Originally Posted by GMPheli

To me, this thread looks like it could be terror related. In the first post the op says:

"I have a project where I need long endurance, a couple of hours at least and electric is going to be far too expensive in batteries and weight to be able to do it."

Then a little later he says:

"The 20cc consumption figures are also really nice to have as we're looking at building a sprayer with a 4m wingspan and 8m of sprayer boom + pump, chemicals, etc - obviously with a limited amount of pesticide you cant fly for very long, but it does allow for planning"

It makes no sense, unless he is not telling us the truth. It is our responsibility to watch for these things. I would not help this guy anymore unless he comes up with a good reason for the duration. I would report this thread to a moderator if I knew how

See the little yellow yield sign in the top right?

Good luck.....

Originally Posted by GMPheli

To me, this thread looks like it could be terror related. In the first post the op says:

"I have a project where I need long endurance, a couple of hours at least and electric is going to be far too expensive in batteries and weight to be able to do it."

Then a little later he says:

"The 20cc consumption figures are also really nice to have as we're looking at building a sprayer with a 4m wingspan and 8m of sprayer boom + pump, chemicals, etc - obviously with a limited amount of pesticide you cant fly for very long, but it does allow for planning"

It makes no sense, unless he is not telling us the truth. It is our responsibility to watch for these things. I would not help this guy anymore unless he comes up with a good reason for the duration. I would report this thread to a moderator if I knew how

Did you know, on properties where one might want a UAV for spraying pesticide (e.g. a farm), one might also find the property is the type that needs aerial photographs requiring long loiter time (e.g. a farm)? It could also help a UAV cover long distances on ones property to get jobs done in different places if the property was the type that was large enough (e.g. a farm). In addition, some properties are work environments where one does not want to deal with continuous lipo battery management but would rather just fill the tank and go (e.g. a farm).

Originally Posted by GMPheli

To me, this thread looks like it could be terror related. In the first post the op says:

"I have a project where I need long endurance, a couple of hours at least and electric is going to be far too expensive in batteries and weight to be able to do it."

Then a little later he says:

"The 20cc consumption figures are also really nice to have as we're looking at building a sprayer with a 4m wingspan and 8m of sprayer boom + pump, chemicals, etc - obviously with a limited amount of pesticide you cant fly for very long, but it does allow for planning"

It makes no sense, unless he is not telling us the truth. It is our responsibility to watch for these things. I would not help this guy anymore unless he comes up with a good reason for the duration. I would report this thread to a moderator if I knew how

Oh man, this made my day. Thank you very much Its been a while since I've been called a terrorist on a forum. A small crop duster is the least of your worries I have to say, my other hobby is high power rocketry and I'm certified to fly some very big, very fast rockets!

You have heard of crop dusting right or at least been outside the city and seen crops? All those fields need to have pesticide sprayed over it every now and then, bugs get into the crop and if they don't get eradicated they eat it all - and leave you nothing to eat! Crop dusting is pretty common, and is really good fun. It doesn't compact the soil, or demolish crops like a tractor/sprayer does. It's also really fast to do, especially over a few thousand acres of land. One problem though - it's really really expensive to run a turboprop and dump hundreds of litres of chemicals.

I see your point though, pesticides are clearly pointless for terrorism. At worst (or is that "at best" considering i'm a terrorist now?) they might make a couple of peoples faces go numb. Clearly you've thought about this much more than me... perhaps you have some suggestions on something else i could spray?

Btw, ever tried to fly a 4M aircraft in a suburban area? Darn things are bigger than the roads.

Just as an update on the "planning" for my "mission" (hehe) we're looking at building a bigger (still 4metre) plane with a composite fuselage to have an integrated fuel tank and a sprayer tank. Working some reallllly rough numbers we feel a 26cc motor will give us a much better tradeoff between fuel use and reliability as well as allowing a nice payload. We're looking to do precision agriculture here, not the "dump 100 litres of pesticide on a crop and call it a day" approach. The idea is to work off hyperspectral imaging and be able to spray herbicide (roundup - doesn't hurt people), pesticide (various chemicals, can't get the concentration to hurt people), or fertiliser (ammonium nitrate is prilled, not liquid, and illegal here as fertiliser so we cant even make it go boom ). From hyerpsectral imagery we can determine crop stress and non-crop plants (ie: weeds) in the field. This means we need to fly at times long distances between places to spray (anyone know a really nefarious way to say that? Spray sounds so innocent and now i'm a terrorist i should really sound much more evil.) The farm we're doing this for has a bit over 10,000 acres so if we can cover a bunch of it with limited refueling and refilling it will be very helpful.

Or maybe we're planning to fly to a city from hours away and kill the bugs in peoples gardens. You never know. "Terrorists have struck today killing all the pretty little ladybirds and the aphids they were feeding in a retirement community's rose garden. Authorities believe the suspect use a radio control aircraft and are seeking any information people may have."

