Bezmiechowa 2013 - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Contest

The 10th Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Contest took place from 20th to 23rd of September 2013 in Bezmiechowa, organized by Association of Young Aerospace Engineers. It gathered 3 teams from polish technical universities. One of them was ours - EUROAVIA Rzeszow. This year we improved our airplane by adding vertical tips for better handling characteristics and we designed, built and tested pneumatic catapult. It enabled us to launch UAS-X1 with  greater take-off mass, than rubber propelled catapult used before. Below you can find compilation of photos and videos from flights in Bezmiechowa.

You can find more information about contest at  http://www.miwl.smil.org.pl/glowna.html

Test flight with modified wing tips

At the beginning of July we managed to conduct some test flights with modified wing tips for improvement of manoeuvrability and directional stability. We mentioned about their design and manufacturing process in March. Their layout was designed according to principles explained in "Tailless aircraft in theory and practice" - Karl Nickel, very useful textbook by the way. 

Below you can find short movie summarizing that stage of the project and test flights. 

 

As we expected, flight characteristics improved a lot in comparison to the first test flight, it confirmed that layout of the geometry and position of the center of the gravity was designed in the right way. Having that confidence we decided to proceed to the next stage of the project and focus on detailed structural design. We will cover that subject on the next posts, stay tuned. 

After a long winter spent on optimization and analysis, we got back to work in workshop. Recently we fitted vertical stabilizers on wing tips of our BSL-X1. Hopefully it will improve flight characteristics during turns and other flight manoeuvres.

Fig. 1 Stabilizers geometry optimization and scetching

Fig. 2 3D model of  vertical stabilizers

Fig. 3 Vacuum-bag with composite stabilizers inside while curing 

Contest in Bezmiechowa 2012

The time for maiden flight finally came. Contest of UAVs in Bezmiechowa (rganized avery year by SMIiL) was a perfect ocasion to try out our UAS-X1. Apart from our team of EUROAVIA Rzeszow from Rzeszow University of Technology, four other universities participated in a contest.

Fig. 1 Group photo

 We were trying to finish works over all systems but didn't managed on time. We are going to continue our work to test all systems in flight. Up to now, we tested only structure during maiden flight, without any extra electronic equipment. That was good a decision because some problems accrued with a directional stability and trimming of control surfaces, in a result we had a crash landing in a forest. Good news is that construction turned out to be strong enough to survive impact. 80 % of structure is in a good condition, so now we are analysing a possibility to fix it and put it into air again.

 Fig. 2

 Fig. 3 So this is like our UAS-X1 looks

 Fig. 4 And after a crash landing

Good new is that we tested behaviour in flight, we know what is needed to be improved. The best news is that nothing from basic design needs to be changed, longitudinal stability is really good, behaviour during catapult launch is also perfect (no problems with internal structure during high G-forces) so the future ahead of us is bright. We plan to have next flights before winter.

Movie from the maiden flight

Fuselage is READY

Fuselage is READY!!! Now we are installing equipment inside... A maiden flight soon - to be announced.

Manufacturing of fuselage

Hi, it's been a while but we are coming back with great news - we've build fuselage. Have a look how we did it.


We prepared molds for putting a lay up inside. The roughness of surface of molds is very important, thus we worked on it with waterproof sand paper and polishing paste. Right before laminating we covered surfacw with mold release wax and finally after all this proceedings we started with the best part of it - laminating. Have a look...

Fig.1 marking places for access doors

Fig.2 Cutting the nomex core

Fig.3 Cutting the fabrics

 Fig. 4 Laying up carbon fabrics



Fig.5 Lay up ready and waiting for core



Fig.6 Setting a vaccum

 Fig. 7 Under pressure

 Fig.8 Out of mold

Fig.9 With frames and empty place for "insert" for catapult launch fitting

Autopilot: Flight-by-wire mode presentation

Note that the roll angle is proportional to the control stick deflection

For more, visit MF Avionics homepage