This somewhat belatedly and for the benefit of my erstwhile colleagues, but doubtless will make for good reading amongst the 'fliterati' devoted to the pursuit of electrical take-off and landing. I shall deal with them in the order in which they appear in the album, and I'm set to use them again as a means of boring the pants off STEM students Friday...
↑ This was undoubtedly to my mind 'best in show' and designed and assembled by my good friend "phat" Tony, from I think Texas. Appearing to be powered by a clone of Rolls' own Pegasus engine, I do fear that with only a Briggs and Stratton( ?) at the back-end driving its array of fans it won't be in a position to go head to head with the AV8-B just yet. For me though it is reminiscent of the work of recently-deceased conceptual artist Panamarenko and spans the gamut of tech and infotainment. Tony also allowed my son to sit way up there in its commanding cockpit, a privilege extended only to insiders.
↑ This unlikely-looking vehicle would be the eventual winner of the Disruptor Prize and was assembled by a team from Japan. Like so many of the runners it struggled in the least of breezes to get airborne, and my overall impression of the competition was that helicopters aren't set to be replaced on those North Sea oil-rigs any time soon. Nonetheless Pratt and Whitney would decide on balance that all things considered, it represented the best all-round effort from all concerned. (My only reservation was that the competition was aimed at a 'flyer for all' and I couldn't see my mother or yours lying down on that wing up top). The underlying concept so far as I could see was not unlike the 'Blackfly' in so far as the angled rotors ~ whilst remaining fixed in position ~ work well enough for a vertical launch, a transition and level flight thereafter. Brownie points for lending me tools, too.
↑ I'm going to have to declare an interest here, but then as we won no prizes then that's probably immaterial. This 'flying phone-box' passed muster as a drone in the USA in view of the fact it was under fifty-five pounds, albeit flying empty as most airliners are doing nowadays with the coronavirus about. The downside was it needed an FAA-licensed drone pilot to operate it, and these were both (a) thin on the ground and (b) busy with their own offspring. It would eventually fly briefly in a park on the south side of the Bay, but without a GPS feed and a compass that hadn't been recalibrated, it was retired hurt by owner J P McManus. One to watch for the hurdle stakes however in the coming season.
↑ Talking of thoroughbreds though, they don't come better from better stock than this one, and its rider is as spirited a filly as you could hope to meet. We've all seen the videos, and frankly this should have won whatever prizes were going. Designed so far as I could tell by Jeff Elkins (formerly of Franky Zappata's stable) and ridden by the illustrious Mariah Cain, it was sadly a faller on the gallops the previous day having got altogether farther than anyone else. Jeff had reduced the weight and size for the competition incidentally by taking the eight U15 motors and stacking them in X-8 configuration instead.
↑ The indefatigable Pete Bitar, and a man who in the best team spirit afforded us a loan of batteries and connectors beside the ample time necessary to fit them out. This was Pete's bespoke entry to the race, as normally he's working on something we'll see later in the form of a personal jet-pack. From what I could tell the ducts had been clipped to squeeze into the unduly onerous race requirements ~ at least when it came to dimensions ~ and this two-year-old, whilst not among the lightest, made the final card and proved equal to the hurdles. Brought in under the FAA experimental category, incidentally.
↑ A non-runner in the form of the Silverwing (I think it was called) from a university in Delft, Holland. The sizeable stable which backed it proved a winning formula during the second phase of the competition, but for reasons of unreadiness, from what I could tell, the entry proved unfit on the day. Like a number of others (and not least the winner) it is designed for prone pilots to take-off vertically and transition to forward flight. This is easier said than done, and with few exceptions none of these beasts could be considered as an easy mount.
↑ This one is a half-scaler and in fact its stable-mate in the form of a quarter-scaler would be one of the few to have been flying high under the masterly touch of seasoned drone pilot Ben Sena of TEAM JAYU. Aside from the fact there is no saddle as yet ~ such that its a sure bet for unmanned meetings too ~ the thing is driven by three power-units which comprise contra-rotating propellers. As the forward-most of these is pitched lower than those at the rear, programmed manipulation of all six motors allows for manoeuvre in all three axes and planes. Ben feels that it needs control-surfaces too, and he may be right in so far as aviation never seems to have got by from thrust alone... even the aforesaid Blackfly (which has been test-flown over 31,000 miles for heaven's sake) seems to need them. The team are from MIT, and frankly you'd have to be to get your head around that sort of programming.
↑ Another from Pete Bitar's stable, and ever the crowd-pleaser. Tipping the scales at an altogether lower weight than the 'Verticycle' tipped earlier, this electric jet-pack comprises four racks of four ducted fans arranged around a square (and around the rider). Likely to be the focus of this stable's attention in the coming months, although a non-runner here on the day.
↑ So far as I could tell, this was a late arrival from the Russian team and came to late to qualify for the starting line-up. There had been complications at state customs apparently, but nothing that a sizeable donation to the Putin Foundation wouldn't solve (and I say that at great personal risk from a poison-tipped umbrella). It's gone through several iterations, although to be fair, haven't we all? It has been seeing flying earlier during the season and looked like it was largely there. I dislike the arched aerofoil however almost as much as the one that used to obscure my rear-view from my Ford Sierra XR-4i.
↑ I've a notion this came from an Indian team, but cannot be entirely sure. Either way it was missing propellers and I, like the Pratt and Whitney judges no doubt, considered this to have been a non-starter so far as flying stakes were concerned. It's a straightforward X-8, although those are powerful motors there and should Mothercare ever need a turbo-charged buggy for those rainy days, then they need look no further than this...
