P4P floating skates
- Thread starter henpax
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For safety reasons it might be best to test them in a kiddie pool were the water isn’t deep enough to actually loose your drone if they should fail.
Please do a video of the testing.
P.S. You did a really nice job designing them.
Waiting to see them on the market.
Agreed...
...and agreed! If those "pontoons" really do perform as intended, you could have one very marketable product there because you can design that for the P3 folks as well. Could be a lot of interest from both groups. Good luck to you!
They are 3D printed, then thoroughly levigated with fine sandpaper, treated with waterproof product and painted. A second prototipe would follow another production line: legs created with casting mold (far stronger than 3D printed plastics) and floating skates carved with automatic 3D cutter from high density styrofoam - or similars, then polished and painted as well. This second option should reduce even more their weight. Then I'll have to do more tests to see wich ones perform better.
They look great, and I'm interested to see how the prototype works on some test flights.
If I could offer you one piece of advise, I'd remove the DJI logo from them ASAP. That's probably a trademark violation, and if they see it, you'll likely be on the receiving end of a cease and desist letter from their legal department.
If I could offer you one piece of advise, I'd remove the DJI logo from them ASAP. That's probably a trademark violation, and if they see it, you'll likely be on the receiving end of a cease and desist letter from their legal department.
You are right, when I designed it the first time I didn't think I would ever published photos as I did here.. that had to be a "personal" experiment. As I'm still developing this project, I'm gonna remove every logo from it. Thank you for your suggestion.
If you mean this, yes they are intended to be quickly clipped on P4P legs, and easily removed as well to replace it back into its original case. Next week with friend's help I should be able to record some test video on water (small lake), then I'll post it on YouTube..
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Any wait to see this in action. I would start small and test in your bath tub at home. Then try a small lake where the wind will create waves. But do the bath first just to make sure you got the balance of the skates dead on centre to make sure the drone doesn't tip forward or backward
Thank you for your suggestions, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'll let you know..
Here we are.. skates fit perfectly when mounted on P4P legs, and during first tests in a pool the result was exactly as expected: the drone remains steadily upright even with some wave simulation. I would say it is quite impossible to capsize it. When powered on and with propellers in idle mode, by moving sticks it can rotate and move forward / backward allowing to pilot it as a RC boat (I know, that's not what it has been designed to perform, it is supposed to fly ;-)). But I have an unexpected problem to solve: as soon as it take off, some vibrations from the skates cause the aircraft to be less stable in air (something like flying with strong wind), and I'm studying how to fix this issue. I presume I have to add some bracket to connect both skates together keeping them steady - something like the previously suggested gimbal guard. They are extremely lightweight, maybe this is the reason for these vibrations..
Hey, henpax, forgive me if I missed any newer updates from you on the "Phantom pontoons", but I saw another thread this morning asking about flotation devices and I immediately thought of your project. Based on the photos above, those pontoons are gorgeous. I am.definitely interested. How's this project coming along?
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If further testing proves that they don't significantly impede performance, the idea that it would allow for a water recovery vs a total loss IMO makes them worth serious consideration. 80-90% of my flight time is over water.
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Agreed. If the pontoons do prove themselves out, I think something like this is long overdue in the Phantom community.
Again, I couldn't agree more. Besides that, they just look so slick. Very well done.
What a great idea!!! Well done sir. A suggestion for a name when you put them on the market: Water Wings for the P4P seriously, you might want to look into getting some copyright action going on your project. I know that I would pick up a pair once the testing has been done and proven.
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