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Remote control Airship

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ATeddyBear:
I noticed your fan for height is located in the middle of your ship. I'm going to assume your using a balloon of some sort too to maintain lift. This is going to cause an issue when falling as the air from the fan will be hitting the balloon.

RaptorSystems:
I've now decided to use the Raspberry Pi which has been sitting on my desk, it has GPIO pins, and added hilarity of then becoming a flying pi(e) and if someone walks into it they get pi on their face.

ColdCurse, that's not a bad idea, I was originally thinking tea stained paper with an inside treatment, will want custom tabs.
I'm thinking it is going to be similar to a squid with the two air balloons (just bags of paper) below the hull. A few people want me to enter in a robot wars competition. I'm not going to but if I were, it would be harpoons all the way.

HamsterIV, I've thought about purchasing an air-swimmer for $25, but half the fun with this is making the actual design & electronics. I also want to put my final design up on thingiverse with instructions so others can make their own.

ATeddyBear, yeah I'm using the fan to attempt to attain some sort of vertical stability. The theory is if I use paddles to break up the air current a bit it might not hit the balloon so much, but that is part of the design I'm least happy with.

Machiavelliest:
To be a true airship, you've got to use buoyancy, not propulsion to maintain altitude. Your difficulty is that a lift fan doesn't really change your buoyancy. You can't just use it to change altitude regardless of placement, since your ship will either rise or sink to its neutrally buoyant altitude when there's no thrust applied.

Also, using very small applications of thrust to maintain a non-neutrally buoyant altitude would be pretty tough. The differences in buoyancy are so minute for your build scale that the digital controls couldn't hack it.

I would suggest using a mock balloon, then using lift fans to actually maintain altitude. Not an airship proper, but an easier design concept.

EDIT: If you're using paddles on the craft at all, your airflow is not fast enough or over a large enough surface to benefit from turbulent instead of laminar airflow. Those paddles will still be exerting force etc etc and you'll have no benefit from their addition. A good bet would be a ducted fan with the duct extending through the mock balloon.

Keon:
Do what most airships do, have a almost buoyant frame (say weighing in close to a gram or two) and gain the rest of the lift from your wings and elevators. That way you steer like an airplane but you fall slower.

Pickle:

--- Quote from: RaptorSystems on April 16, 2013, 07:35:22 pm ---I'm thinking it is going to be similar to a squid with the two air balloons (just bags of paper) below the hull. A few people want me to enter in a robot wars competition. I'm not going to but if I were, it would be harpoons all the way.

--- End quote ---

Is the paper an outer skin for a mylar envelope? - if so, the weight it adds may be detrimental.

If you're expecting a paper envelope to hold your lift gas (I recommend hydrogen instead of helium - it's cheaper and more sustainable), you may be expecting too much. 

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