SILLY IDEA???

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just wondered ( not too much to drink, honest ) whether fitting wings to a quad copter would be of any benefit, especially when flying in wind hovering? my thought being that if you have the wings facing into wind you are getting 'free' lift therefore reducing the dead weight of the quad, the wings would have to be giving more lift than they weigh of course to be a benefit. less dead weight = less power needed to hold altitude???. not so useful on a phantom if you're filming as you would only get the benefit facing one way, but on a quad with a 360 rotating gimbal it would be of more benefit. in normal forward flight you could have extra lift also if you have a mechanism for changing the angle of attack as the leading edge would be facing 10 - 30 degrees down if fastish forward flight. a sort of gimbal like the camera has in 1 plain only you could mount the wings on carbon rods so there was no wing under/in the prop wash too.

a down side being you are making a bigger sail to catch wind so it might use the spare power to station keep against the extra wind resistance??
 
locoworks said:
just wondered ( not too much to drink, honest ) whether fitting wings to a quad copter would be of any benefit, especially when flying in wind hovering? my thought being that if you have the wings facing into wind you are getting 'free' lift therefore reducing the dead weight of the quad, the wings would have to be giving more lift than they weigh of course to be a benefit. less dead weight = less power needed to hold altitude???. not so useful on a phantom if you're filming as you would only get the benefit facing one way, but on a quad with a 360 rotating gimbal it would be of more benefit. in normal forward flight you could have extra lift also if you have a mechanism for changing the angle of attack as the leading edge would be facing 10 - 30 degrees down if fastish forward flight. a sort of gimbal like the camera has in 1 plain only you could mount the wings on carbon rods so there was no wing under/in the prop wash too.

a down side being you are making a bigger sail to catch wind so it might use the spare power to station keep against the extra wind resistance??


I would imagine any benefit you get from the free lift into the wind... You would lose in added weight when you aren't going fast enough (or the wind isn't).

I also would like side winds or swirling winds would make you more likely to flip without a rudder or tail.

Not an engineer... So this is just speculation on my part :)
 
I think it's already been done, is this what you're talking about?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir_a3IIhS_k[/youtube]

edit: not a phantom, but you get the idea. Also, I seen another video of someone who installed an extra prop for forward movement on their quadcopter, so I'm sure you could do that for a more jet/planelike experience. kinda like a vertical lift jet.
 
kitari said:
I think it's already been done, is this what you're talking about?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir_a3IIhS_k[/youtube]

edit: not a phantom, but you get the idea. Also, I seen another video of someone who installed an extra prop for forward movement on their quadcopter, so I'm sure you could do that for a more jet/planelike experience. kinda like a vertical lift jet.

That's totally cool dude... But it's kind of the opposite problem set isn't it? The primary mode of flight for that is jet-like flight where it uses hovering to land or maintain a position more as the exception more than the rule...

In this case...wouldn't the primary use to be more hover and smooth movement and forward flight?

Not at all trying to be argumentative... Just an interesting discussion to me...
 
Buckaye said:
kitari said:
I think it's already been done, is this what you're talking about?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir_a3IIhS_k[/youtube]

edit: not a phantom, but you get the idea. Also, I seen another video of someone who installed an extra prop for forward movement on their quadcopter, so I'm sure you could do that for a more jet/planelike experience. kinda like a vertical lift jet.

That's totally cool dude... But it's kind of the opposite problem set isn't it? The primary mode of flight for that is jet-like flight where it uses hovering to land or maintain a position more as the exception more than the rule...

In this case...wouldn't the primary use to be more hover and smooth movement and forward flight?

Not at all trying to be argumentative... Just an interesting discussion to me...

I'm not sure to be honest, I just seen it on youtube one day and thought about it. lol
 
Narrator said:
Wings are only good if you're always going forwards.
Nice idea though


sort of, wings work with air passing over them really which doesn't necessarily mean forward flight if the air is the moving bit.
 

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