Blog 2 - 3/2/2021

My first goal is to create and draw a design for my drone. I spent part of my 20% time during this week starting a rough sketch (Links to an external site.) of a possible idea of what I want it to look like. Also, I spent majority of my time browsing through forums so I could have an idea of drones that others have previously built. While I was looking at builds, I had many questions that I wanted answers to such as how many motors/wings should I have, what materials should I build it out of, would fabricating it out of carbon fiber be to time consuming and expensive, etc. Through my research, I decided that I would build a hexacopter (6 wings/motors). A hexacopter is more stable than a quadcopter, and stability is desirable if a camera is going to be attached. Lately there has been a lot of rules coming out about having and fly drones from the FAA. I read an article (Links to an external site.) that the government wants everyone to register their drones with the Department of Transportation. While I continue researching ideas for my drone, I will also read about the regulations and laws regarding drones.

During the past week, I talked to Mr. Muscarella about my idea to build a drone. We talked about the experiences that his previous students had in their attempts to build a drone. Even though he said a couple of his students were unsuccessful in the competition of building a drone, I still plan to stick with my idea.