Event: Drone Testing

David organized a mini-event at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale, CA. Several squadron members participating in our Quadcopter Kit AE Stem Project met at Baylands Park to fly the STEM Quad Lugs quadcopter. This quadcopter, built at the squadron by squadron members, was stable on the easy settings, near impossible to control on the sensitive settings. It will continue to fly in the future, and will be used at recruiting events. This successfully concludes this STEM project.

While there, the group also flew other member-owned quadcopters and fixed wing RC aircraft. The park had other RC modelers flying their aircraft, and the group spent quite a bit of time watching them as well.

Activity: Quadcopter Electronics Configuration

Date of activity: 06 Nov 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Electronics Configuration
Description: Having done some experimentation at home on his own time, David brought out the software and demonstrated some basic configuration of the electronics.  The quadcopter is still not quite ready to fly, so we were unable to test that, but we could selectively run each engine separately.

Activity: Quadcopter Electronics Installation

Date of activity: 30 Oct 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Electronics Installation
Description: With the project well underway, this evening's entertainment consisted of installing the electronics that control the quadcopter.  This proved not as easy as it sounds, and was not quite completed successfully in the available time.

Activity: Quadcopter Assembly (start)

Date of activity: 09 Oct 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Airframe Assembly
Description: David led a few brave souls in beginning the assembly of the recently-received STEM quadcopter kit.  While we were not able to complete assembly in the available time, we did get quite a bit done.

Presentation: April 2017

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 10 Apr 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Aerodynamics
Description: I discussed how the multi-fixed-rotor design is an alternative to conventional collective-pitch rotors. Everything is a trade-off in engineering. Long, high-aspect-ration rotors are more efficient that propellers. However, large rotors have a lot of rotating mass, so thrust changes must be made using a complex swashplate to change the rotor pitch. Quadcopters with small propellers are less efficient, but simple because thrust changes can be made by changing the speed of the fixed propeller. We discussed the aerodynamics of quad copters including handling torque, yaw pitch, roll, and lift. A key enabling technology for quadcopters is the electric motor. Although flight times are usually short to keep lightweight batteries, electric motors can have up to a 5x increase in power vs. weight when compared to internal combustion motors. The discussion concluded with a brief history of multi-rotor aircraft. The first successful helicopter in 1923 was actually a quadcopter. In the near future, we will continue to see a proliferation of small UAVs based on the quadcopter design, and perhaps personal air taxis.

Presentation: February 2017

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 20 Feb 2017
Subject: STEM kit - Quadcopter
Description: From an email sent by David on 15-Feb:
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I finally received the "Build a Quad Copter" STEM kit.  Here is a summary of what I had put in the request for the kit:

•     Build the quadcopter with a couple senior members, include a couple cadets from Squadron 36.
•     Perform a density altitude experiment:
•  Fly in a cold environment, perhaps in a park outside in the morning. Baylands is a good park for this, Steven also suggested the RC park near Morgan Hill. Suspend a weight at the center of gravity, find the maximum that can be lifted.
•  Fly in a warm environment, perhaps the Squadron building with seats removed and the heater running. We should see that the max weight is less.
•     Give the following presentations to both Squadrons 80 and 36 as part of our AE program:
• General aerodynamics of a quad copter (Wikipedia on Vortex Ring State, Forbes article on what makes quadcopters so great for small drones).
• Use of drones, both commercial, hobby, SAR, and military.
• Effects of Density Altitude.
• (The above could be combined into one long preseo depending on the amount of content)

Thoughts on how to do this?  I can kick this off by giving a quick introduction to the project at the next Sq 80 meeting.
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