Single Fan Thrust Vectoring VTOL Project - MonoPhan

[VAALLEON]

I usually use my existing threads for the new stuff that I build/post but this is kind of a new concept that I am testing. The unit is a first in many ways and is a prototype to test my easy VTOL concept, where I want to harness the lift from a wing without “really” transitioning to horizontal flight in terms of conventional controls and flight characteristics, while flying “almost” horizontally I am also looking for a design which will not be sluggish in vertical flight while creating lift in horizontal (or semi horizontal) flight, without folding wings, etc... Below are some videos from last couple of weeks…

This is my first Mono unit with CG this high with a single battery and with carbon fiber thrust vectoring vanes. The first flight was a failure as result of this and the not enough gyro compensation. So, I made some changes to PID, replaced the backbone supporting piece with a 2mm carbon fiber piece for better support and just in case added this small foam board piece to make sure there is some more lateral resistance. The second flight was successful but still not there. You really need to be on the controls to keep the unit off the ground. Higher compensation levels are necessary. Also, I am not sure if I will be getting as long as hover time as I was hoping. But I have other plans for this unit which will hopefully keep it I the air for much longer times.

This turned out to be a completely different animal. The wings placed at the center of gravity didn't seem to help stabilize the unit. Tomorrow new test with higher CLR and a higher gryo compensation levels...

Testing different wing designs which can handle vertical and horizontal flight. The problem is to come up with a wing design that can handle a stable transition to horizontal flight while handling the pitch and roll vertical flight stability with proper level of lateral resistance. The most successful one for transition was the last one, which is a recycled wing from one of my unsuccessful units years ago. It doesn’t compensate for the roll lateral resistance, which I had to manually compensate during the flight. I will work on that piece…

The last video shows the best result so far. The Unit is now capable of transitioning to horizontal. Need to adjust aerodynamics and the tuning further to harness the most possible lift from the wings.

Thanks

 

[VAALLEON]

The design is pretty much finalized. It flies amazingly good vertical and horizontal. Still working on getting the baro respond better. I have three settings programmed in the FC.

1- The first one tilts the unit right above around 10 degrees attack angle, avoiding altitude loss at full stick. In this mode, I will use the throttle for altitude control.

2- The second mode tilts the unit below 10 degrees attack angle. In this mode at full stick, the unit will start losing altitude, which makes it possible to fly it almost like an airplane, adjusting the altitude with pitch. I will extend the tilt angle below 0 degrees depending on flight capabilities.

3- The third mode will not go lower than 25 degrees attack angle and will activate the altitude hold. This will be the economy mode, where I will harness the lift from high attack angle wings and the unit will automatically adjust the throttle down and the lift kicks in and it starts climbing. I will adjust this attack angle to get the best flight time based on testing.

Looking forward to get some onboard videos and post.

 

[VAALLEON]

The design is finalized and the test cardboard surfaces are replaced with the new ones. I cannot believe the unit turned out to be such a good flyer. This is just a slow test flight to make sure all new stuff works. The unit loves transitioning to horizontal and speed up. Hopefully, new videos coming soon...

 

[Flying Monkey fab]

Very nicely done!

 

[VAALLEON]

Very nicely done!

Thank you sir!

 

[VAALLEON]

It was a good test after a tough weekend. The yaw was unresponsive in horizontal flight all through weekend. So, I tested some additional surfaces and took off the stabilizer to let the nozzles handle better. Didn’t work. After studying for ours how the nozzles react at lower attack angles, I was able to fix the tuning and realized that I wasn’t piloting the craft correctly.

This video consists successful transitions and long stretches of horizontal flight with maneuvering. The flight is not as smooth as I wanted because of lack of rear stabilizers. So, I will add some new stabilizing surfaces at the back and test the results. I believe the unit will be able to handle attack angles down to minus 10-15 degrees which should be more than enough for some high speed dives. I don’t think the FC is capable of handling anything less than that.

Thanks

 

[VAALLEON]

After working on the final design changes, at last was able to start testing the baro assisted semi-horizontal flight to calculate the increase in efficiency, the reason that I built this unit for. This flight is 100% baro assisted (except take off and landing). I circled around the park without any major throttle intervention and let the unit adjust the throttle, keeping a constant altitude. I calculated around 20-25% increase in the efficiency of the unit. Which is better than nothing, less that I expected. I will test some different attached angles and see if I get anything better. I think I need to cruise with a higher speed that I am currently testing for better efficiency.

 

[VAALLEON]

New FC test. ESC cutoff and crash due to overheating. Power setup will be changed with a new 4S configuration.

 

[Vimana89]

I've seen these browsing youtube. Great stuff. The newest one looks especially cool. I had a similar but more complex idea in the back of my head for a while, way beyond my area of expertise and current knowledge. My idea is a cylinder or cigar shaped airship/wingless plane/UFO thingy, that could fly vertically or horizontally using thrust vectoring. One version had the fans running inside and inline with the fuselage and each other and used some sort of extra thrust vectoring like that experimental Aerodyne thing. The second more practical idea had the fans vertical with thrust vectoring parts underneath while the fuselage ran longways, sort of like a Chinook tandem helicopter with EDF units with thrust vectoring gear where the rotors would be. It would be sort of like the hoverbike style models a couple people have made but with a more substantial fuselage. I wonder how feasible this idea would even be

 

[Vimana89]

Never bothered to sketch or post it but here's a quick and sloppy sketch of my premise.

 

[VAALLEON]

Never bothered to sketch or post it but here's a quick and sloppy sketch of my premise.

