Thursday, July 4, 2024

King of the Swing... ing-Arms


Notwithstanding my suggestion that we test the craft in the hover first, it is actually a better idea to test it initially as an airboat. This is because (a) any quad can be made to hover and (b) tuning it is expensive, not least because it requires four motors in lieu of two besides a flight-controller.

What you see above therefore is two alternative positions for fitting a motor to each  pontoon, and not a recommendation for a pair of propellers... although it might be.

In order to test whether the boat performs better with a mid-mounted pusher or high-mounted tractor, we shall replace the swinging arm with a fixed king-post as seen in the diagram.

It shortens the overall length of the craft to nine feet, for it's the motion of the swing-arm to the horizontal that extends it to ten.

It's a revolutionary boat, but assembled with good old-fashioned joinery skills... good to know then that I was useless at woodwork at school.

But can we build it? Yes Bob, we can.