Iran’s 3rd UAV Design and Flying Competition
Once again our friend in Iran Ali Parvazi fills Patrick in on their student competiton.
Hard to believe that contest and symposium season is upon us already. So this year see’s another robust competition come out of the Iranian Republic. Encouraging to see, so many of the Universities and students to compete. Hopefully this annual contest will lead to more systems with real capabilities and less of the Photoshoped variety. (You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one by Gary “Eagle Eye” Mortimer.)
The participants in this case appear to endure many of the same trials and tribulations suffered by the rest of their competition contestant brethren from around the world.Every year I look forward to the kickoff of contest season and all of the participants getting a chance to share in the promise of the future of aviation.
Account of the competition as follows:
UAV design and flying competition, is one of the scientific and technical competitions which is held each year by Sharif Technical University. Final stage of this year has been held in Azadi airport of Qazvin and finished on 15 April 2013. 16 teams compete with each other in final stage.
Following teams reach to the final and compete with each other in 3 days:
Afar, Irsa, Raad-e-Sorkh (Red lightening), Sorosh ,Shabah (Phantom), Koliak, Matin, Hoda , Pardad, Dorna, Raga, Sepehr (Sky), Sarad 2,
Sirang, Mohajer (Migrant) and Homafaraz.
In this year’s mission, each team must fly their UAV into the target coordinate in 1.5 kilometres from the ground station, and then try to fly in the radius of less than 500 meters around the target in two different altitudes with difference of 3000 feet and film and monitor activities in the target area. The minimum flight time for each level was defined as 15 minutes (in the ideal conditions, each team might have 120 minutes of endurance)
Although most of the teams did not finished the competition in desired level, but some of them proved their ability to finish the mission. One of them was Matin from Booshehr city, which unfortunately at the end, had some problems and crashed.
Generally, it can be said that most of the teams had a substantial improvement in their airframe production methods and their avionics. For example, wide usage of carbon fibre and fibre glass in the airframes, industrial production methods, using Autopilots and avionics, and installation of safety parachute.
Sources:
http://20flight-ww.rahauav.com/blogs/entry/24-uav-competition-sharif-2013
http://www.mehrnews.com/detail/classicPhoto/2031937
