I’ve recently had the pleasure of testing the new ARACE Phoenix quadplane, and it is a truly remarkable vehicle. The headline number of 6 hours flight time was not something I was expecting to see on a quadplane, especially one that flies as well as the Phoenix does. It really is quite remarkable how far electric quadplanes have come in the past few years.
The Phoenix comes in a nicely arranged foam packing case, which I was relieved to find does fit in the back of my car with room to spare (cavaliers for scale in the photo).
My unit came with a H16 Pro transmitter which gives very good line of sight telemetry and video range (nominal range of 16 km with clear line of sight). The video from the built-in FPV camera is very clear which really helps with operation at long ranges.
Also note the anemometer in the little pocket in the top right corner of the case to make it easy to check if wind is within the rated wind limits.
Assembly for each flight is extremely easy, with no tools needed, just simple click-lock connectors. Similarly, disassembly post-flight to put it back in the box is very easy.
Six Rotor Redundancy
This is the first ARACE quadplane to come with 6 rotors which increases reliability in case a motor fails. It is a tilt-quadplane, with the front two motors tilting for forward flight. To help further with reliability ARACE have used DroneCAN servos for the tilt, allowing the flight controller to monitor that the servos are performing as expected. If a tilt servo does fail then it is important to switch off the motor corresponding to that servo as the aircraft would have no way to control the direction of thrust. ARACE worked with members of the ArduPilot dev team to develop monitoring for the tilt servos and to automatically perform a motor shutdown as needed.
ARACE have also added a system for logging hours on all components (servos, motors etc) and will warn the operator if the rates hours are exceeded. This simplifies the component tracking needed for the vehicle a lot and is something that is often neglected.
Battery Monitoring
The attention to detail in this plane really becomes apparent with their system for battery life cycle monitoring. A small DroneCAN “BatteryTag” is attached to each battery to monitor each discharge cycle. This information is then used for a number of things:
- an arming check to prevent you trying to fly with a battery that has been through too many cycles
- automatic adjustment of the battery charge estimation from the disarm voltage, so you know the amount of actual capacity you have, even with an old battery
- logging of battery serial numbers and number of cycles with each flight
Payload Bay
The use of the canard arrangement means the mid-section of the aircraft has a lot of room for payload centered on the CoG. This is going to be very welcome for people with complex payloads. For the fire monitoring project we are working on we will have quite a bit of gear in this bay and the open form factor will make it very easy to fit things in.
Starlink Coming!
ARACE is working on a starlink-mini integration option as well, which we are very excited about. We fly long distances over mountainous terrain for the ANU fire project, and keeping a good comms link is very challenging. Having integrated starlink would make a huge difference, although we don’t yet know what impact this will have on flight time.
Huge Potential
We’re really looking forward to using the Phoenix in the ANU fire monitoring project. It is an incredibly capable vehicle that is also easy to fly, ideal for the sorts of missions we do. Many thanks to ARACE for putting together such a great plane!
