Drone Delivery Range Calculator

This calculator estimates a delivery drone's usable one-way delivery radius, not just its raw flight range, because a delivery drone has to fly back after dropping the package. It first estimates flight time from usable battery capacity (total capacity minus the reserved safety margin) divided by current draw, then converts flight time to distance using cruise speed, and finally halves the round-trip range to get the delivery radius. Current draw itself scales with the payload -- adding weight increases the ratio of total aircraft weight to empty weight, which proportionally raises the current the motors pull -- and with wind, modeled as a flat percentage penalty on current draw per unit of wind speed. Cruise Current and Battery Capacity are the two biggest levers on flight time, since between them they set both sides of the flight-time ratio (usable capacity divided by current draw) -- but Cruise Speed matters just as much for Delivery Radius itself, since radius converts that flight time directly into distance.

Battery Voltage, by contrast, has no effect on delivery radius or flight time in this model: flight time is derived purely from capacity in amp-hours divided by current in amps, a ratio where voltage cancels out; voltage only affects the reported energy-per-kilometer figure, which converts the same flight into watt-hours. The Wind-Adjusted Radius output goes a step further by modeling a slower outbound leg into the headwind and a faster return leg downwind, rather than treating wind as only reducing average speed. What this model doesn't capture: real battery discharge curves sag under load (so usable capacity isn't perfectly linear with current draw), and it doesn't account for altitude, temperature, or the extra current draw of vertical takeoff/landing and climb segments.