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Did anyone ever try something like this, A quadcopter airplane mix?

Posted by Petrus Botha on April 4, 2013 at 4:37am

Yes, it is exactly what it looks like, a Quadcopter mixed with an airplane. Just a page out of my over-active brain. Take off in quad mode, hover, switch to plane mode, fly, switch back to quad, hover, land or land in plane mode. This would give you VTOL and hovering for an airplane, etc.

 

Think of it, it should not be too difficult.3691010020?profile=original

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  • Glenn Spacht May 18, 2013 at 11:26am
    If you do a search of"ArduVTOL-Wingcopter" you'll find that there is a tilt quad version without the front engine already flying. A servo tilts the quads and the autopilot changes as a function of tilt angle.
  • Alex Kuehn May 18, 2013 at 8:28am

    I wouldn't tilt the rotors if you don't have too. Sure the vertical ones are dead weight when you're flying in forward flight, but it is far less complex to have two power systems and not have to rotate motors, especially if they're big ones because it takes a lot of power to do that, it's something else to fail, and if you're turning large propellers you have some major gyroscopic effects at play during the transition. I would take advantage of our increasingly efficient motors/light motors and just have the quad and a single motor for forward flight. They can share the same battery if set up right and that is a large part of a power systems weight. If you really wanted to utilize the vertical engines in forward flight as well I suppose they could be set up to auto rotate and then you wouldn't need wings, it could fly just like a gyro copter. If you read about the V-22 it has had a lot of problems and if you've ever tried flying one on say an RC simulator you know how nasty the torque factor from rotating those large propellers is. I'd much have a little extra weight and something that is more reliable/simpler to use. 

    This has been done with full scales before as well. A good example is the Dornier Do 31: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_31

  • Glenn Spacht May 17, 2013 at 5:36pm
    If you go through the airframe design forum you'll find that someone has built this but tilts the quad rotor to provide thrust in horizontal flight.
  • Glenn Spacht May 17, 2013 at 4:59pm
    The challenge with this is that you have to lift the weight of the fixed wing airplane with the quad rotor. On the other hand, the quad rotors don't do anything when e aircraft is in horizontal flight. The V-22 tilt rotor was developed to address exactly this problem. In that case, the rotors are used both in hover and in cruise. If you are going to try a fixed wing quad, I would suggest you tilt the quads so that they provide forward thrust in horizontal flight. That eliminates the redundant motor and prop on the nose. The big challenge is then to blend the flight controls during transition from hover to forward flight. It's not impossible, but it is not simple either.
  • Alex Kuehn April 8, 2013 at 2:21pm

    This is a short clip of our proof of concept model flying. 

  • Alex Kuehn April 7, 2013 at 3:18pm

    That quad shot is interesting, but it doesn't look too stable to me. I like the other configuration a bit better myself. I've already built an aircraft using this type of setup(quad along with a separate forward propulsion unit), but I also used helium to help offset the weight of having two propulsion systems in mine as I was using a very small quad.

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    3691011553?profile=original

    I am planning on building another one using this method though it won't necessarily be the same configuration. Thinking about a delta wing or something along those lines, though the symmetrical canard provides excellent mounting for the quad copter's rotors.

  • Dave C April 4, 2013 at 10:47am

    Yes!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_-yTrwNtU

    Quadshot are quite established now :)

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