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The Twinstar from Multiplex is a very good plane to start with. For any purpose. Although mine consists of a lot of glue now - it flies very nice and smoothly. First flight was in spring 2001, it does have more flying than working hours.
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The trick: Thermopile sensors. Commonly used in thermometers that measure the temperature of surfaces (like in-ear thermometers). They do an unbelievable good job. The horizon is found by simply measuring the temperature difference between sky and earth. It is like visual flight rules (VFR) for model pilots. The original Paparazzi design uses sensors from Melexis, also usable is the TPS 334 from PerkinElmer/Heimann. They can be obtained from Reichelt Elektronik.
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That is what the 'loading space' of the Twinstar looks like. You can see the processor board with power supply, connectors to the wing, a slightly modified Jeti REX 7 receiver and the connectors of the Schulze speed controller. The received (traditional PPM) control signal goes from the REX 7 to the controller board and is then distributed to the servos.
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The GPS receiver from ublox. You can get it hassle-free from Pointis if you are in Germany. It is set up to deliver four position fixes per second.
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A 2.4GHz video transmitter is used for video and telemetry downlink (big green board on top). Can be bought in almost any supermarket. A ham radio amplifier is attached to have a safer link (to be found in the copper shielded balsa box underneath). There is some additional power supply in the black box to have distortion-free 12 Volts, 9 Volts and 5 Volts. Video is sent as analog PAL signal and the audio channel is used to transmit telemetry with 4800 baud AFSK. The microphone preamp is not used yet (small green board). A ham radio license is needed to operate this transmitter/amplifier legally.
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The deluxe version of the camera holder. Two ordinary servos are glued together with Powerstrips. The camera is the cheapest colour cam from Conrad Elektronik. It delivers 340 TV lines. The servos are controlled by the normal remote control sticks while in autonomous mode.
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This is the simple version as the deluxe holder is very sensitive to rough landings or high grass at the landing site. You can see the yellow coated 2.4GHz dipole antenna in the back of the picture.
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A nice idea from blackwidowav: Put a digital cam into the aircraft and connect its analog video out signal to the input of the transmitter. You get a nice preview of the picture you are going to take. Just like looking through the camera. Make sure you remember there is a slight delay... Camera weight is 220g plus another 35g lead in the wing tip of the other side. Picture is taken towards the bottom of the Twinstar.
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After forgetting cables and boxes for a repeated number of times I thought about a dedicated docking station for the laptop. It includes a laptop power supply, connectors for the video receiver, a Linux-aware DivX video-to-USB converter from Plextor and a 4800 baud modem. The modem is now obsolete with the multimon software that uses the laptop soundcard.
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This is The Glotzer, our aircraft for the MAV'05 contest. It was built by Christian Lindenberg and is entirely made of 3mm Depron. The flight characteristics are not as good as the Twinstars...but it makes ok pictures. See this PDF for some info.
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The Glotzer makes its pictures through this 2-axis stabilized camera. The camera points at a predefined position and takes attitude, position and direction into account to stabilize the view. It can look at the entire hemisphere under the aircraft.
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Although the good old Twinstar still works - this is our new Twinstar II. It has got wheels for runway take-off, lights for night flight and a lot more space inside. It can even carry an autonomous Dragon Slayer from Miraterre into the sky.
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The BlackOne is a modified Mini-Foxbat from ACT. It runs with the Tiny board, six attitude IR sensors and a gyro. It took part in EMAV 2006 and MAV 06. For MAV 06 a sensor drop mechanism and a rollable camera was added. See PDF.
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The OrangeOne was built for the MAV 06 but could not take part as it crashed in Arizona during flight tests (always make sure you secure all cables with hot glue). It is flying well but was not ready tuned for the competition.
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Yet another nose of the BlackOne. No other aircraft has been changed so much than this - and the the aircraft configuration file is almost unchanged for one year. The CCD camera gives a very nice picture and it's fun to fly it in auto1 with camera view only.
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The most agile aircraft in the hangar, a Multiplex FunJet. It does have very broad speed range and does incredible climbs. It will be used to measure meteorological data over Hofsjökull/Iceland during Flohof if inrared weather permits.
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This is some example gnuplot of the air temperature measured in flight.
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One of the three Funjets used during Flohof with portable ground control station on the Hofsjökull glacier in Iceland.
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Our aircraft for the MAV 07 outdoor competition. It is completely made of computer cut EPP foam. It is our 7th aircraft type equipped with the Paparazzi autopilot. The cutting was done by Christian Knüll. You can get the raw MAC07 foam parts from him and build your own.
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Our little fleet of GlassOne aircrafts (wingspan 28cm) used in the MAV08 competition. The three aircrafts were launched one after the other, having different camera setups. The wing is completely flat and based on Aramid Honeycomb from R & G. The wing is covered with Kevlar/glass and reinforced with carbon.
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This picture of the Funjet is taken in the Barents sea around Svalbard.
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