UKHAS Wiki

Restrung Parafoil Kite (bought off ebay) using design and measurements from The Black Rainbow. As can be seen the parafoil lines are brought up to 2 wooden bars which have servo horns glued on allow it to be attached to the payload. Therefore by turning this bars you actually change the parafoil's angle of attack.

Adapted R/C Transmitter so that both sticks were in the vertical plane (as each controls one servo). This was achieved by hacking up the controller and gluing the stick in place.

Test video can be seen here

Drop tests from a tethered balloon. - helium balloon tied normally, through the loop created when you turn the neck back on itself is a carbonfibre rod from which the cutdown device is hung from and also the 2 grounding lines are attached. To attach the payload it was necessary to bring down the balloon by pulling on the ground lines. We changed this set up adding a small ring in the middle of the rod through which we strung a long line which could be used to hoist the cutdown device and payload up speeding up the time between testing.

Changed Parafoil to Steve's and instead of adjusting the angle of attack we directly attached most of the lines to the payload and used the servo + bar to control the break lines.

Managed to get some degree of control

Video of a sucess full drop here

Brake lines are the best method of controlling the payload

It is actually possible to control the parafoil with 2 servos.