FT style (swappable) autogyro!

[stay-fun]

Hi guys,

Here's a take on an FT style autogyro! After numorous crashes of my Auto-G from HK, I decided to make a new fuselage for it, FT style. I took the dimensions from the HK fuselage, and made the FT style fuse.

I changed the dimensions of the vertical stabilizer, but kept the total area the same. The height of the rotor is even a little higher, 2 cm or so, so the rotor won't hit the tail (which had happened a couple of times with the HK fuse).

Also, the advantage of the FT style fuselage is battery placement! There hardly is any room for the battery in the HK fuse, and an autogyro generally needs to be very nose heavy, so I was flying with down elevator a lot! Now I just mount the battery outside the fuse, all the way up front and it flies even better than the orginal! In my view . Although the rudder authority seems a little less, because the whole fuselage acts as a vertical stabilizer. The original simply had an aluminum tube as tail. See pics and video:

Electronics setup:

9 gram servos on elevator and rudder
Hitec HS-5065MG on aileron (tilt rotor, more power is needed)
Align 35A ESC
sunnysky V2216-12 800kV motor
4s 1300mAh battery
10x8 GWS prop

 

[Foam Addict]

Very cool! I wish I could've seen it fly in person, I was actually up there last night with a friend watching his Q-40 pylon racers.

Nice redesign though, it looks like it flew great.

 

[stay-fun]

Yeah I'm really surprised it flew so well! I didn't record the actual maiden, this was the second flight. But the maiden was pretty much the same.

I'm usually at the club in the morning in the weekends. Mornings are usually better weather than afternoons. I hope to meet you some day in person tho

 

[Foam Addict]

It'll be Christmas break, I leave for college Tuesday.

 

[Nathan_116]

you should try to make one entirely from scratch and see how you do. Try like a single rotor version of the twin twirl.

 

[stay-fun]

Planning on making a collective pitch autogyro ...in the future somewhere...

 

[JohnRambozo]

What a cool flying machine. Thanks for sharing, stay-fun!

 

[ruud]

I saw this fly this morning at Baylands Park in Sunnyvale and it was really cool to see. Thanks and nice to meet you!

 

[stay-fun]

It was great to meet you as well!

I would like to note that I've now re-built the gyro, and the nose is now 3 cm longer. This helps with getting the gyro more nose-heavy (which is required).

 

[gabrielete]

Really cool, I love it....

Are the blades homemade?

 

[stay-fun]

Thanks gabrielete! Yes I made them myself. The blades are composed of a basswood leading edge (10 mm) and balsa trailing edge (38 mm). The thickness at the thickest point is 5 mm, the length of a blade is 400 mm. I sanded the balsa and basswood to make a flat bottom airfoil, and put packing tape on it so the surface is smooth (less air resistance). They seem a lot more sturdy than the stock hobbyking blades (for the auto-g) too.

They did break today though. I was flying and a superfast plane hit it mid-air... (unfortunately no footage). I have to make one new blade and a new rudder.

 

[stay-fun]

Nice episode today! I ordered an AC-10 yesterday, after I saw a picture on FT instagram about their busted AC-10. Wish me luck!

 

[ftwingnut]

Are these blades fixed-pitch? If so, what is the incidence? I have heard that autogyro blades are actually set at a slightly negative incidence. Is that correct? If so, how many degrees are yours?

 

[stay-fun]

Yes they're fixed pitch. I'd have to check later to see what the exact angle is, I think it's around -2 to -4 degrees.
The negative incidence is because air flows from below the rotor disc to above (opposite to what happens in a helicopter rotor disc), and it needs to windmill.