Manned multirotor

Joined
Dec 3, 2018
Messages
34
Looking forward to a new flying season!

[youtube]ffb_F7Agqv4[/youtube]


Two other clip in the build/flight log youtube series that might be of extra interest: :)

[youtube]5_xSN9fIQfI[/youtube]

[youtube]OkGyz0m8TuA[/youtube]

Youtube channel: amazingdiyprojects
 
Wow, pretty cool, but glad to see in the one video that he was wearing earplugs. Helmet? Nah, no need for that! Smart guy obviously, but I guess he ran out of money or didn't want to look like a dork by wearing a helmet?
 
Right, he could have used a helmet like the old days:

Aviator helmet.jpg

Still, pretty impressive for something that is probably made from mostly Hobby King parts.
76 individual motors should give enough redundancy so a single motor fail would hardly be noticed. Each blade is small enough that it won't have enough energy to cut your body in half either. Fingers look out.
 
A speed test has been on my list for a long time, and now is finally the time. The structure is optimized for light weight and hovering flight, which becomes apparent in this speed test where the back side of this design becomes apparent, namely high drag. Sitting in the chAIR it fees pretty speedy but the actual ground speed of around 50km/h is not very impressive. There is still headroom on the throttle but when flying the vehicle it is apparent that air resistant becomes a significant counterpart around 50km/hand the overall flight efficiency drops. A maximum practical take off weight test will be carried out later on this spring.
[youtube]GKBNTP6D1ag[/youtube]
 
These things are retarded because you can't do any real flying in one unless you're suicidal. The redundancy isn't there and there's no autorotation. Waste of good money, motors, batteries, engineering and creativity. If you want vtol a conventional helicopter is a much better proposition. Then your control lift and life aren't all dependent on chinese hobby electronics.
 
Haha, OMG!
Seriously, read up, learn, think, reflect, THEN judge/comment.
You are 90% clueless. Its a penta system, all of them running simultaneously. Obviously not safe by any conventional means, but the safest DIY manned multi currently out there as far as I am aware of. I have turned off 16 motors, one FC and 1/5 (20 packs of 4 cells) of the batteries mid air, and you can still continue to fly/land safely.
Is it worth the time and money? Well, for me it sure was, for you probably not, but that is a totally different subjective topic.
 
How am I clueless? It's way too sketchy, otherwise you would do some real flying and not just skim along the ground. And you are 100% reliant on sketchy electronics that are not human rated and not designed to be. Sure you can tolerate 1 flight controller failing but what about 2? There should be more redundancy with this kind of equipment. And what if you have some hard to trigger kind of bug or defect in multiple boards and it strikes in the air? Human-rating is the best practical way to ensure against those problems. I'm not worried about your batteries and motors as long as you monitor and inspect them.

The other main problem would be if you have an issue with your human flight controls. Are the electronics redundant? What about the connection to the flight controllers? Presumably the flight controllers can keep you stable if your controls disconnect, but what then? Want to try automated RTH?

A conventional design, electric powered helicopter would be a lot better. Mechanical "redundancy" is cheap and easy to build in as a safety factor and there are a huge variety of vetted designs that allow safe landing from a reasonable range of heights and speeds with complete failure of the motor and all onboard electronics.

Finally, a flying machine should really fly...or what's the point?
 
Having spent some time maintaining helicopters I absolutely disagree with then being a good option for a recreational VTOL design. They are neither mechanically simple, nor redundant.

I do however agree that redundancy and failsafes are critical. Fortunately electronic control and power distribution is much easier to make redundant and also monitor compared to mechanical systems. Modern model FCs provide better failsafes than were in commercial aircraft until recently (possibly better than the 737 max....)


I don't think chasing either speed or altitude is the right approach for this sort of aircraft. Keeping both low is how they stay safe. I'm assuming you are operating under Part 103 rules in terms of weight.
 
flat tire said:
How am I clueless? It's way too sketchy, otherwise you would do some real flying and not just skim along the ground. And you are 100% reliant on sketchy electronics that are not human rated and not designed to be. Sure you can tolerate 1 flight controller failing but what about 2?
Could you tolerate 2 engines failing on your next trip to Hawaii?
Human-rating is the best practical way to ensure against those problems.
There are no human rated multirotor aircraft yet. Someone has to be the first.
A conventional design, electric powered helicopter would be a lot better. Mechanical "redundancy" is cheap and easy to build in as a safety factor
In a conventional helicopter, how many redundant rotor masts are used? How many rotor blades can you lose and keep flying? How many redundant swash plates are there? How many tail rotors?
Finally, a flying machine should really fly...or what's the point?
That looks like real flying to me.
 
amazingdiyprojects said:
There is still headroom on the throttle but when flying the vehicle it is apparent that air resistant becomes a significant counterpart around 50km/hand the overall flight efficiency drops.
Thanks for the update.

Might a pusher prop allow a lower-drag presentation during higher speed flight?
 
Pushers are universally less efficient.

His airframe is light but with lots of drag. It's a great tech demonstrator, I love how quickly it assembles (try that with a typical helicopter) and how small the storage footprint is.
My #1 expense related to aircraft ownership is the hangar. Being able to skip that and really the entire airport is very appealing.

A ballistic chute could solve a lot of the danger aspects if the weight wouldn't be better spent on batteries. Likewise there are other ways I'd look at configuring the cockpit to enhance safety. But again it's a flying test-bed.
 
Looks interesting. I'm looking forward to the improvements you are likely already working on.

If the pilot weighs 180-lb, that also means it could be run pilotless with 100 lb of cargo? Lots of possibilities open up...
 
That is so cool!

So much potential redundancy as well. It's hard to think of any single point of failure that could afflict such a design.
 
Grantmac said:
But again it's a flying test-bed.

Flying test-chair.
 
I agree that speed should not be the focus of development (at this stage at least), but efficiency, energy consumption may well be a concern.
From a complete laymans intuition, isnt the center chair/pod/pilot command unit,...likely to be a major drag source ?
And how would 76 motor shrouds ( prop centre cones) affect lift or power consumption ?
 
Brilliant build. It looks like it is very light, portable and stable in flight
I remember watching on TV similar builds supported by large organisations, and IMHO yours is much better.
People just don't understand how much it takes to build something that works. Specially building something on a shoestring budget.
Congratulations and enjoy it.
 
Amazing project, congratulations!
That's exactly the kind of stuff I wish I can build someday. Just need some space and save some money... Hopefully that time will come!

Again, bravo and keep up the updates!
 
flat tire said:
In a conventional helicopter, how many redundant rotor masts are used? How many rotor blades can you lose and keep flying? How many redundant swash plates are there? How many tail rotors?
That looks like real flying to me.

Or pitch links.
 
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