Thanks bud! We share the same interest: vimana

Check this out. Very close to your sketch:

 

[Vimana89]

Thanks bud! We share the same interest: vimana

Check this out. Very close to your sketch:

Awesome, looks great. Functionally that's pretty much exactly what I'm thinking, but with a light but sturdy foam board body to give it more of an airship/space ship look. It is cool we share an interest that's a little "out there", but definitely ties into the RC hobby as an interest in anything that flies, the more unconventional the better! I have zero experience with rotary/multirotor type craft from a building perspective, though I do fly quads. My home design/build interest for the time at least is more into fixed wing.

 

[VAALLEON]

Awesome, looks great. Functionally that's pretty much exactly what I'm thinking, but with a light but sturdy foam board body to give it more of an airship/space ship look. It is cool we share an interest that's a little "out there", but definitely ties into the RC hobby as an interest in anything that flies, the more unconventional the better! I have zero experience with rotary/multirotor type craft from a building perspective, though I do fly quads. My home design/build interest for the time at least is more into fixed wing.

Great stuff! I may get to build something like that one day

 

[VAALLEON]

Hover testing the winning setup after a couple of failures.

 

[VAALLEON]

Change of design…



A step forward in flight capabilities, a step back in technology… Not sure how they go together but it is the truth! After building some fully transitioning units with proper algorithms, that I couldn’t really fly, because of lack of space and skills, I built this easy VTOL that I can totally fly at the park and enjoy.



This is the continuation of my quest to get a better flight time and cover more distances, merged with my love of FPV that I have recently tried. I also wanted to stick to my single fan philosophy which started this journey. I converted one of my MonoPhan units to this bird. Both wings are independently controlled, so I can maneuver the unit in tighter spaces. After many tests and crashes, this is what I got so far. I think I was able to create a very easy transitioning (just push the pitch stick forward) slow flyer VTOL.



It currently has 3 different attack angle settings. This test is utilizing the higher two , I transitioned back and forth a couple of times during this flight. If I want to go faster I have one more that gets the unit flatter and faster, which I still have to test and understand the maneuvering. If that is successful, I may change the settings to test some negative attack angles… When you are in trouble just release the stick and the unit starts hovering.



Still to test the flight time but not with these batteries. They got old and the C rating is not sufficient, as can be seen in the landing. As soon as I transitioned to vertical flight the unit basically crash landed. I can definitely use some advice on modifying the wings for higher lift. The shape and area are set, per tested. But would an aerofoiled design help, or is it not worth trying… Thanks!

 

[Ihichi Bolls]

That was AWESOME mate!

The transition between flight modes was super smooth. Not even noticeable rpm changes in the motor to compensate.

So we got ya hooked on fpv huh SOOO much more fun riding live. We need to get you on a high powered race quad and really get your attention. Im learning more practical race tuning methods and have recently upped my speed and agility with my flying. Been flying short course practice runs and have to set over 80 degree camera tilt just to keep up with turning fast and not falling out of the air because I slowed down too much hehe.

I am sure a more efficient airfoil can be made but that is out of my knowledge level. PM one of the fixed wing gurus here doing all the fancy projects or balsa builds. I am sure they can provide you with a method to help you.

 

[VAALLEON]

That was AWESOME mate!

The transition between flight modes was super smooth. Not even noticeable rpm changes in the motor to compensate.

So we got ya hooked on fpv huh SOOO much more fun riding live. We need to get you on a high powered race quad and really get your attention. Im learning more practical race tuning methods and have recently upped my speed and agility with my flying. Been flying short course practice runs and have to set over 80 degree camera tilt just to keep up with turning fast and not falling out of the air because I slowed down too much hehe.

I am sure a more efficient airfoil can be made but that is out of my knowledge level. PM one of the fixed wing gurus here doing all the fancy projects or balsa builds. I am sure they can provide you with a method to help you.

Thanks bud! Yeah will improve the aerodynamics a little more. Still working on fine tuning. Almost there. Another slow flight with some close passes and stop and go action. Had to cut it short due to a servo failure.

 

[Ihichi Bolls]

With the fatter body and the short but wider cord wings that kind of reminds me of a bat flying around. Maybe scallop the wings and enhance that trend hehe. after all it is the right time of the year for that sort of theme.

 

[VAALLEON]

With the fatter body and the short but wider cord wings that kind of reminds me of a bat flying around. Maybe scallop the wings and enhance that trend hehe. after all it is the right time of the year for that sort of theme.

I totally agree. I will probably employ the Batman theme for this

The old unit became very unreliable after a hundred crashes. Built a new unit with larger surface area. Different and lighter (cheaper) foamboard with much larger surface area, 4S setup vs 3S, different servos and motor, and a longer range Radiolink radio.



Pretty much everything changed except the base design and the concept. The unit is quite challenging to fly vertically. Yaw is very tricky due to the large wings. I made a couple of minor aerodynamic adjustments but other than that have been working on the tuning.



Started flying good. Got it to quite low attack angles in this last flight. Getting a little shaky at faster turns at low attack angles. Will work more on tuning and if I cannot get comfortable enough I will work on the wing design a little more for a better vertical flight performance and faster turns.



Also ready to install the camera.

 

[VAALLEON]

At last my first easyVTOL aerial video. The old unit didn’t let me get a proper aerial video with all malfunctions and problems. The new unit did it for me.



At around 2 minute mark I switch to a lower attack angle and the unit speeds up with higher speed maneuvering. This is my fist unit which flies better horizontally than vertically. Which is a little sad as I had to give up some good qualities, but I am looking forward to some FPV action at the country.



I am thinking that with new batteries and at the slow flight mode with high attack angle I should be getting around 8 minute flight time.