Records are made to be broken, and a bunch of students at the University of Maryland are smashing the ones they just set earlier this summer. They're so close to winning the crazy-hard American Helicopter Society's Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter competition — watch an amazing eight-foot flight past the jump.
Henry Enerson, a freshman at UMD, is one of a handful of pilots taking turns furiously pedaling in the cockpit of the Gamera II, a human-powered quadcopter. The team has already met one major requirement of the Sikorsky Prize this week, hovering for 65 seconds. Now if they can hit one minute and get a little higher than 8 feet -- to exactly 3 meters, or 9.8 feet -- they'll win the $250,000 32-year-old prize.
The team has been testing all week but had to take a break for a few hours today so the students could go to class. We're following their progress and we'll update here if they set any further records -- meanwhile, watch Henry's flight below.
Comments
No, the stability of the system actually does not depend where you place your CG in reference to your thrust generation.
Could the low slung props also be to get some stability from the high CG?
Randy: What they are trying to do with their large props is to reduce the induced drag of the propellers. Also they tried to maximize the ground effect by mounting the propellers as far down as possible (which is why the propellers are so freakingly slow over the ground...)
They need a baseball stadium.
So I've heard that for electric powered quads, generally low kv (i.e. low rotations for a given voltage) are more efficient than high kv. Also large props are more efficient but of course you sacrifice stability. So looking at that video it's got enormous props...no stability but very efficient i guess!