I guess i'm inciting terror in sprayer sales men, banking organisation and pesticide companies the world over. One team of men with a mission. One farm. One UAV... cutting down on costs and pesticide use.

Originally Posted by GMPheli

To me, this thread looks like it could be terror related. In the first post the op says:

Actually, sorry i've just realised you're completely right. I thought you were saying it was terrorism related. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Terror is an emotional state.. and spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars on batteries is a real terror if mine, it wakes me up at night with nightmares (actually, i think its more a emotional problem for my fiancee lol). Running out of fuel a few kilometres from somewhere nice to land... now that's terrifying! Planning an aircraft around an unknown motor, with unknown parameters.. well thats more just making me feel anxious.

Originally Posted by GMPheli

To me, this thread looks like it could be terror related. In the first post the op says:

"I have a project where I need long endurance, a couple of hours at least and electric is going to be far too expensive in batteries and weight to be able to do it."

Then a little later he says:

"The 20cc consumption figures are also really nice to have as we're looking at building a sprayer with a 4m wingspan and 8m of sprayer boom + pump, chemicals, etc - obviously with a limited amount of pesticide you cant fly for very long, but it does allow for planning"

It makes no sense, unless he is not telling us the truth. It is our responsibility to watch for these things. I would not help this guy anymore unless he comes up with a good reason for the duration. I would report this thread to a moderator if I knew how

I know the guy personally and even stayed at his house for 2 weeks on vacation, he's not a terrorist, just a crazy aussie.

Originally Posted by chris1seto

I know the guy personally and even stayed at his house for 2 weeks on vacation, he's not a terrorist, just a crazy aussie.

And by "vacation" you mean "training camp" right right? Come on man... you're killing my street cred

Originally Posted by Issus

And by "vacation" you mean "training camp" right right? Come on man... you're killing my street cred

I was trying to be undercover so the infidels wouldn't suspect anything

I will ask you again, why do you need hours of duration, when you will be landing much more frequently than that to refill pesticides? It just does not add up. No one else finds this odd? I did report this thread to a moderator. And am going to look into how to report this to the feds

lol Calm down there GMPheli, do you really think terrorists need to consult the internet to figure this stuff out?

A simple test would give the fuel consumption and terrorists don't make their plans public like this unless they're stupid and acting alone like that moron that bought a couple small electric jets from the undercover fed agent that had no payload carrying capabilities. We might as well ban all Ag planes if we're going to worry about pesticide sprayers.

ChillPhatCat, yes this is exactly the place terrorists would come to try and get info. I have no problem with agricultural use of r/c aircraft. However, to me it does not appear that this is what he is using it for. He conveniently did not answer the question as to why he needs hours of duration, so he must be hiding something. It is our responsibility to police these forums for this type of activity

Originally Posted by GMPheli

I will ask you again, why do you need hours of duration, when you will be landing much more frequently than that to refill pesticides? It just does not add up. No one else finds this odd? I did report this thread to a moderator. And am going to look into how to report this to the feds

LMAO, please do, please do. I believe the contact you want is the FBI - the contact us page is here: http://www.fbi.gov/contact-us. Oh wait! I'm not in your country - try the CIA. I've worked with the department of foreign affairs here on projects before. I've manufactuered electronics using military grade parts and have been checked out by the americans, danish and australian security agencies. Chris Seto also does robotics work for the US defense department (army?)

How on earth do you get terrorism from a guy wanting to fly a plane for a few hours? People fly gliders for hours all the time! I can just imagine your conversation with them "so theres this guy on this internet forum right... he wants to make a r/c plane that can fly for hours at a time.... no he's not in america.... no, he said he wants to use it for agriculture which i find highly suspicious... no, i dont know his name or where he is". I'd love to see the email chain that goes around the offices from the person who takes your call.

While you're on the phone, if they don't hangup on you - please be sure to report *everyone* here: http://www.rocketryforum.com/forumdi...-Rocketry-(HPR) These guys are flying half scale ICBMs and some of them even fly over 100,000ft in less than a couple of minutes. They also have pyrotechnics on board (explosives) for deployment. Guess what?! It's totally legal - just like flying a plane for a couple of hours!

*WHY ON EARTH WOULD A TERRORIST WANT A PLANE THAT CAN FLY FOR HOURS?!* You can get high resolution aerial imagery of any city in the whole world cheaper than you could build a 4M uav and the cameras and control systems to do it if you think they are doing some sort of surveilance. Why they would bother carrying a payload several hours, explosive or chemical I have no idea - Cars carry more. Look through your history books, look at the news in palestine, afghanistan, iraq - car bombs or IEDs are the weapon of choice - certainly not a plane! Are you off your rocker? An aircraft is a *horribly* tool for a weapon... it cant carry crap, its not discrete, it's rather bloody loud if it has a petrol motor on it

I'm guessing you've never tried to carry a hyperspectral camera, or any camera around to photograph 10-15 *thousand* acres. With a crossover of a couple of hundred metres thats a vast flight distance. Farmers have other crap to do than sit there waiting for a plane to come back every 30 mins and refuel it, and they certainly don't have the money to pay for us to sit there babysitting it.

