Hello, I wanted to ask if it’s realistically possible to achieve a higher battery charge rate from solar cells than the current load by using this 2400mm wingspan Volantex Phoenix 2400 glider frame?
Truthfully I don’t have any experience with RC planes, only drones, however I became really interested in building a solar plane which could fly for long periods of time. I read other posts achieving the same thing, and they have used higher wingspan frames (3m and more), wider wings (to fit more solar cells).
I hope I’m not asking the impossible, but are there other frame options which would suit my needs and preferably not cost a fortune?
You have to design and make the wing around the cell size available. Using hot wire cutting is not too difficult. But before you begin, fly a regular glider first to undestand the “small print”. Solar planes are not easy.
Same opinion as @PeterWang.
You can’t efficiently place solar cells on the wing. You have to design the wing around the solar cells.
If you can guarantee the cooling, you can build a transparent wing where the solar cells sit as part of the structural integrity within the wing. If the wing profile has a flat bottom, the solar cells could be the bottom.
Hmm, well I’d like to avoid designing a custom wing as much as possible (based on my inexperience).
Solar planes are of course not easy, my intent was to get a plane flying without solar first, then go from there, I just didn’t want to go wrong with the frame.
Thanks. Yeah I can imagine pre-made frames are going to be an issue, I thought I could still get positive charge from solar without making my own frame.
Do you have any suggestions which solar cells I should use?
There are a lot of semi-flexible cells on the market, you can buy them on aliexpress, you can get for instance 15 x 15 cm cells which supposedly provide about 5 W max power. You have to build a slow flier, which would consume little power. My guess is thatyou can get away with 100 W for level, slow (30 kmk/h) flight. For 100 W you would need 20 cells, so span would be 20 x 15 = 300 cm. The wing chord (i.e. the width of the wing) should be round 22 …25 cm, because the leading edge is too curved, so about 3…4 cm are not usable, and on the rear, you should leave about 3…4 cm for the ailerons. So your wing would be about 25 x 300 cm = 75 dm2.
To get a flying speed of 30 km/h your plane should weight no more than 3 kg. This is not too complicated, the airframe of such a plane may be close to 2 kg, and the rest would be for a small battery and the photovoltaic cells, so itis douable.
This plane is almost useless, because it will not be able to fly in any wind, and it will be very fragile, so for turbulance, it will not be able to withstand much either. So for experimenting, yes, for flying very high altitude, long missions in ideal wind conditions (once every two weeks, for up to 12 hours), yes, for normal flying, no no and no.
