As explained on their YouTube posting, Aerovel’s autonomous flight of their Flexrotor aircraft shows a remarkable level of adaptability and control. “In what are believed to be the first-ever flight cycles of an unmanned aircraft based on an unmanned boat, Flexrotor launches from a remotely-controlled skiff while underway, climbs out as a helicopter, transitions to wing-borne flight, images the skiff while flying at low and high speeds, transitions back to thrust-borne flight, and retrieves autonomously onboard. The aircraft then shuts down, is automatically refueled and restarted, and repeats the first flight, finally being secured onboard in a docking station.” Aerovel notes that the boat was radio controlled, but the Flexrotor Pandora flew the mission on its own and without human intervention during the October 16 flight over the Columbia River in eastern Oregon. This repeated maneuver is as thrilling as it looks. Tad McGeer, the founder and president of Aerovel, wrote of an earlier flight, ““transition requires a climb, pitch-over, …
Thrust Testing Wingtip Puffers
Oliver Garrow, President of Garrow Aircraft, LLC in Mountain View, California, has been developing the Verticopter® concept for the last several years, and made a dinner presentation on his design at last year’s Electric Aircraft Symposium. Garrow’s Verticopter uses pivoting motors to provide vertical and horizontal thrust, with tip and tail thrusters fine tuning low-speed maneuvering capabilities. Verticopters will come in all sizes, with a single-seater ultralight as an entry-level machine and an inexpensive way to test the concept, especially when one uses a low-cost model aircraft motor unit from Turnigy (distributed by HobbyKing in Hong-Kong, P/N CA120-70), and a SPIN 300 Optically-isolated electronic speed controller (ESC) from Jeti for power – at least for the wing-tip thrusters. The motor shown costs a mere $299 for its promised 20 horsepower, while similar German and American units run over $1,000, with similarly high prices for controllers. Testing shown in the video was carried out with lithium-polymer battery packs arranged in a 16S2P configuration …