Like wise with pesticides, as i've said this is precision agriculture we're looking at - 5-10kg at low dose rate pesticides is perfect for what we're doing - but the areas which need it may be 5-10km apart on the land. Farmers don't have time to move the aircraft and re-setup a ground station and routes for every paddock - let the thing go do its business and come back when its done.

Not that I have to justify myself to you.. but did you know country australia has some of the quietest areas for RF *in the world*? We have family friends on a medium size farm who allow us to test lots of electronics and aircraft on their property - and have done for years. With a recent infection of aphids, the land owner asked if we could look if it's possible to build an aerial sprayer that can spray a systemic pesticide around the perimeter of a crop to kill the aphids (they work their way from the outside in). They also pay *thousands* of dollars to get a couple of aerial photos of their land and it takes a week to get back to them - at which point it's utterly useless to them for look at crop stress. A dual purpose aircraft which can take a sprayer module or a set of cameras is the target - the more we look at it, the bigger it gets, and the more power we need. Have you ever heard the saying "thats a bit agricultural" or similar? Yeah well, farmers and lipo batteries probably dont mix so well. They understand 2 strokes because of all the ag bikes they have strung together with fence wire.

Make sure you have your tin foil hat on before making that call, you wouldnt want secret government signals in the telephone lines changing your thoughts!

Originally Posted by GMPheli

ChillPhatCat, yes this is exactly the place terrorists would come to try and get info. I have no problem with agricultural use of r/c aircraft. However, to me it does not appear that this is what he is using it for. He conveniently did not answer the question as to why he needs hours of duration, so he must be hiding something. It is our responsibility to police these forums for this type of activity

Oh Noes!!!! I didnt fully disclose a possible commercial application of a product for the company I work for!? I MUST BE A CRIMINAL. QUICKLY PUT ME IN HANDCUFFS BEFORE I KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT ANY LONGER!

Go check the FPV forum please. World record 111km distance flight, took 6hrs. Then go check the gliding forums and gliding endurance competitions. I guess you're more of a quick shooter right? Your wife must be so satisfied.. knowing you'll be back home from flying so quickly.

I guess you have to look at it like this GMP (or whoever your primary is.....):

Everybody responding with intelligent feedback understands why he needs longer endurance. Everybody who has gone through the absolute NIGHTMARE of setting up a fuel powered UAV/FPV plane and spent hours/days/weeks/months trying to get the vibes down to a usable level, understands why you want longer endurance. Most of us who have flown these planes around other people, and especially AMA fields, have heard the "terrorist talk" one too many times.

It is like going into a thread about helicopters and asking why they want fancy gyros, then demanding an answer and inserting the false dichotomy between "answer the question, or you are a terrorist".

The answer to the question is obvious, and you are being stupid...

You are not being a patriot, or boyscout... just annoying and fear mongering... and probably a troll at that (a well-fed one by this point unfortunately...). Just... go away....

Originally Posted by GMPheli

ChillPhatCat, yes this is exactly the place terrorists would come to try and get info. I have no problem with agricultural use of r/c aircraft. However, to me it does not appear that this is what he is using it for.

Sooo... what exactly does this appear to be? lmao.

Originally Posted by chemnut842

The answer to the question is obvious, and you are being stupid...

You are not being a patriot, or boyscout... just annoying and fear mongering... and probably a troll at that (a well-fed one by this point unfortunately...). Just... go away....

You know, i actually had to check his "location" was real.. because assonet just sounds like a troll's fictional home town. Don't worry, with the work I do I get accused of being a terrorist at least once a year. It's pretty fun. I have all sorts of rockets (bigger than my fiancee) and aircraft and CNC machinery in my garage too - so it's best to keep the door down or we get visits...

People with boring lives just dont understand people who have interesting hobbies and interesting goals. It's so foreign to them that the only thing i could *possibly* be is terrorism.. right?

My primary job is all government work - GMP would be appalled at what I do all day.


On a plus note, I ordered a 18x8 prop and a fuel tank and some other bits and pieces from hobbyking so I can model them up in solidworks to see how much room i'll have left and what I need to design around The RCG 26cc gasser in the aus warehouse is cheap enough that even my meagre budget can afford it for testing (about $150). I'm sure if it doesn't work out I'll be able to find a project for it - if not, GMP seems to have some interesting ideas for projects, maybe he can buy it off me?