Comment by MarcS on October 22, 2010 at 9:43am

Hi,
is it only my impression or are there some cuts at scenes which would be important to see uncut (especially the transitions...
Seems to be a quite early stage of an experiment with complete manual control.
The concept is good, anyway. Let´s do it DIY and autonomous...

Comment by Alex Arevalo on October 22, 2010 at 10:33am

Looks good. I can't tell for sure, but it appears that the rear motor is not used for conventional fixed wing flight. Is that true? I could see that if WERE used as a pusher, the motor would have to reverse its direction in order to go into hover mode.

Comment by Ron Jacobs on October 22, 2010 at 10:45am

Looks cool. First really successful application of non-scale VTOL pivoting motors I have seen.

If you could pivot the rear motor forward between the booms you could push with it as well.

Comment by Joe Bloeski on October 22, 2010 at 11:59am

Even if you didn't use the rear motor as a pusher rotating it down between the tail booms should help with drag.

Comment by Justin on October 22, 2010 at 1:18pm

Also, why aren't there torque issues with hover mode?

I'm guessing the props spin opposite of each other?

Comment by Peter Seddon on October 22, 2010 at 1:26pm

Because it is probably like a classic tricopter where the angle to the vertical of the third prop at the back can be varied and the two front props could easily be spinning in opposite directions.

Peter

Comment by Alex Arevalo on October 22, 2010 at 1:49pm

The two front props can both be going in the same direction. It's the task for the flight control system to vary the speeds, as needed, to insure that it flies straight and level. The same applies to the rear prop. All three can be balanced so that it flies straight and level, as required. Am I wrong about this? However, I can see that if all three props are rotating in the same direction, that there would be a yawing moment developed. How to tricopters handle that?

Comment by Joe Bloeski on October 22, 2010 at 2:14pm

The two front props can rotate in the same direction but having one CW and one CCW reduces the yaw moment. With three props (or any odd number) you can never completely balance the moments and that has driven the popularity of quad, hex and octo copters. This is handled on a tri by tilting one or more of the rotors to counteract the yaw moment and this can be over or under driven to allow for CW or CCW rotation. Quads can do this by speeding up or slowing down a pair of motors to do the same thing. One more rotor or one tilting mechanism has been a fighting point between quads and tri rotors for a long time.

Comment by Alex Arevalo on October 22, 2010 at 2:21pm

@Joe: Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. I know Jack Crossfire flies a tricopter but I don't know how he solves that problem. It has to be one of the solutions you mentioned, I think.

Comment by Jimmy P. on October 22, 2010 at 10:01pm

Those 12kg UAVs probably don't need very long runways. Are there other benefits to VTOL motors? Looks very cool though!

Comment