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??
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??