Penguin flies better than most known birds
It struck us early at sUAS News that the UAV Factory was a company going places and they have proved that with an endurance flight. A great achievement ahead of next weeks AUVSI conference find them 16th– to August 19th, at booth #1628
Well done Konstantins and your team from all of us at sUAS News.
He sent this report:-
Most people will be surprised to find that penguins do fly, and even more surprised to find out that Penguin is among very few unmanned birds that can fly for 25+ hours and, probably, the only two-stroke carbureted engine powered UAV that can achieve such endurance.
On the late evening ofAugust 10th 2011, UAV Factory team has set out for a flight with the aim to break the 40 hour endurance mark. The aircraft was the 20 kg, Penguin B UAV, manufactured by UAV Factory Ltd.
A significant fact to note is that for the aircraft set-up a stock Penguin B UAV, powered by a 28 cc two-stroke gas model aircraft engine and UAV Factory’s proprietary on-board generator system was used. The engine was, however modified by UAV Factory engineers to improve specific fuel consumption, but it was still a two-stroke model engine with inherently inefficient fuel consumption.
The Penguin B UAV was launched using a car-top launcher at20:15 pm. The weather was particularly poor during the flight, with the wind gusts of 15 m/s and a strong continuous rain. After 26 hours and 30 minutes of flight, the Penguin was forced to land at22.45pmon August 11th due to software malfunction. There was still 2.5 kg of fuel left in the Penguin B UAV gas tank, which is enough for 13 to 14 hours of flight.
During the flight the Penguin B UAV maintained an average speed of 19.8 m/s and covered 1889 kilometres. Penguin B also carried 1.6 kg of payload to demonstrate the usability of the system. The flight was performed as close to the best endurance flight regime as possible which meant continuously recalculating the flight speed as the aircraft was getting lighter.
The flight demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a long endurance flight using low-cost two-stroke model engine, while still carrying a meaningful payload