↑ Dubbed the 'flying breakfast', there was a lot more to this scale model than met the eye. A Phase Two winner from a Texan uni, an immense amount of technical work had gone into getting this thing flying... which it would eventually despite teething troubles early on. The team seemed to have bet all of their chips on winning the prize for the Quietest personal air vehicle, and the full-scaler would scare anyone creeping up behind them in the dark. An ingenious craft redolent of 1950s tech at places like NASA Ames, it features contra-rotating propellers driven by motors above and below, and rotor-disks manipulated by electrical actuators to tilt them in the required direction. Looked like it wouldn't work, but actually did what it said on the tin when it was finally released at the starting gate.
↑ I've a notion this one was from Australia, and another that the rider is going to be expected to stand atop the arrangement (as per the Dragon Air entry from Florida whose prospects I was extolling earlier). This one not nearly so advanced however, but a good-looking set of bones that promises to go the distance. The electrical ducted fans (EDFs) are designed to combat something all of the teams suffered from viz. the draining effect on the batteries that stems from constant manipulation of the power going to the larger propellers. Indeed I know from many years flying FADEC-controlled jet airliners that the computers go to great lengths to avoid constant fluctuations of the throttle for precisely that reason. For Dragon Air it was Mariah's weight-shift which I was told was responsible for most of the manoeuvring, which reduced the burden on the motors altogether when it came to steering.
↑ This again so far as I can recall was from India (or else Indian students outside of India, but either way, what is it with all of these Indians and eVTOL?). I like this one, as it appears to be a blue version of the TELEDRONE albeit more adapted to a lunar landing. Again a non-runner, although non-runners were divided among those like TELEDRONE that didn't make the cut, and those for which it was never intended. So far as I can recall this neither ran on the day, nor in the run-up. It's a hexacopter Jim, but not as we know it.
↑ Like the father-and-son entry from Scoop Aerospace, this one was a scaler and yet a working model at the same time. Or not entirely so, as it caught a gust of headwind on the qualifying day early on and flipped over backwards. It's from Athena Aero in Canada and a one-man (and one Action Man) team dedicated to ducted propellers. These actually tilt from an upward position as here for vertical take-off and then a forward-facing for cruise, and in this regard is not unlike something BAE Systems put together early on. The arches that surmount the props do something special aerodynamically-speaking, which frankly I've forgotten. One in the green colours that's worth a punt.
↑ Another (?) Indian entry although this one looks like it made a wrong turn on the way to the Sled of the Year race-meet. Actually a lovely bit of carbon-fibre moulding in that saddle and elsewhere, of which they can be rightly proud. Otherwise a straightforward hex, and one we look forward to seeing on the turf this side of season's end.
↑ This one was assembled by a loose-assemblage of human beings who get together to solve the world's problems and were set after this to design shelters for the homeless. They included amongst the team the young owner of a curry-house in Blackburn, who proved to be the only other British national at the event. Then again he hasn't answered my text-message and so he won't be appearing on my Christmas card list any time soon. Like myself the team-leader seems to be eternally devoted to alloy, and this one looks like something again from early experiments at NASA's Ames facility into deploying jockeys behind enemy lines during the Korean War. It's a tail-sitting contra, and if nothing else wins my prize for the largest and scariest engine... which looks suspiciously like a Rotax. The bus-driver from this team, incidentally, was to benefit from the Teledrone's airframe (once stripped of its valuables), which he intends to hang in an LA warehouse for posterity.
↑ This guy had a serious budget and a serious RV in the car-park, to the extent that when I applied for VC funding in London this week I claimed to have known him. His website envisions these zooming up the sides of high-rise apartment blocks and attaching themselves limpet-like to their sides, where their successful owners deplane prior to massaging their portfolios over a margarita. Marvel-style prone-piloted vehicles were in the ascendancy here, with only the lazier designers like myself opting for being suspended from a drone in a comfy chair. The same two propulsion units are replicated on the other side, so that control-surfaces need not apply. Circular wings are not overly efficient, but as this one looks like it's about to land within a ray of blue light in Rendlesham Forest, that probably doesn't matter.
↑ And talking of science fiction, Trek Aerospace have been successfully into this stuff for decades. Their proprietor gave the best speech during the aftermath, and could so far as I was concerned have bid for president (as everyone else on TV seemed to be doing at the time). Experts in ducted-fan technology, they are the sort of people who wouldn't allow an open rotor in the house (although the very-well-funded Vertical Aerospace in the UK just made the switch in that direction). It was most unexpected that this was not among the starters, as they'd won in the previous round and look set to romp home clear of the field. They had ~ like practically all of us with the hurdles having been set so high in retrospect ~ been bedevilled by any number of rebuilds.
Finally, let me conclude with a quote from Pratt and Whitney's 'VIP for IP' as quoted in the UK's 'New Scientist' magazine:
'The first time you do a contest like this you have a lot of failures,' says Troy Prince, an intellectual property lawyer at Pratt & Whitney. 'The next time you do it, people move a lot closer. And the third time, you suddenly have half a dozen teams making it.'
↑ EXTRA, EXTRA! And finally, I like this one from a young European guy for its palpable simplicity, its carbon-fibre skeleton visible within the outline of its outer skin, the latter kept continuously inflated by low-power fans. Saddle up below, flick the switch and you're beyond the racecourse on a breath of wind...
Finally, let me conclude with a quote from Pratt and Whitney's 'VIP for IP' as quoted in the UK's 'New Scientist' magazine:
'The first time you do a contest like this you have a lot of failures,' says Troy Prince, an intellectual property lawyer at Pratt & Whitney. 'The next time you do it, people move a lot closer. And the third time, you suddenly have half a dozen teams making it.'
