107 landings in the rough and still fully functional

Okay its not really that many landings, well not at least for a QuestUAV.  But it seems the the world of similar commercial sUAVs its quite a lot and others would be written off by now. We get quite a few inquiries asking "how long will a UAV body last before it needs replacing" with the expectation that by 40 landings is it likely to be damaged beyond repair. This certainly isn't the case with our aircraft and our messages of "Tough Tough Tough" and "Engineered for Endurance" ring true with all our designs.

Other QuestUAVs airframes of ours have flown more, but we just haven't logged it.  The life of this one has been logged, in pictures and diaries because this one did all the work in our Bulgaria project and has done a huge amount of work since it came back.  Its been our mainstay NDVI UAV and become our general testbed for camera installations and launch testing.

So what has it been put through and how has it fared?

Let the pictures tell the story as to the condition it is in. There is some dried mud, a few tiny bits of foam  missing, but otherwise in very good condition. I've deliberately not cleaned it because the action needs to be seen.

Its landed in grass, in mud, in trees. Its landed in hard, compacted, dry, ridged  and rocky, fields, kicking up mini dust clouds as it landed. Its landed in a river (and been partially submerged trapped by the current for 20 mins), its cartwheeled at full power after a bad take-off.  Its landed in bushes (see pictures in blog below), in sunflower fields, in meadows, with birds singing and rivers babbling.  This could almost get poetic so I had better stop.  Its had a tough life, but then that is just what a QuestUAV is designed for.

The wings?  Well they are really tough. Some mud marks, the QuestUAV sticker is creased a little and a minor crack (repaired with epoxy) shown in the bottom picture here.  We didn't bother to repair it until we got back to UK because it just wasn't significant enough. After our river incident we replaced the servos, but they are still in use for R&D. The Speed controller got damaged in the river and written off, but that is all that was lost.  The motor was under the water for the full time, but it is still 100% functioning.

Its gone through two propellors. The cameras are good as new and we have a number of recent datasets to prove it (even after getting filled with water -  after service they were as good as new!).

A note on cameras and the durability of the Lumix LX5... of all the cameras we have had, our clients have had and all the bumps and tough landings they have cumulatively gone through, WE HAVE NEVER DAMAGED ONE OR LOST ONE.  That is just amazing, and its the truth.  We've had some severe crashed during testing and even written off an airframes and gimbals, but amazingly the design of the UAV with its crumple zones and the strength of the Lumix make it an incredible combination. And of course we now know they will recover even after a REALLY bad water immersion. Shame we didn't get any pictures of fish.

So there we have it. This airframe is probably good for another 100 missions or more. I wish we could keep it to see just how many missions we could get out of it, but that would just be too much fun for my staff.