Max speed – 120 fpm. Even flat out it won’t go anywhere fast…
1.2kt into a brick wall is enough to do five figures of damage…
I guess you do need electronics to know how to set up the motor controllers and link them to the remote receiver
The transmitter, receiver, and motor controllers can all be standard R/C parts.
A second transmission channel would indeed be required for an emergency stop.
Though the “main” channel could be made to stop if no reliable data was received for, say, 10 seconds.
That might require a non-standard receiver, perhaps, and a little bit of extra electronics.
And if once one takes the step of adding a microcontroller, it isn’t hard to make the thing follow a line painted on the hangar floor. There’s plenty of hobby robots round doing more complicated jobs.
Project for the euroga electronics gurus… I’m willing to spring for seed capital :-)
Didn’t we discuss these before? Personally I’d be quite happy to trust a high end RC transmitter – the main thing you’d want to do would be to make it smaller and lighter. Some of the high-end r/c aircraft cost 5 figures and to boot a malfunction e.g. whilst flying a a big helicopter at close range could get you killed.
Yes, 4k is money, but in the scheme of what it costs to fly, why run the risk of building something that may not work properly?
I suspect the manufacturer has done its best to make it safe, knowing what kind of damage and claims are at stake.
A friend of mine owns one of these, and he’s quite happy with it. I have seen him recently move his Cirrus and tailwheel aircraft in and out of his hangar, and it worked like a charm.
It tucks nicely under that nose wheel pant.
I disagree – this “in the scheme of what it costs to fly” mentality is what allows manufacturers of various aeronautically related goodies to rip us off. Just because avgas is expensive and airframes are priced on a valuation scheme involving holy spirits and black magic there is no need to charge 4k for something which could probably be built for 1k.
In the case of this particular kind of equipment, the manufacturer does not have you at gunpoint to buy it, so nobody is ‘ripping you off’.
The amount of units sold of this kind of products is very very low. A mark-up of 4 times the actual direct cost of manufacture would will not make them rich at all.
The amortization of the design costs, setting up and maintaining a supply chain, marketing and admin cost, warranty expenses, distributor commissions, you name it,
eat up most of the sales price.
Aart is right, I think. I did some tinkering and was surprised to see the low cost of a proof-of-concept, using second hand parts like car wiper motors. But this is a small market, and the sales volume could not make up for the overhead of setting up a production line and support.
Could make a nice DIY project, though, for those with some insight and enthusiasm in mechanics, electrics, electronics. And a bit of time to spare, of course.
