![]() Work your way backwards from the destination, you will have your Top of Descent point. Flights typically descend 1000 feet per 3 nautical miles. ![]() From the route you obtained earlier, you'd have known the flight's cruise altitude. Now we need to figure out when the plane will begin its descend. You can easily work out the flight time by looking up the cruise groundspeed (not airspeed). We will assume the aircraft remains at a constant cruise altitude for now. You need to repeat the calculation for each 1000 feet until the aircraft reaches cruise altitude. You will need an aircraft performance table, which typically has data at 1000 feet increments. Engine thrust also varies with altitude, so the ground speed will vary throughout the climb. When the plane is climbing, part of the engine thrust is directed upwards, so ground speed would be slower. Next you need to figure out your plane's groundspeed. If the route is not available, you will need to construct the likely route by guessing which airways the flight will take. After that, you can plot the route on an aviation chart to get the distance. Sometimes the published route is available on flight-tracking sites, for example this one. performance.I assume that you're a passenger travelling on a flight and you want to know how long the flight will last, from takeoff to landing.įirst you would need to get the route you're going to fly. If you would like to learn more about how to achieve a longer flight time, then a good place to start is our previous blog post - efficiency vs. If you would like to more accurately model your multirotor setup and evaluate lots more parameters, there are other, more technical web-based flight time calculators. Depending on how hard you are flying, FPV racing can take 3 to 4 times as much current as stable hovering does. In some cases, it can cut the flying time by as much as 50%! Finally, if you are involved in FPV racing, and are flying at high throttle levels, your flight times will degrade dramatically. Flying in a strong cross wind can also have a huge effect on the current draw of the motors. For aerial photography work, where there is minimal moving around, you should start with about 75% of the calculated flight time. This higher current draw will reduce flight time, so you should bear this in mind when thinking about the calculated flight time. Whenever you do any maneuvering, other than a controlled steady hover in calm air, one or more of the motors will have to spin faster, and thus pull more current. Obviously this is a very simplistic calculator as it doesn’t take into account numerous factors, among them flying styling and weather conditions. If each motor draws 4amps to produce 500g of thrust, then your average current draw will be 16amps. The idea is to work out how many amps your multirotor will draw to maintain a stable hover (note we are taking a stable hover to represent average flight). For example, if your quadcopter has an AUW of 2kg, each motor will have to produce 500g of thrust in order to hover. ![]() To represent this in the flight time calculator enter the value 80% in the discharge field.Īverage Amp Draw: To work out the value for average amp draw, you’ll need to know the all up weight (AUW) of your drone and relate this to thrust and amp values found in the datasheet for your motor/prop configuration. In respect of this, it's common practice to not discharge your LiPo batteries below 20% mAh during flight this is known as the '80% rule'. For example, enter 2.2Ah for a 2200mAh battery.ĭischarge: LiPo batteries can be permanently damaged if they are fully discharged. To convert from mAh to Ah, divide by 1000. The flight time calculator requires the value to be given in Ah (amp hours). Normally the value will be given in mAh (milliamp hours). The greater the number, the more energy the battery stores. The calculator requires input values for: battery capacity (Ah), discharge (%) and average amp draw (A).īattery Capacity: This value can usually be found printed on your battery. Our simple flight time calculator isn’t designed to accurately predict flight time down to the second, but it should help you to quickly get a ballpark idea of what you can expect from your setup. One of the main considerations when building or buying a drone is flight time. Yet, although it’s such an important factor, it’s actually quite hard to calculate. ![]()
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