20 June 2017 Eben Wilson

Sky Hopper flight control variant build underway

As one of our initial steps in proving our design, we are building scaled versions of Sky Hopper that will be used to verify third fan flight control parameters.  We call this the FCV (flight control variant)

FCV1 was constructed some months ago in order to encapsulate the first version of our flight control software.  It worked well and we achieved a stable hover with good controllability in yaw and pitch. However, this initial variant did not attempt to produce the empirical data we need to analyse our control inputs realistically and apply that data to the full scale demonstrator design. The purpose was solely to identify how well we could link control inputs to airframe configuration changes in the form of linear and/or progressive changes.

We are now building FCV2 which will allow us to generate this data in a specific set of flight trials. Essentially we will be laying down reference points for control capabilities in flight in hover and flight in cruise, while leaving the intermediate envelope of transition flight for later trials.  This should allow us to impute stall points in velocity and alpha angles that will inform later VTOL transition flight trials.

This early work is still self-funded, please consider sending us a donation to help us move onwards to our full-scale demonstrator construction stage.