16-Dec-2012

Thesis
Although I had Finals last week I was still able to get some work done on my Thesis.

• I keep plugging away at my Literature Review.  I found some really good sources online that give a lot of information on the design process of an R/C Scale Airplane, which I am adapting to my project.
• I put a lot more information on the Wiki.  Check it out.
• I've been working on documenting the design process information I've accumulated so far.  I am following a spiral-like process of project management.  Currently I am in the first spiral of development, and am working on (what I refer to as) the ICARUS Flyer version 4, Revision A Iteration 1 (or v4RevA.1).  I will post this information to the Wiki when it's complete, should be in the next few days. With this documention process I've been really able to start quantatively analyzing the Aerodynamic aspects of the Flyer v4RevA.1 including finding out the Airfoil's, Wing Spans and Wing Areas are not acceptable at all.  I'm not surprised as I didn't really know much about that kind of thing when I first drew it up but I'm learning a lot more about it now.
• I started some more in-depth Component Selection, namely for the Flyer's Powerplant (Battery, ESC's, Motors, Servo's, etc)
• I've more or less given up on X-Plane, at least for now.  It's very cumbersome to design what I want and control how I want it without using the X-Plane SDK and I don't have the time to really devote to that now.

Since I have a lot of free time until school starts back up on Jan 14, here are some of the things I would like to accomplish:

• Finish the documentation process for the ICARUS Flyer v4RevA.1, including providing recommendations for the next iteration.
• Perform more Literature Review on critical Aircraft, relevant documents on Airplane design and structure design.
• Develop a list of software I would feasibly want to develop to automate the Iterative process (Wing size/location optimization, battery/ESC/Motor optimizer, etc).
• Provide some information on interesting add-ons to the Flyer, such as Ultrasonic Sensors, Voice Commands, etc.
• Keep updating the Wiki as much as possible.

I may add more to this list of things to do, but for now this is what I'm focused on.  Sorry not really any pictures this time.