Let's see some VTOL

[patrickegan]

Anything at a "safe" demo stage?

[Jack Crossfire]

mlbco has the V-bat. The project still seems to be alive. He put canards on it & has it flying for 6 hours. There was an autonomous raptor 90 which vanished. There's always my waste of time.

[13brv3]

Hear, hear! I spent hours of my drive time today thinking of a good way to make a VTOL. Has anyone actually made an Osprey that works? Let's try to keep the humor about the real one to a minimum ;) We have a bunch of them around here, and I get to see them in operation pretty frequently. Just way cool :cool:

Rusty

[patrickegan]

Jack,

I admire your work, but was looking for more of a product like...

[mlbco]

I have a bunch of videos of the V-Bat flight tests on YouTube. Here are 2 from recent tests:

Transition flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuujWPY3oj8

Hovering flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AwXaIepBh4

The V-Bat has been built in several sizes from a 5 lb electric version to the 65 lb 10 ft version shown in these videos. The VTOL capability is intended to eliminate the need for runways and catapults. If you don't mind burning fuel, it will hover for 1 hour. If you choose to operate "on the wing" it will fly 5-6 hours at around 80 mph.

The autonomous hovering control laws are finished and we are working on the high-speed waypoint control and autonomous transition. The transitions shown in the video are mostly controlled by RC, but all of the hovering is computer controlled.

Steve

[patrickegan]

Steve,

I already asked you, did you change your mind? :)

[markv]

A working Osprey built with, oh say T-Rex 450 head units, would be very cool and worth the money in my book. Though, if anyone is getting any ideas to create a kit or ARF please don't bother with foam. Something that complicated deserves either a balsa built up fram or nice fiberglass. Besides, how much money would cheap molded foam save considering all the other parts it would take.

I am convinced that 450 sized helicopter head units could make an Osprey work. An air retract system may even have the oomph required to move the pods for VTOL transitioning to forward flight and back. What I think would be the real challenge is figuring out how to keep the thing flyable between transitions and the circuitry reuired to change the controls between helicopter style controls and plane controls. Oh, and when during the transition should the controls switch? Get a little confuse and you will have a nice crash...

[mramsey]

I'm having trouble understanding the point behind a tilt-rotor for a UAS. It makes perfect sense if there are humans on board, but without, a tail sitter is the obvious choice...

[aperture]

How about eddie weeks' plane
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1000521&highlight=kitting+this

[jwims01]

......... An air retract system may even have the oomph required to move the pods for VTOL transitioning to forward flight and back. ..........

I don't have much to offer for an osprey build, but I ran across something a few weeks ago while pondering retracts for my simprop dornier 328 retract installation. In my pile of goodies in the basement, I found an old computer hard drive with a worm gear for moving the head. If you could hook an esc to that motor, then connect it to a reveiver channel, you get torque AND the travel distance you need while sacrificing speed. Since you would need a slow transition anyway, win/win. If you have an older radio, you can create a circuit board for you servos so that when the wing moves to airplane mode, a series of slidiing contacts is made that routes the servo outputs from the radio (aileron and elevator) to servos mounted in the wing. Just a thought. ....

[EddieWeeks]

I fly this plane all the time for AP. Best of both worlds. Only needs
120 watts to fly level at 18 mph... 45 mph top speed so far..

If I had in IMU and help I bet this think could hover on its own..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf5ZhNfdDZc


Eddie Weeks
http://www.aerialimageryla.com/

[patrickegan]

Not bad, do you take stills off of it?

[EddieWeeks]

Yes... We take all our pics from these two planes...

Eddie Weeks
http://www.aerialimageryla.com/

[Tuner]

Ok well I am a VTOL addict.

My whole goal in getting into an Autopilot is to create a stabilization system that will allow me to control this Quad Tilt Tandem Wing.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11709591&postcount=44

I am working on a simpler version of this VTOL where all 4 wing rotate together and they DO NOT rotate independantly, as I found this one great feature vastly complicates things so it will be implemented in phase 3.

This project wont get rolling for another year however I am working on another VTOL project. I am currently exploring many different design Ideas.
I am starting to settle on a design that is a Tailsitter and either has Coaxial Motors OR side-by-side motors.

My dilema is that side-by-side rotors allow for using a Heli Head for adjustable pitch and roll/pitch control. However airplane propeller based VTOLS seem to be the only ones that can transition.

Im working 3 designs:
1. Convert the Dual-GAUI 200 pictured into a side by side VTOL not unlike Eddie Weeks. They key difference is I am not going to use heli blades and will modify APC SlowFlyer 12x3.8 propellers by cutting off one of the blades and turning them INT heli-like blades. Using the center of the prop as the mounting hole for the heli blade grip, Ill have to reduce the thickness of the center of the prop here and this will be tricky as I think this needs to be remain square and I only have hand tools. Slow flyers are nice and thin already at the hub otherwise this would not be possible with a standard electric APC prop.

