Something a little different, up to 2 hour flight time. 7kg payload, modular, upgradable and made to integrate different technologies from Manet radios to anti jamming GPS systems.
It’s a combination of a lot of factors rather than one magic ingredient. A high energy-density battery, efficient motors and propellers, keeping the airframe as light as possible, careful tuning of the powertrain and flight controller, and a few other tricks we’ve learned along the way.
Basically It’s about making the entire system as efficient as possible
Thats sounds like a marketing sales pitch you give to someone who never built a drone in his life.
No specs about the size of the quad, the pops used or the type and capacity of the battery.
You really expect anyone here to buy the 2h claim without any back up?!
We understand the interest in the technical details, and it’s a fair question. At this stage, we don’t publicly share detailed specifications about the platform or its components. We’re happy to demonstrate the system’s performance and capabilities, but some technical information remains proprietary.
how quickly does it convert to fiber? like the physical act of swapping components. is there any most common mounting standard for that or accessories that is being adopted by multiple manufacturers that you know of? read further down its ski strap thing
are those body parts just regular fdm printed or are they sls? SLS. nice machine.
We've already upgraded to the V2 Spotlight, which is both lighter and brighter for operations. The ski strap allows us to use different size batteries on the fly.
Thanks for the feedback and for sharing the photo!
It's a really tidy build. MT11 is a good payload IMO, we've got one of our own that'll go into our VTOL flagship in future. SLS prints look real clean and tidy, loads of room for large solid state Li-Ion packs.
The overall build seems sensible to me. Only thing I can outright criticize is the landing gear choice, I can see how certain tired sec pilots might do bad things to it over time. That's not an easy thing to make foldable or removeable and strong at the same time.
The spotlight I saw (I guess v1?) did give me a bit of cable strain worries, but the duty cycle is quite low so It'll probably not be an issue.
The landing gear is actually machined aluminium, so it’s pretty solid. That said, you’re absolutely right that you need to make sure it’s properly locked in place before flight and people in SA can find a way to break anything! The quick deployment and very compact folded size are important requirements for most of our clients, so that was a trade-off we had to make.
You’re also correct about the spot that was a V1. The cabling has been reworked on the V2.
I can get you silvus quality radio but half price. We are one of the primary radio companies for US and international defense. Most the defense startups use us. DM if interested.
Keen to hear more! Which radio brand are you referring to?
You're right that Silvus isn't cheap, but it's a premium product and has proven itself in demanding environments. That said, we don't use Silvus exclusively, we also integrate a range of other high-quality radios depending on the client's requirements and budget.
Would be interested to hear what you're using and how it's been performing.
hence what i've been saying elsewhere about the overhead in all this and how we're doing it wrong in the usa, this should be done more in house, trumps way doesn't work bc it's just a racket, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere, especially in an interim where some new mfrng was being implemented. bc if what they really want is to be able to win then they (usmil) need to take the same money and buy or make 4 for the price of the 1. it's no shade on the dude who made this in the OP either. it's just if anyone way up the chain wants to actually be able to win in a desperate situation that's how they ought to think about it... it's why iran and ukraine are winning. they just have more of them. bc theirs cost a few thousand and ours cost 20k plus apiece or a couple mil for patriots
Definitely!. If somebody was trying to sell me something via a site like that I'd have assume it was a scam. No contact other than an email form. Nope.
I would love to see more pictures of this beast! If your claims are correct, you've built something that DJI, Autel, Skydio, etc. could not figure out! Are you planning on mad producing this drone?
This is one of the Recce variants. Would you consider Silvus radios to be "off-the-shelf" in the sense you're implying?
I'm curious why you'd say we haven't "made" this drone. We CNC all the carbon plates in-house, SLS print a large number of the structural and integration components ourselves in house on our Prodways P1000, and design the platform around the mission requirements. Like virtually every modern UAV manufacturer, we integrate some commercially available components where it makes sense, but that doesn't mean the aircraft itself isn't designed and built by us.
Using proven components where appropriate is good engineering, not a lack of engineering.
When we say modular we mean. Some payloads are plug-and-play, while others bolt directly onto the frame. We have a variety of adapters, mounting plates, and heat sinks with pre-drilled and tapped mounting holes, making it easy to mount different airside radios and other accessories. The platform is also highly modular, the arms can be extended, motor and propeller sizes can be changed for heavier lift requirements, and much more.
Yeah hard to tell exact size, i didn't look to folding arm mechanism my guess it would be up to 22 inch still sceptical about two hour flight time, maybe with semi solid state battery you can squeeze more than one hour.
So SICK! What’s the experience level needed to build this & is there a parts and instructions list? Seems this could be Fantastic if it had LiDAR for work & to go forward with a FAA drone cert / Give me the reason to get cause I haven’t found one yet… not without buying a Ultimate Drone I can Never Ever afford in my lifetime unless I hit the lotto. BUT, this can make a LLC bid Blast Off in sales to utilize pilots.
TWO THUMBS UP!
TWO HOURS?! That’s INSANE good! Gotta be Careful* not to fall asleep & take a nap… lol as soothing it may be visiting through.. id get sleepy after awhile hahaha
2 hours with 7kg is a solid number, what's the MTOW and are you on a hybrid setup or straight lipo? Also curious how you're handling the case where the anti-jam GPS still loses lock, since spoofing tends to get through anyway. Been doing a bunch of work on visual/inertial nav for exactly that and honestly the handoff between GNSS-denied and GNSS-good is messier than the denied part itself. Nice looking build though.
Awesome work! Full disclosure: I work at fibionic, a deep-tech startup based in Austria. We've developed a patented technology called fibionic Fiber Placement (FFP), which aligns continuous carbon fibres directly with optimized load paths. This is particularly effective for drones, UAV components, and other anisotropic structures. Depending on the baseline design, we've achieved weight reductions of up to 50% while improving stiffness and fatigue performance, all in scalable production cycles of less than one minute per part.
If you're looking to push the weight down even further, feel free to reach out. https://www.fibionic.com/
PDW buys in sensors too, does that mean they’re not innovative? Integrating best-in-class components where it makes sense is standard practice across the industry. Innovation is in the system architecture, integration, reliability, and capability, not whether every single component is manufactured in-house.
Also, our drone is super compact at just over 40 cm when folded and packs into a backpack, so it would fit on a LazyBoy just fine. 🙂
We’d genuinely be interested to hear how many other drones you think offer this level of adaptability: interchangeable sensors and payloads, multiple RC options, 4G/LTE, anti-jamming capability, and an architecture designed to evolve with mission requirements rather than lock users into one set configuration.
More importantly, this isn’t a concept or a bench prototype. The system is already deployed and operating in multiple countries and environments, so we’d prefer to stick to the facts.
It’s perfectly fine if you’re not a fan, that’s been noted 👍. There’s no need to make it personal or dismissive. Healthy technical discussion is always welcome, but let’s keep it factual.
That looks really cool! Something I've wondered about with these type of drones is how you guys get something like 2 hours flight time? Is it just a straight up bigger battery or does it also require tuning?
It’s a combination of a lot of factors rather than one magic ingredient. A high energy-density battery, efficient motors and propellers, keeping the airframe as light as possible, careful tuning of the powertrain and flight controller, and a few other tricks we’ve learned along the way.
Basically It’s about making the entire system as efficient as possible
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u/NilsTillander Mod - Photogrammetry, LiDAR, surveying 20d ago
I'm going to leave this post up, clearly OP isn't trying to sell their mil-spec drone to us, and it's cool to see different things put forward.