I tethered my drone to a battery on the ground.

photojunky said:
Thought I had more wire but maybe it was a good thing I didn't.

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Risky situation, really do love to see experimentation though in spite of that. Also glad to see that it didn't end in destruction of the model as new things sometimes do ;) .


My biggest concerns would be cutting the wire due to a loss of stabilization, the extra resistance, or the wire affecting the stabilization while it blows in the wind. I wonder how much wire you could use before the weight of it (due to both length and gauge) is greater than the weight shed be removing the battery? Of course if you can generate power or change out batteries that would mean little. All of these are simple problems that probably can likely be mitigated.

Maybe even have a smaller battery on the model that would allow it to land after a loss of the ground battery, this could even allow you to swap batteries out or use a generator on the ground, so certainly some benefits to be had. One possible use I could see would be the ability to setup a long exposure shot about anywhere among the other benefits.

Great post for sure, keep up the new ideas!
 
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Thank you GJH,

I was thinking the same thing about having a small battery just in case there was a interruption in current, or a small battery that would have enough juice to land safely. I think the weight of the wire would keep it under the drone away from the props although you never know. I may order about 1000 feet of wire from amazon for a part 2.

There are so many things this application could be used for such as signal repeaters, lighting and area, surveillance, or just towing parts to a construction site.

As for crashing my rig, the way I see it is, if I smash my homemade quadcopter to bits, I get to make a better one with the knowledge gained from all the mistakes I made building this one. I've been itching to build another but I already own a T810, T986, a couple of Phantoms, 2 Syma's X5C's and the one in the video. It is getting to the point of insanity.

Thanks again.
 
photojunky said:
Thank you GJH,

I was thinking the same thing about having a small battery just in case there was a interruption in current, or a small battery that would have enough juice to land safely. I think the weight of the wire would keep it under the drone away from the props although you never know. I may order about 1000 feet of wire from amazon for a part 2.

There are so many things this application could be used for such as signal repeaters, lighting and area, surveillance, or just towing parts to a construction site.

As for crashing my rig, the way I see it is, if I smash my homemade quadcopter to bits, I get to make a better one with the knowledge gained from all the mistakes I made building this one. I've been itching to build another but I already own a T810, T986, a couple of Phantoms, 2 Syma's X5C's and the one in the video. It is getting to the point of insanity.

Thanks again.
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Hahaha, always good to have multiple, and really can you ever have enough? :p

Before you order the wire be sure to look at the gauge requirements for stranded alujminium at that legnth and current. For the shorter distances we use you can generally get by with a lot, but when you increase the legnth you should run it through a calculator. Especially for higher current DC. You may already know this but I mention this is for your benefit as well as others who would like to try.

This might actually benefie from supplying AC and then rectifying it closer to the copter or on the copter (would have to clean up the DC afterwards too) to allow you to use longer, smaller wire with less loss. Would certainly do the bit of research first. Again great idea, I've seen tethered umbilicals for test, but not much in the way of a permenant setup. Might look into some of those setups to see in anything jumps out.
 
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