My name is Thomas Glavin, and I am currently studying manufacturing engineering at Western Washington University. I started this project in March of 2024, with the goal to build a perpetual flight drone.

A perpetual flight drone is a type of drone with solar panels on its wings that flies from solar power during the day while charging a large battery that allows it to fly all night, effectively allowing it to fly forever (provided there is sufficient sunlight and weather). This is not a new concept, and there are many large scale examples of this type of aircraft.

However, the only example of a perpetual flight drone that is small and hand launchable that I found online was a project called atlantiksolar, a drone that has the current world record for the longest flight time of a low altitude drone (81 hours).

I originally had the idea for this project from Daniel at rctestflight on Youtube, who built several of his own solar planes. It was extremely useful to see how his design shifted over time, and to learn from his success and mistakes. The main design consideration I used from his videos was a KF airfoil, or an airfoil that has built in steps to allow the solar cells to be mounted without a covering material which can decrease their performance.