Multiplanes

Above, practically the first type of airplane to fly in the UK, circa 1904 from a hillside in the South London suburbs by the fantastically named Horatio Frederick Phillips.

Wind forward over a century and material progress has allowed for the ALEF flying car, Horatio's dream come true. Technical details are scant, but the Alef would not fly were it not pitched at rather less than ninety degrees to the horizon, as it appears in the company's animation.

This would turn the many surfaces making up the mesh of the car into airfoils, thus providing the lift that Horatio long hoped would eventually prove to be practical.

It appears the mesh is planar, though if its surfaces formed airfoil profiles then this imaginative concept might be further optimised for flight... and they can't patent that now, can they?

It still however stumbles against whether or not we really want our cars to fly at all ~ the evolution of the automobile having been one of people wanting four wheels, four seats, a big boot and even bigger interior.

And for cars, electrification means bigger and heavier than ever, so that flying versions like the ALEF are more likely to be like the Harley you wheel out on sunnier days (unless and until anti-gravity advances in ways that aliens appear to have mastered).

What this and the previous post shows, however, is that eVTOL is not wholly dissimilar from internet porn in that both are accomplished at selling the dream.

eVTOL Bullshitter of the Year Award 2023

They're not the messiahs, they're very naughty boys.

This is not your flight deck, it's a back-to-front image of an Airbus flight-deck.

And 'mission' is ideally not spelled 'mision'.

https://www.acevtol.com/elite

Full marks tho' for computer graphics and if ever we can fly to work in computer graphics, I'll be front of the queue.

Re: configuration

I resolved after the recent flight-test failure to call it a day, tho' in view of the fact the equipment is in place and represents sunk cost, then I figured it's worth one more try.

Reverting to first principles I shall restore the outline of the frame to 36" from 30" and reconfigure the top-set of rotors (on the upper drone) the way they had been during a successful flight-test back in December of 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAIYGQ-CgQ8

To call on the rotors at the bottom end to participate in steering at this stage of the game is literally to stretch the elasticity of the airframe too far, though they could do wonders in terms of applying additional thrust. To this end, enlarging the airframe by those few inches provides for a tic-tac-toe planform that ~ in the hover at least ~ will be about as efficient as it gets.

You can ignore the overlap, incidentally, as the efflux from a propeller approximates to a funnel, so that by the time the airflow from the upper set gets anywhere near to the lower, it is unlikely to impinge at all. This effect I would occasionally observe whilst at the holding point of various runways, whenever the atmosphere was humid enough to show the vortices around wing-tips, propellers or the cowls of fan-jets.

It has then been, as the test-pilot said at conclusion of the last flight-test, a case of getting back to the drawing-board.

The pic below features the funnel-effect and that above the new configuration of each drone, with the upper in red providing cyclic control and the lower in blue collective.

Flying Sorcerer

That was then, this is now. Canadian engineer Paul Moller flew this 'new' flying saucer around fifty years ago, as can be seen from his pilot's 1970-era garb... looking like he's just been abducted from Woodstock. Moller, now nearly ninety years old, was accused of having done more to damage the potential market for powered lift than anyone, in view of the fact his various piloted designs never resulted in a saleable product.

I think this is unfair, however. The Wright brothers surfed the cusp of a wave that saw the steam engine replaced by the first practical means of powering flight, in the shape of the internal combustion engine. iUFO in Shenzen are likewise popularising the only practical means of powered lift in the shape of AC electrical motors: and are flying on the shoulders of giants.

Say, Cheese?

Thursday's test-flight scrubbed in view of the fact that the flying field we've used in the past ~ successfully, as it happened ~ belongs to the Frome Cheese Show, who've co-opted it this week for their annual cheese-fest. I wish I'd made this up, for to my knowledge even SpaceX do not count such an eventuality amongst their various pre-launch setbacks (though the first cargo their Dragon spacecraft flew into orbit was in fact a wheel of French Brouère, in homage to the Monty Python 'cheese-shop' sketch.)

You have to laugh, or else you'd cry.

Launch rescheduled for June 20-23.

Hover-Board of Enquiry

Trawling YouTube at 04:30 as you do when you can't sleep, I come across the exploits of one Hunter Kowald and his SkySurfer. I figure the guy from Canada has done well, tho' a further search reveals that the (naturalised, I think) Canadian who invented the hoverboard as we know it is still buzzing around on his OMNI aircraft.

The layout of each is almost identical too, although the SkySurfer is invariably blurred in every moving picture that you see. A benefit of building PAVs like these however is that you get to recognise its various parts. In both cases the rider is stood astride an extensive battery-pack, whilst the motors are mounted inverted on one of eight arms. The speed controllers in the case of the machine above appear to be mounted in the space above the motors, atop the end of each arm.

It is hard to know where these vehicles are going, besides the lucrative entertainment they currently provide; on the other hand you could have said that of the early days of the aeroplane. In each case I prefer the safety and smaller foot-print of a flying phone box, but then I would, wouldn't I?

Telling too is the fact that the inventor of the jet-powered hoverboard in the form of Franky Zapata has supplemented development with a jet-powered cart for those who feel that the air id not, after all, the safest place to be surfing. Horses for courses, as ever?

Meanwhile today is allocated to getting the uppermost drone flying independently of the remainder of the vehicle, in order to move things along step-by-step: you have to walk before you can fly.