Interesting design. Reverse maple leaf propeller spring loaded to switch in to a twin prop flying wing.
VTOL without the landing.
Lack of control surfaces as far as i can tell. Tilt rotor wouldn't be a far stretch. Might be able to hack it together using a hobby servo.
Seems difficult to control, so I guess the real innovation here is the concept rather than the implementation. They made it cheap, what can be done for a little bit more money? The airframe itself seems pretty refined, just looking at it. Blending a propeller in to a flying wing must have been an interesting challenge. Really aggressive pitch it looks like.
What are everyone's thoughts?
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I decided it was time to put this into a blog. you can read all about this endeavor at the following location.
http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blog/list?user=1jbinqoa4rm4k
I have completed the airframe design and tools. The tools are fiberglass and bondo, but they did the trick for the carbon layup. I used a male mold and vacuumed the carbon on. The surface needed some finishing but came out pretty well. This is sufficient for a small electric plane since the power to weight is so high compared to a full scale airplane.
The design required the props to be mounted in front in order to increase the stability by moving the cg forward. I have also extended the elevons aft with offsets to increase the x distance from the cg. This is helpful for a flying wing but more important for the rotational mode.
Photos of the completed airframe are soon to come.
h flight wing tools.JPG
horiz wing tools in progress.JPG
canopy tool.JPG
I like this concept as well. The aircraft mode could be greatly improved upon. There are many well developed flying wing designs that would be suitable. The major challenge is with the control of the helicopter mode.
The lack of control in helicopter mode is due to the lack of a stationary body. In that mode it lacks an anti-torque rotor or a counter-rotating coaxial propeller. This is common to monocopters which also have no stationary body. This lack of stationary heading makes it difficult for the system to identify the direction of travel and counter the yaw caused by differential blade speed of a laterlay moving rotocraft. MIT and UM have made some progress with rotary wing body UAVs, but the off-the-shelf solution is still a ways out in the future.
I am developing a similar system now. I will post details as the project develops.
Aerotech106@hotmail.com