In reply to GameboyRMH:
Look up indoor Airbus A310. It's a 2 meter airliner weighing over 280g, running 9 servos, flying slowly, indoors. The fuselage is filled with helium.
With a flying wing, all the structure is providing lift and surface area for solar cells.
Consider the relationship between the volume, weight, and payload of that thing. It's basically a hybrid-lift RC blimp with a tiny payload, the fuselage is the main gas bag. To get the same volume of gas into a flying wing, it would need to be much larger. Our hypothetical craft needs to carry solar panels which are far from light, along with photography, computation and communications equipment and a hefty battery. I'd say at least 6lbs of stuff.
I think for the flying wing shape to work you'd need at least a 30ft wingspan. It can definitely work, but it's a space-inefficient way to hold the amount of lifting gas you need.
In reply to Appleseed:
That thing is cool!
Came into this late but wanted to add that someone is doing this with drones for high power line inspection. You can leach power by landing on the lines.
http://open-source-energy.org/?topic=1040.0
Low speed airfoil can get away with being extremely thick. Almost cartoonshly thick. As long as you plan on low speed, there is very little penalty. Macdonnel Douglas did designs in the late 80s/early 90s with span loaders, and the the lift/weight/volume blew conventional designs out of the water.
Good discussion folks. I need to finish my tracked robot project with the boys this winter and then move on to building this cool drone/plane/thing.
Would I be out of place is I mentioned you had another project to finish first?
NOHOME wrote: Would I be out of place is I mentioned you had another project to finish first?
I figure it might be easier to spend the $100 on parts to play with a robot for the kids education (you should see how they responded to the blimp idea) before I can commit to near $1000 for truck painting.
It's coming though, I promise. I have to post a house update, things have been moving nicely.
Fyi: in perfect conditions 1000 watts per square meter worth of light reaches the ground. Multiply out all your (in)efficiencies in the panels, charger, and batteries and I think you will realize why solar is not worth it. Especially when trying to keep it all in the air. Sorry to rain on your parade. Dang physics! Jcamper
Here's one more:
As a former private plane flyer and R/C flyer. I think you have a great spirit but the risks to a guy like me or anyone else flying for crop dusting, surveying, and other low to ground flying work. An autonomous clear blimp is a terrible nightmare. The FAA isn't just around to poo poo on drone rights or something. They protect those that use aircraft for government and private work. Having unidentified objects roaming through the same airspace gets everyone into more risk.
A club member was out at our field with me, I was doing touch and goes with my R/C plane. He was flying a large glider with his wife helping him spot it. While not common the local airport sometimes sends commercial aircraft on a loop that goes over our field. Well the glider ended up being above the flight level of a Delta Airliner. His wife screamed when the glider was unsighted for a moment as the airliner passed by. It took a full 2 minutes to dump the lift on the glider and get it back down to land. They talked about what ifs, as in what if the glider hit the aircraft. Very unlikely to bring down a large airliner but still, I don't think you want your R/C craft to hit a smaller aircraft and cause it to go down.
You can still build it but please be aware that you would be sharing the skies with aircraft that have people in them.
I should note that it isn't like the airliner was close to landing. It was still pre final circulating. The glider was just way above the allowed ceiling for our R/C field.
Just poking back in here to say that the balloons weren't me. In case you were wondering.
tuna55 said:Just poking back in here to say that the balloons weren't me. In case you were wondering.
Thanks for clearing that up! 
tuna55 said:Just poking back in here to say that the balloons weren't me. In case you were wondering.
Haha this thread also popped into my head with the recent news.
One big change since this thread was fresh: Satellite communications are kind of affordable to mere mortals now...
GameboyRMH said:tuna55 said:Just poking back in here to say that the balloons weren't me. In case you were wondering.
Haha this thread also popped into my head with the recent news.
One big change since this thread was fresh: Satellite communications are kind of affordable to mere mortals now...
So you're saying that now is the time to try it? I am sure it would be fun to watch the news afterwards.
FYI, there is an Australian company, Advanced Navigation, that makes a cloud based control and monitoring system that interfaces with PixHawk flight controllers. As long as it can get 4G/5G it's gold.
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