Banggood is now taking pre-orders for a VTOL wing. It seems to be the holy grail of VTOL to me - no redundant motors, no extra servos, so it's a simple, reliable, and above all, efficient.
Note that the link above excludes electronics, the Arkbird Lite 2.0 FC is required, along with the usual electrics.
Tridge..? :)
Comments
@Rob,
I think what he means by efficient is that it is a VTOL Fixed wing platform with the assumption being fixed wing flight is the most efficient means in comparison with other options. I like this setup/design and agree it minimizes the requirements for parasitic weight and still have a VTOL option. The VTOL portion of the flight is probably very inefficient, but, if the amount of time it spends in a VTOL state can be minimized as much as possible, this should be a very good solution for a long endurance VTOL platform compared with other options.
Of course, testing will be required and I don't think the banggood foamy is going to be the most optimized to be a good comparison test bed for efficiency numbers.
@Tridge I was hoping you'd say that! If you can do knife edge in code this would be peanuts ;) Can't wait to start testing! I'll prep the airframe so long :) Going to check it out, thanks.
@Rob I remember seeing only 5 minutes hover time but a flight time of 20 minutes, with a small (2200mah?) battery. Either way - what's great is, while in cruise mode, there's not a single parasitical part, not even pivot servos.
@Jason, all good questions - I never thought this was practical. Soon we'll know, though.
Hey, Rob
I have been wondering about heli efficiency, do you have a watts per lb or other metric for hover
Could you simply put a Vertical Stabilizer in the front on top and bottom or a small CF rod through the nose so it if does tip over, it simply hits the Rod/Rudder will hit the ground and the plane will be perfectly fine?
Have it touch down on the tail, if that works and stays there, great. If it falls, the CF Rod/Dual vertical Stabs will keep it from having the main body/props/motors/camera hitting the ground?
You can program the autopilot to automatically cut the motors if it goes beyond a certain angle, indicated a tip over, on take off and landing?
Hein, on what basis do you claim it's "efficient"? Do you have any performance numbers?
This type of airframe is already supported in ArduPilot master. We got the first test flight of a non-simulated airframe like this today. See http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/dual-motor-tailsitters/15302
There is a video from Mark if you scroll down enough :-)
But they fall over. Still fun. Tail sitting is very much in development. The best place to get Tridges attention is of course over on the Ardupilot forums. http://discuss.ardupilot.org/
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