lancektm
Heliman
Location: Lawrence, KS
My Posts This: Topic Forum | DKTek,
Yes, we would probably work with a company/individual who wanted to strap everything on themselves. There is still a great deal of setup involved that would require quite a bit of our attention (we don't have a generic integration manual). You can see that many people are having all kinds of trouble integrating autopilots these days, and you just have to ask the question "will I put one of my people that cost ~$80K or more on this project for 8+ months to get this thing working...or will I just pay a company an extra $8-10K to do it for me in one week, and prove it before I pay?" Of course, all our customers choose the latter usually due to time and budget constraints. Its just the market we chose to ensure product reliability and success.
I would disagree with you that this is not the forum. We obtain significant exposure from sites such as this and there are many companies/individuals out there flying their UAV helicopters with great success. Are we in the business to sell a hobby product?...you could argue no, but you would be surprised at how many hobby R/C guys turn into industry partners. I originally responded here because people were writing about wePilot who didn't seem to have experience with the products. I just wanted to clear it up. To tell you the truth, I was google searching something to do with UAVs, and this was the forum that popped up first. I was concerned that potential customers would get the wrong idea about our products by reading this forum, so I decided to just clear things up.
As far as our pricing, I also wish these things were cheaper, but the truth is, we use very high quality parts and these sensors are expensive. You just wouldn't believe some of the costs (ex. I spend $1200 on a tool to crimp wire so that wires don't break in flight). Getting a helicopter to fly by itself is one thing we are good at...but keeping the system running (robustness of controller as well as physical toughness) is more of what we do well.
By the way...you would also be surprised at how many large defense and other contractors (all of them) own things like maxi jokers, Bergens, etc. I bet they end up on this website a lot more than you realize. As an example, wasn't one of the guys on this post asking for resume's of r/c pilots a while back?
Take care,
Lance Holly
www.vikingaero.com
attached is a photo of a YAK we just completed. This one now has 7-8 missions flown under its belt.
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. Is it fitted ?.
