I invite Monty ~ Teledrone's chief test pilot ~ over for a 'look and feel' sesh now that the booms have been dropped roughly in place. And you can see now why the propellers are to be fixed fore and aft, well away from the whirling cookie-jars.
This is a suitable 'lift-plus-cruise' configuration of eVTOL and the more I look at it, the more I like it as against a vectoring pusher-propeller arrangement (which does however require only four power-units, as against the six required here).
It has the benefit ~ as do all distributed electrical power (DEP) types ~ of simplicity, for to raise it into ground-effect requires only adjustments to the thrust from the lift propellers while pushers at the rear 'do their thang'. With vectoring rear propellers you would be having to juggle the angle of vector besides the throttle in order to stabilise ground-effect flight, which has got problems written all over it.
Am also greatly encouraged by the guy recently featured here who is going for the quadcopter endurance record, and who discovered that any forward motion (or else headwind) does wonders for reducing the draw on the batteries.
The MO with the baby above is, therefore, to squeeze that collective lever to power up the lift motors so as to ease over sandbanks, ice or snow or indeed launch into flight within ground-effect (or surface-effect if you prefer) when sea conditions are at their calmest.
Boats flying above the water are (a) faster and cheaper than ones in the water and (b) altogether less complicated than aircraft designed for free-air operation.
So pleased with what I see though that I decide to have a fried breakfast.
The singular advantage of the vectoring type at this stage of the game is that we can get away with two-metre booms instead of the eight foot (2400mm) spars seen here. Most carbon-fibre tubes retail in either one-metre lengths, or more rarely two.
