UA in the news

[CenTexFlyer]

Amazing how far behind the times the press can appear. Of course, you buy a million dollar flying trash can, that is newsworthy.....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23805369

[Jack Crossfire]

The link is dead but the story is well known. The real news is that the contract didn't go to a Neural Robotics, Rotomotion, Adaptive Flight, Microdrones, Wecontrol, or Verhagenx2 but to a tried & true defense contractor.

[_helitron_]

Hi guys,

this is a REALLY interesting story of a tiny camdrone, brandnew and highly newsworthy:

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9381851&postcount=2026

Cheers,


//Erwin

[Jack Crossfire]

Always fascinating that the country which is launching our next moon probe & produces most of the scientists in the world can be so poor.

In the flight control business, Germany is #1. Have always thought the flying part would be imported from somewhere like Germany & the jobs for US would focus on ground stations & networking. This is a point in favor of that arrangement.

The 40min time quoted was for several attempts including some failures. The hex copter only flies for 12 min.

[_helitron_]

You're right Jack, flight time is still limited at the moment but this is only due to the (very good) battery technology currently available. I'm a quadrocopter pilot (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9204984&postcount=1639, http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9218957&postcount=1677, www.mikrokopter.de) and I tried a lot of different LiPos, it doesn't help very much to put a big battery on the quadro. Problem is simply the weight/mAh ratio, that means there is only one way to increase flight time, building as light as possible (a good example is the professional Microdrone MD4-200 http://www.microdrones.de/md4-200.html).

Cheers,

//Erwin