Tristanjprowse
Junior Member
G'day, I'm Tristan and I'm from Australia.
I'll begin by firstly stating that I've had basically no experience with multirotors or RC planes. But I've been watching FliteTest religiously for a couple of years now, and I've learned a hell of a lot. I'll also apologise for the crude, scrap-booky way I've set some of these images out; my house was burgled recently and without a computer, this was the easiest way to do it.
So I built this cardboard X-Wing model just for fun. But then I thought "why not try and make it fly?". Well, maybe because I've never even built a regular multirotor...
So I figured ultimately it would great if the X-Wing could take off, fly around and land like a tricocpter, but also convert, mid-air, to forward flight. This was inspired by Peter's VTOL Chimera. However I was quite keen to maintain the shape of the X-Wing, avoid having booms sticking out at the front of the body and so I wondered if I could stick one prop on the nose and two trailing props on the wings.
A quick look on some forums and it didn't seem like a back-to-front tricocpter wouldn't work, just that it's uncommon and not ideal for photography. However I still wasn't confident about having yaw function performed by a tilt mechanism on the leading prop; especially if that leading prop was going to have to pivot in forward flight-conversion as well. So the solution became to enable both of the rear props to pivot both up-and-down and side-to-side. But that would obviously be quite overcomplicated.
So currently my theory for making this VTOL X-Wing RC Plane is to have a single leading prop attached to the nose of the plane, which pivots to thrust either downward or backward. To achieve this i'm thinking a very similar type of mount used for the Chimera.
Then I would attach a trailing prop to each of the wings which would also pivot to thrust either downward or backward. But I also theorise that this pivoting motion of the rear props, between downward and backward might be able to be coordinated into giving the tricocpter some yaw function.
So a couple of issues even I can see are that firstly, the thing weighs 1.8lbs already and it's just a cardboard model. So once I add electronics, motors and a battery it'll really be starting to pack it on. The second issue is probably the most obvious; an X-Wing is just un-aerodynamic. Probably not such an issue for tricocptering, but to be able to fly forward in any sort of stable way, I suspect I'll have to do something to fix that. I mean the wings themselves almost have an aerofoil shape but they pretty much cancel each other out being mirror images of each other. But p'haps if I could make them more aerofoily then they might work. Additionally, they angle downward slightly, so if I could make them generate lift, they might help to angle the nose of the thing upward.
Another possible solution to the un-aerodynamic problem I thought of would be instead of rotating the front motor completely 90 degrees down, to face backward, what if I only rotated it say 60 degrees down; so that it would face mostly backward but still a little downward, so as to thrust the nose of the plane both forward and upward.
Finally, if any of this actually works and I can at least make this thing fly like a tricocpter, I'd be remiss not to try and pop some FPV into that cockpit, but that'll be a cherry on top once I get the thing in the air.
So do you guys see any other issues? Maybe some glaringly obvious ones I wouldn't've seen? Do you have any recommendations on what kind of power I'll need to lift an eventually over 2lbs X-Wing into the air?
Do you think it'll even work?
Any advice is greatly appreciated, cheers guys
I'll begin by firstly stating that I've had basically no experience with multirotors or RC planes. But I've been watching FliteTest religiously for a couple of years now, and I've learned a hell of a lot. I'll also apologise for the crude, scrap-booky way I've set some of these images out; my house was burgled recently and without a computer, this was the easiest way to do it.
So I built this cardboard X-Wing model just for fun. But then I thought "why not try and make it fly?". Well, maybe because I've never even built a regular multirotor...
So I figured ultimately it would great if the X-Wing could take off, fly around and land like a tricocpter, but also convert, mid-air, to forward flight. This was inspired by Peter's VTOL Chimera. However I was quite keen to maintain the shape of the X-Wing, avoid having booms sticking out at the front of the body and so I wondered if I could stick one prop on the nose and two trailing props on the wings.
A quick look on some forums and it didn't seem like a back-to-front tricocpter wouldn't work, just that it's uncommon and not ideal for photography. However I still wasn't confident about having yaw function performed by a tilt mechanism on the leading prop; especially if that leading prop was going to have to pivot in forward flight-conversion as well. So the solution became to enable both of the rear props to pivot both up-and-down and side-to-side. But that would obviously be quite overcomplicated.
So currently my theory for making this VTOL X-Wing RC Plane is to have a single leading prop attached to the nose of the plane, which pivots to thrust either downward or backward. To achieve this i'm thinking a very similar type of mount used for the Chimera.
Then I would attach a trailing prop to each of the wings which would also pivot to thrust either downward or backward. But I also theorise that this pivoting motion of the rear props, between downward and backward might be able to be coordinated into giving the tricocpter some yaw function.
So a couple of issues even I can see are that firstly, the thing weighs 1.8lbs already and it's just a cardboard model. So once I add electronics, motors and a battery it'll really be starting to pack it on. The second issue is probably the most obvious; an X-Wing is just un-aerodynamic. Probably not such an issue for tricocptering, but to be able to fly forward in any sort of stable way, I suspect I'll have to do something to fix that. I mean the wings themselves almost have an aerofoil shape but they pretty much cancel each other out being mirror images of each other. But p'haps if I could make them more aerofoily then they might work. Additionally, they angle downward slightly, so if I could make them generate lift, they might help to angle the nose of the thing upward.
Another possible solution to the un-aerodynamic problem I thought of would be instead of rotating the front motor completely 90 degrees down, to face backward, what if I only rotated it say 60 degrees down; so that it would face mostly backward but still a little downward, so as to thrust the nose of the plane both forward and upward.
Finally, if any of this actually works and I can at least make this thing fly like a tricocpter, I'd be remiss not to try and pop some FPV into that cockpit, but that'll be a cherry on top once I get the thing in the air.
So do you guys see any other issues? Maybe some glaringly obvious ones I wouldn't've seen? Do you have any recommendations on what kind of power I'll need to lift an eventually over 2lbs X-Wing into the air?
Do you think it'll even work?
Any advice is greatly appreciated, cheers guys
