Shameless update from Dale Kramer

On Friday, March 18, 2016 at 12:08:46 AM UTC-4, bumper wrote:
Would this be automated in some manner, or with say a green safe to land "descent profile" indication below a given safe altitude and allowable descent rate, etc. If, for some reason, the pilot has to abort a landing, say due to wind conditions or surface irregularities, would a vertical take off after a partial descent be possible?

You are on the right track testing with a model, as that should show up any issues.

Yes there will be automation of some flight maneuvers, after all this could not even be attempted if I was not relying on the multirotor controller for automation of heading and attitude during hover. Adding automated features beyond that is somewhat trivial, especially since I plan to have all control done with 'fly by wire'.

However, I am a firm believer in having a design that is as close to humanly flyable under as many failure modes as possible so I just don't want to start automating things too quickly.

This is a great thread and has given me much to consider, however I am going to have to start concentrating on getting people to pledge on the Kickstarter campaign. If it that campaign fails, I will have to find another way of building the 1/4 scale. So, I will have to slow down the posting here and get my brain into another gear now

DaleKramer wrote on 3/18/2016 5:38 AM:
This is a great thread and has given me much to consider, however I
am going to have to start concentrating on getting people to pledge
on the Kickstarter campaign.

The thread got me to pledge $100. I'm looking forward to seeing the
charge on my credit card next month, which will signal you got the
funding you seek.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"

https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Dec 2014a" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm

http://soaringsafety.org/prevention/...anes-2014A.pdf

Eric,

Thanks for the support!

Dale

On Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 7:07:15 AM UTC-7, DaleKramer wrote:
Eric,

Thanks for the support!

Dale

Has NO ONE come forward to challenge my calculations? It has been 3 days and the only rebuttal had something weird to do about having dinner of molds.

Okay, I DID leave something out, and I admit it. I forgot to mention that horsepower from carbureted engines falls off with altitude, so that 100 hp engine will only produce 70 hp at a 10,000 ft DENSITY altitude.

Here is another factoid that you will find if you bother to check my calculations: power required is INVERSELY proportional to the square root of disk area. This is simple physics, so there is NO avoiding it! Consequently, tail squatters require A LOT more horsepower. Dale's design will require nearly THREE TIMES more horsepower than an R22 simply because of the MUCH higher disk loading - that is WHY I made such a point of the HIGH disk loading. I don't have ANY idea where Dale came up with the number of 1.3X thrust to weight, maybe it was in a dream. It seems like engineering analysis is, at best, an after thought. During my career as a design engineer I can assure you we thought of it otherwise.

Here is an interesting quote I dug up from the book by Ray Prouty (Dale, I assume that you ARE reading the reference books):

"Despite the trend for higher and higher disc loadings in the past 20 years, there does seem to be a practical upper limit. Values of more than about 10 pounds per square foot generate such high induced velocities under the rotor that it is difficult to operate from unprepared sites without filling the air full of flying sticks and stones to break one's bones. It also becomes increasingly difficult to obtain safe autorotational characteristics as disc loadings go up. These are two reasons why VTOL aircraft that depend on heavily loaded propellers for hovering have not yet become operational."

And Dale wants the pilot sitting out in the open to be pelted by those sticks and stones. Whatever...

On Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 7:07:15 AM UTC-7, DaleKramer wrote:
Eric,

Thanks for the support!

Dale

This thing crashed this week - pilot walked away, but it was a total writeoff.

http://elytron.aero/#page-home

9B