ar6

Introduction:

Testing the ar mini wing.

Components:

  • AR Mini 600 wing PNP with 1806 motor & 30amp flycolor ESC

  • TBS crossfire nano receiver

  • Noxe F4 flight controller

  • Vivafpv 600mw vtx

  • Foxeer micro arrow camera

Conclusion:

200g dry. This took a while to build because I needed to figure out how I wanted to cram the components in there. I think it will work fine as it is as long as the weather remains cold. However, I am considering moving the vtx out onto the wing instead.

Update 1/6/21: The first launch was bad since it rolled and was unable to recover (the hatch and battery came off, but nothing broke). The elevons were not exactly even. Even though it was on 3s with the same autolaunch settings as my other planes, this one didn't seem as powerful (probably due to weight). I'll need to tweak the autolaunch settings for more power. RSSI wasn't displaying properly since I configured the nano rx to output LQ:RSSI instead of just rssi. Will need to test to see if it works with LQ instead. Overall, it flew really well. I used 2 3s 850mah lipos in parallel to get the CG to balance. In total, I flew for 35mins covering 23km with the batteries coming back down to 3.7v per cell. Cruising was at a throttle range of low to mid 30s. Winds were about 12mph and there were no real issues. I think this will be a great long range plane for the windier days when 2s won't cut it.

Update1/8/21: Autolaunch is still a big issue. It needs a lot of tweaking. However, I did cover 30km in 40 mins on 2x 3s800mah batteries resting at 3.6v. It's hard to find the limit as the flights get rather boring after a while. I've also acquired some li-ion cells which I made into 2 and 3s packs for testing.

Update 1/10/21: Was able to fix autolaunch by spinning up the prop before launch itself. I was also able to try the molicel 3s on this. It performed really well by flying for 30mins covering 25km with a resting voltage of over 3.7v (charging the battery put back 1160mah). Since it used less than half the battery, it seems that we can easily fly an hour covering over 50km.

Update 1/13/21: Did some range tests today. With the regular dipole, the range was .6km to 1.2km at under 100m. With the spironet patch, the range got boosted to 1km to 1.6km. However, when climbing to over 500m, I was getting perfect reception even at over 2km away with the patch. The low altitude results were highly disappointing, so I decided to move the vtx to the wing. I also took the chance to move the crossfire antenna to be horizontal instead since I think that is a much better orientation. I was getting telemetry lost messages even at close range. With the changes, the weight now came in at 204g dry.

Update 1/20/21: Made a 5.2km run today. Conditions were not ideal as it was very gusty. I chipped off a part of the wing on landing.

Flight efficiency logs:

  • 18.63km (979mah used)| 3s lion | 52.54mah/km