Saviour, the WINNER OF THE 100g of PAYLOAD CHALLENGE

Saviour, the WINNER OF THE 100g of PAYLOAD CHALLENGE
created on March 21, 2003 - JLN Labs - Last update March 22, 2003
Images courtesy of Saviour from Blaze Labs
Toutes les informations et schémas sont publiés gratuitement ( freeware ) et sont destinés à un usage personnel et non commercial
All informations and diagrams are published freely (freeware) and are intended for a private use and a non commercial use.

SAVIOUR from Blaze Labs is the WINNER of the 100g of Payload CHALLENGE started on October 12th, 2002, see below :

Saturday October 12th , 2002

1st Worldwide Lifters competition by JLN Labs

Towards 100 g of Payload, the race is open...

This is a worldwide competition to all Lifter experimenters, the challenge is to build a Lifter device which will be able to lift 100 g of additional payload for about 5 seconds in a stable hovering. ( click to read more informations )

Experiment 14 (21/03/03)- 100g payload lifter
By Engineer Saviour - Blaze Labs

The aim of this experiment was to design an efficient lifter which could carry an extra payload of 100g. My Spiral Hex lifter V3.0 was designed for this target payload.

Total element length = 1834 cm
Total weight = 70 grammes

Dimensions for this lifter are as follows:

90mm between cells
5 sectors have these dimensions: 93, 82, 72, 61 cm
1 of the sectors has dimensions: 88,77,67,57 cm

The whole structure weighs 85g same as V2.0. Air gap was set at 70mm, and this enabled the lifter to handle voltages over 40kV as required, at which point it lifted an external payload of 100g (total lifting force of 185gF).

In the photo you can see the 102g external payload stainless steel nuts, which are inserted in each balsa vertice as shown in the lifter photo. When powered on, the lifter goes up very smoothly and well balanced and its maximum payload surely exceeds 100g.

The main power unit

This new power supply has been designed with flexibility in mind, in order to be useful for various high voltage thrusters experiments. The specifications for this power supply are as follows:

Output voltage : 50kV max.
Output power : 1000 Watts max.
Running modes : 10 channel / or any combination in parallel
Weight : 3.1 kg

The above equipment was setup for the test. From left to right you can see the hv probe, 1kWatt power supply, dc supply for hv supply electronics, multimeter connected to hv probe, and oscilloscope connected to hv probe.

The first video shows the tethered lifter with no load. The power supply is remotely operated by my infra red remote control. Each time that a channel (out of 10) is enabled, both power and mean voltage increase at the output. If you keep an eye on the small oscilloscope trace, you might be able to follow the channel switching at the hv output. The oscilloscope probe is connected to my hv probe output.

As you can see, with just one channel at 30kV the 85g lifter starts to float around. With 2 channels, voltage rises up to a mean value of about 36kV at which the lifter thrust increases for stable flight and some additional payload.

Here the lifter is now loaded with 102g payload in the form of stainless steel nuts (total thrust= 85gF + 102gF), distrubuted evenly at each lower vertice balsa rod. Sorry my webcam has no zoom to get a close up of the payloads in flight, but I am sure you will notice the effort the lifter is doing from the video.

As you can see, 7 channels were required to achieve stable flight with the external 100g payload. Voltage reached at the output at this point was 48kV.

As you can see, 7 channels were required to achieve stable flight with the external 100g payload. Voltage reached at the output at this point was 48kV.

Note from Saviour : The power used in this test is just about 200 Watts. The Efficiency is very high with this Lifter setup, almost 1g/Watt ! Imagine what we could do with few Megavolts. Thrust per unit length increases with V^², while the efficiency increases with air gap. The results are very promising.

CONGRATULATIONS TO SAVIOUR for his wonderfull and hard work about the Lifter Challenge.
Now, towards more payload, more efficiency for a self and an autonomous flight of a Lifter...