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Bilal Deli
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Robotics2022

Martı-III

A fixed-wing UAV that reached the final stage of TEKNOFEST, for which I designed the 3D model and contributed to autopilot configuration.

The team and the fixed-wing aircraft at the TEKNOFEST UAV competition
Competition
TEKNOFEST — High School UAV
Category
Fixed-wing
Result
Final stage
My role
3D design & autopilot configuration

Technologies

  • Fixed-Wing UAV
  • 3D Design
  • Mission Planner
  • Pixhawk
  • Autopilot

Project overview

With the Kadıköy Anadolu Lisesi team, I reached the final stage of the fixed-wing category at the 2022 TEKNOFEST High School Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Competition. I designed the aircraft’s 3D model and contributed to its Mission Planner and Pixhawk autopilot configuration.

01

The first project outside a screen

Everything I had built until then lived inside a screen. Martı-III was a physical thing with weight, balance and parts that could break.

It taught me that a design mistake does not raise a compiler error, it hits the ground. That left me with a habit which later paid off in software too: think before you run it.

This project is a large part of why I turned to software seriously. It was the first time I produced something with a team of different specialisms rather than on my own.

The competition team with the Martı-III aircraft
Martı-III and the team at the TEKNOFEST finals.
02

The 3D design

The aircraft’s three-dimensional design was mine. Fixed-wing is a far less forgiving category than rotary: you cannot hover, so take-off, glide and landing have to be planned as one continuous movement.

Almost every design decision was a search for balance. A larger wing lifts more but drags more; a heavier fuselage survives more but takes off harder; a longer tail flies more stably but turns more sluggishly.

I learned there that a model looking good on screen and a model flying are different things. Every dimension needed a justification, and we had to defend that justification in writing in the competition report.

03

Autopilot and Mission Planner

Alongside the design I worked on the autopilot software. We prepared flight plans, tuned parameters and followed telemetry through Mission Planner.

Putting waypoints on a map was the easy part; the real work was tuning the parameters that decide how the aircraft behaves between those points. Push a control gain too high and the aircraft oscillates; leave it too low and the wind pushes it off course.

It was the first time I saw the gap between simulation and a real flight. A plan that looked flawless on screen could be rewritten from scratch on the field because of wind.

04

Reaching the finals

Reaching the finals was not something one person could do. Aerodynamics, electronics, fabrication and reporting sat with different people, and all of it had to connect.

TEKNOFEST’s documentation process — including design reports and critical design reviews — gave me early experience with technical documentation. Looking back, I see that explaining an engineering decision in writing is an essential part of building it.

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