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Changed ESC yesterday to account for possible ESC issues on failing motor , but during (via 2023-05-05 Practice Flight @ Airstrip & Daily Debrief ). During hover test drone continued to have rear-right motor fail and dip, forcing flight termination
Happened first time in about 2 min of hover, team came back, removed wings to reduce weight, had the same issue again after 2-3 min of hover
Realized motors might be failing because VTOL motors aren’t rated to be run at 100% throttle for continuous amounts of time since they transition.
the spec is “full current for 3 minutes”
we assumed we’d transition so didn’t need to worry about this
Solutions Brainstorming:
Deduced that high drone weight as well as continuous motor operation at high throttle causing problems
Will be shaving a lot of weight off the Icarus aircraft in order to reduce load on motors, ditch quadplane/transition mode
Remove tail-section
Remove pusher prop
Remove mid-wings
Shave aluminum down
Aim to reduce weight to <10 kg
Find other motors to increase thrust and prevent VTOL motor overheating (perhaps Vanny motors) in 6 or 8-motor configuration. Can also use just 4 Vanny motors
If sub 6 kg, use Vanny motors, otherweise see if we can use other motors from other teams
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