3345. Weight Tracking for Controlled Growth of a Backpackable UAV

Paper

Abstract

Vindication Aerospace proudly presents the Phoenix UAV system, a backpack portable UAV designed to provide day and night over-the-hill reconnaissance in response to the 2003/2004 AIAA Graduate Team Aircraft RFP. The Phoenix will work along side existing man portable UAV systems such as Dragon Eye and Desert Hawk, but it will have greater capability. The Phoenix can operate in 30 knot winds and be launched out of a 20 meter clearing with 10 meter obstacles on all sides. The Phoenix can provide troops with at least one hour on station up to 20 kilometers away. It also packs up into package 0.18 ft3 larger than its competitor, Dragon Eye. This paper is a design report which highlights some of the unconventional ways in which preliminary sizing, weight estimation, and performance analysis can be applied to arrive at a workable solution. The Phoenix is not born out of textbook equations, it is derived from system sizing, derived equations, and real world testing. Because weight is such an integral component of aircraft design, the entire report was deemed relevant to the study of weight tracking and how it influences an evolving design.