On the late evening of August 10th of 2011, the UAV Factory team set out for a flight with the aim to break the 40 hour endurance record with a two-stroke model engine. The aircraft was the 20 kg, Penguin B , manufactured by UAV Factory Ltd.
A significant fact to note is that for the aircraft set-up a stock Penguin B UAV, powered by a 28 cc two-stroke gas model aircraft engine and UAV Factory’s proprietary on-board generator system was used. The engine was, however modified by UAV Factory engineers to improve specific fuel consumption, but it was still a two-stroke model engine with its inherently inefficient fuel consumption.
The Penguin B was launched using a car-top launcher at 20:15 pm. The weather was particularly poor during the flight, with the wind gusts of 15 m/s and a strong continuous rain. After 26 hours and 30 minutes of flight, the Penguin was forced to land at 22.45pm on August 11th due to software malfunction. There was still 2.5 kg of fuel left in the Penguin B gas tank, which is enough for 13 to 14 hours of flight.
During the flight the Penguin B maintained an average speed of 19.8 m/s and covered 1889 kilometres. Penguin B also carried 1.6 kg of payload to demonstrate the usability of the system. The flight was performed as close to the best endurance flight regime as possible which meant continuously recalculating the flight speed as the aircraft was getting lighter.
The flight demonstrated that it is possible to achieve a long endurance flight using low-cost two-stroke model engine, while still carrying a meaningful amount of payload.
Source: Press Release