Shameless update from Dale Kramer

Vortex ring state has nothing to do with "staying away from other vlift vehicles." VRS is the interaction with your own vortex that decreases the relative angle of attack on your own airfoils/rotor blades. The recovery is to lower collective (altitude permitting) and use cyclic to pitch forward in order to fly out of the ring state - essentially to leave the vortex behind you. Simple adding power will exacerbate the "settling with power" and accelerate your descent.

I've encountered settling with power a couple of times back when I flew helicopters. The worst was when holding a stationary position at 1000' in a Bell 47 with a skysign (grid of lights). The bottom suddenly dropped out and the entire ship started shuddering as the blades went in an out of a stalled or zero lift state. Recovery was textbook and we lost about 200' feet.

How to recover in something like this proposed VTOL will be a large hurdle to surmount for certification and for overall safety of the design.

Paul A.
(Knocking the dust off my CFI-Rotorcraft...)
Jupiter, FL

Thanks Paul, I added that statement only because I understood that the Osprey had that recommendation added to its operation requirements.

Who knows, having propellers on 3 different horizontal planes during hover and that are so spread out versus their diameter, could reduce the chances of vortex ring state significantly.

In any case, we are talking about a condition that seems common to VTOL and helicopters which tells me that there is no reason to stop the development of my design due to some foreseeable consideration.

The proposed full scale vLazair would be an LSA with minimal certification issues.

Dale

"Who knows, having propellers on 3 different horizontal planes during hover and that are so spread out versus their diameter, could reduce the chances of vortex ring state significantly."

Take into account the interaction between the upper propellers/rotors and the lower with wind affecting the downwash angle. To my eye, you could easily end up with blanking of the lower rotors or unpredictable changes in angle of attack with any wind.

Good luck. It's fun to solve problems.