it up in the air and balanced. This design scales up linearly (see the B-2 bomber.)
I've hypothesized that a dirigible filled with helium or hydrogen could potentially stay up for days or weeks if you had a full carbon composite airframe with a well sealed mylar skin. Lift capacity wouldn't be as great but it's still a fun thought exercise.
[1] https://hobbyking.com/en_us/phantom-fpv-flying-wing-epo-airp...
Basically all civilian fixed wing aircraft have an order of magnitude less thrust than what they'd need for flying straight up. Wings are an awesome piece of tech!
Google heavy lift drones. The specs you are looking for are payload and flight time. They are going to be inversely related.
Expect to pay more than $10,000 for an off the shelf solution. 10kg is a lot of weight for a commercial drone. Are you sure you need that much?
I see.
I'm mostly finding drones with multiple rotors and batteries thus far, not much that's like a more traditional "is a plane, has an engine" type of approach, which I suspect will net me a fair bit of flight time.
This is really just a thought experiment - I saw the thread and decided to throw the question out there as something I've been mildly curious about for some time. "Could I load up a bunch of stuff into something that looks like a (big) model plane, head down to the local park, hit 'go' and have it land near a friend's house in a couple hours?"
I'll admit I was kind of expecting $10k, although that is duly disappointing to learn nonetheless.
I think "long range" probably will violate many countries drone laws. I'd investigate the legality before proceeding with a build project.
The FAA doesn't care about range but is pretty excited about altitude (keeping it low), being away from airports, and being under direct human observation/control or if doing first person video with goggles having some kind of backup.
The FCC is who gets annoyed when long distance folks do the "CB linear" attitude and basically ignore all power regulations to get range.
Most of the civilians doing research and "production" flights currently are more likely to be violating various DEA laws with somewhat more draconian penalties than the FAA or FCC would every enforce anyway. 10 Kg of coke is going to be problematic to talk your way out of.
My experience with traditional RC planes is anything liquid fueled is audible for at least half a mile unless you go to some effort, but electric assist gliders, although huge and highly visible, are nearly inaudible maybe 10 feet away unless you're doing something dumb (running the prop tips supersonic to get more thrust, etc). A glider would also have much better range. Lets just say you should be wearing hearing protection when tuning a 0.40 sized RC airplane engine without a muffler, and probably while a muffler is installed too. Its a lot louder than you'd expect based on experience with yard work equipment (other than a chainsaw... A chainsaw is a pretty good comparison...)
My multicopter sounds like a weedwhacker in operation, and I can easily hear the 5volt beeper go off 30 feet away when the battery voltage drops too low. I donno maybe 50 feet away you wouldn't notice it? This is a 210mm sub 250g build, I'm sure a monster sized aircraft has monster sized noise to match.