2. I will replace the Heli-heads in the side-by-side VTOL with 2 motors and standard APC propellers.
3. I will use a coaxial motor or 2 coaxial mounted motors and will use a similar design to the Tail-sitter pictured.

Scott

[patrickegan]

It's cool

[Pack AE]

Patrick --

These seem like things that might be along the lines of what you're looking for:

http://www.draganfly.com/uav-helicopter/draganflyer-x6/

http://www.adaptiveflight.com/products.html

[patrickegan]

Dragan couldn’t make the trip because they are committed to the AUVSI show. :( This was a chance for better exposure, but what are you going to do? :)

[Pack AE]

What demo are you recruiting for?

[patrickegan]

Tomorrow I fly out to Virginia do to a demo for the FAA ARC SRM panel. I'll be taking and flying the "Cracker Barrel", we want them to see "other" systems. :)

[CenTexFlyer]

I guess after the last fiasco, I wouldn't be asked again, huh?

[patrickegan]

Nope, I thought I ran it past you. No money for travel...

[CenTexFlyer]

Not that I recall, but I do have advanced CRS disease......

[Pack AE]

Interesting. Good luck navigating through all of that snow... if you don't mind, please do report back afterwards on the demo. I, for one, am highly curious as to who the FAA ARC SRM panel is using for evaluations.

[patrickegan]

Do you mean those demonstrating aircraft?

[Pack AE]

Sure... who demonstrates, and what they (the FAA) are specifically evaluating, and how the demo goes in general...

[Jack Crossfire]

Guess the general idea is if the demo blows up, we don't want a record of it. So you won't find out anything until it's done & successful.

Never saw a box that said "DO BEND" before.

[patrickegan]

The box got opened and crushed, but I'll have to see what's up tomorrow. I don't know who is going to show as there is fresh snow on the ground. For sure we have Scan Eagle, Raven, Wasp and maybe the "Cracker Barrel". We have a test card that matches the one used at Edwards. This time the demo is for the safety risk management panel. :)

[patrickegan]

It went well... The Cracker Barrel demo was flawless and included a hand catch. Others besides Scan Eagle, wasp and Raven, was a rotary wing offering from Adaptive Flight and a 60' blimp flown by Galaxy. The SRM Panel is a mixed bag...

This was the venue
http://www.fbi.gov/hq/td/academy/academy.htm

Pictures to follow

[Pack AE]

Congrats. I'm guessing no one tried to hand catch the Scan Eagle, haha. So all parties flew without incident (I hope)?

Please do post pictures...

[Jack Crossfire]

We all know how hard it is to get photos of UAV's. Not even sure Henrik allows photos of his T-Rexes since none have ever been shown besides his own.

[patrickegan]

Galaxy had some issues with one of the engines, but they were rushed as the Marines wouldn’t let them set up the day before. Tony did a steep climb out over the trees that defied what I thought a blimp could do. We had a test card for visual acuity (VLOS), but to be honest I don’t know how or what was determined. We had management from the 3 letter agencies and a delegation from Australia, along with some first responders and the Cineflex guys. I was busy catching up and meeting with people from the different branches. Bruce brought out his bar-b-q and made lunch for everyone.

[EddieWeeks]

How about eddie weeks' plane
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1000521&highlight=kitting+this

Full cad drawings are now available for $40. This includes
13mb of clear pictures of the real plane and all materials and URLs where to get them.

All downloaded files will be PDFs.

Thanks
Eddie Weeks
weeks1@bellsouth.net

[Pack AE]

Thanks for the pics... that's a LOT less snow than I was anticipating. I thought they got like 10 inches of snow in that area...

Out of curiosity... did you get the feeling that it was a worthwhile demo for the purpose of moving forward on UAV regs? Or did it feel more like an "ooh-and-aah" exercise?

[patrickegan]

Me too, on the snow. :cool: Yes, I think it was worth it (cost me about $1500 in travel to demo the Slow Stick), as we also got to see and talk to the SRM Panel. Unfortunately, none of them are operators and that is a real problem with this entire effort. Another problem (for us) is that the majority of them are very conservative when it comes to safety.

[Gary Mortimer]

Wow you have to love brushless conversions, just look what you can lift now.

[patrickegan]

I’d like to thank Insitu for the use of their launcher… :D :cool: :)

[Jack Crossfire]

$1500 might be worth it if the FAA has you eventually become the UAV czar. $1500 would buy a lot of tacos. We're more likely to see a car czar than anything aerospace, in this country.