@jumpwing Would you be willing to share your RF8 models? If so, I’ll try configuring ArduPlane to support the vectored trimotor flying wing.
Hi Mark, thanks for the offer of help!
The tricopter model is the simple RF tricopter model but I put tilting motors on it.
The JumpWing model is a flying wing model with 3 tilting motors attached.
Im not sure if you have watched the video at the beginning of this post but this has already been done by a guy in China (who hasnt released his source). there are also links to the files he has uploaded.
thanks again for the help
Jeff
JumpWing_RealFlight_models.zip (11.4 KB)
RF8 can only import RFX and G3X files, as far as I know…
I hope that guy isn’t trying to sell anything.
I think these files will work because they were mods of existing planes in RF.
If I remember, one is the Tricopter 900 and the other is the alpha flying wing. I think both are included in RF and not downloaded.
The guy in China was trying to sell parts to DIY builders, but no one ever responded to my multiple messages and I actually had the guys from Cube trying to find them. nothing. really sharp business people.
Anyway, despite him getting the code to work, his design is still inefficient. Mine is based on an efficient 2 meter span wing made of carbon fiber. I have my own 2’ x 4’ CNC that i built to make parts for this project.
It should fly really well. The wings fold too so it can be carried in backpacks. Its main market is Forest fire fighters and such.
thanks
Jeff
I have maybe decided to shift gears a bit. After a lot of study the larger the plane, the worse it performs as a multicopter. I have been thinking about a manned vtol forever, but at the size needed for manned flight you run into the squared cubed law. Its just too heavy. Now im thinking a tail sitter with massive motors and variable props may be the way to go. The motors only need to make a lot of power for maybe 30 to 45 secs, until the wings take over. But will the same motor be too inefficient at cruise levels? Adding any extra motors/blades add a lot of weight or drag. Actually, extra motors and more pitch may work. I think a Warp 11 is only 200-300 lbs. But now you need huge battery power. So an ICE is needed. See the problems? That is why no one has done it yet.
youre right David… carrying bigger payloads isnt safe yet until we get better energy density from our batteries.
The big option is having an onboard generator driven by a small turbine combined with a capacitor bank instead of batteries. possibly 3 gas engines driving 2 meter+ props may lift 1 person safely but the lack of prop speed changes could be dangerous.
As far as tailsitters go, they are far too unstable in hover in any wind above 5 knots so they are totally out of the picture.
As I see it, a 3 or 4 pivoting-prop layout is the best option as it allows for a wing that has certain design elements that other aircraft dont have.
Ive designed this bird to be as efficient as possible and I still see no way to make it with a 6-7 meter span that 1 could fly on
Even a 3 prop.tail sitter? I would think it would be as stable as a tricopter, but may need to tilt on motor for yaw. I have been looking at the Puffin design which is very innovative. The Blackfly actually does fly, as does the Lilium I think. Those are the only two full size prototypes that have actually flown that I know of. The Ehang may also be in that group.
Those aircraft fly… for 10 minutes. their core designs are horribly inefficient.
My main gripe about tailsitters is their profile when they are in hover… too much exposed surfaces to wind.
The lilium actually has a decent range, and is fairly efficient. Of course, it also could burn up at any time 
Kittyhawks Cora has too much drag. There has to be a design that will work for more than 10 mins of hover. I would not be comfortable with much less than 30 mins total hover , and that doesnt include cruise time. I cant find any turbine powered vtol designs.
OK, I checked in on the Lilium again and it appears they have not transitioned to forward flight yet. IMO, their wing design is faulty and wont provide efficient lift due to the slots for the engines.
There is a startup that looked promising (using props and a turboshaft generator) .
XTI TriFan 600
xtiaircraft
I dont know whats going on with this, they have a lot of top aviation execs involved but it seems to be dead.
funny, its like a giant convergence.
I watched the triphan 60% simulator video and it looked like a tissue paper model, and the fans almost fell off. It could not have weighed a 10th of what it should have. Kittyhawk seems to have the only thing that really works, and its a go cart.
Ok, I am getting back to this project. First I want to add elevator control to the front rotors in hover. I am thinking I need a parameter to scale the vectored thrust and the multicopter thrust. Any thoughts? I think the change needs to be made in quadplane.cpp.
What do you mean by elevator control of front rotors?
This PR adds a manual trim for forward rotor tilt:
On the Convergence in MR mode the elevator stick tilts both motors fore and aft, in the same direction, to move the plane forward or backwards. Ardupilot does not do that. The motors move in opposite directions for yaw control.
So is that what you meant by “elevator control”, the “stock” controller’s MR mode?
I’ve been playing with adding similar capabilities to the quadplane code, but without giving up pitch control on the elevator stick:
So far, I prefer using an extra channel for “forward throttle”, as in the first PR.
It would be great if you could test some of these changes and suggest improvements.
I will test as soon as I figure out why I am getting the message Motorstri: unable to set up yaw channel.
I keep checking the parameters, and they seem right. I have a Matek F405-wing, and servo 7 is set to motor4.
In MotorsTri.cpp k_motor7 function should return 11, but it is getting 0. Q_FRAME is set to Tri, Q_TILT_TYPE is VectoredYaw, Q_TILT_MASK = 3. I must be missing something but can not find it.
Can you post you full param file
I figured it out. Yaw min and max pwm were both zero. I will review your changes and try to test today. If I don’t kill yet another F404-wing. The USB port is too fragile, and the metal shield wiggles until the solder breaks, the the shield falls off. You can resolder if you are careful, but it will be even weaker. I have had three boards do this .
hey folks i’m thinking about building a tricopter VTOL with the tilting tail rotor as the cruise motor because it’s too inefficient to run the other two in cruise (optimized for hover not cruise). the tail rotor might as well be binary because pitch control would probably be done more conveniently through just RPM control in hover mode, without any tail tilt. I think the difference between this idea and the OP is that i don’t use the two front rotors in cruise at all. I plan to use collapsible CF rotors that hopefully will fair into the nacelle by drag.
Just read this post but not sure if i’m following the conversation, so: is there any functioning version of the code that will allow my configuration? I read the VTOL documentation two three times over and then this post and got the impression that my configuration isn’t supported in any way. thanks.
I’m new to Github, if there’s a ‘branch’ or test code that sorta works I will perhaps try to build a foam prototype with my small spare motors just to test the water so to speak. I checked out kd0aij posted above but not really following what that is for or how to customize it for my configuration.
Should work with the stock code, have you seen this?
You would just have the yaw servo on the single motor rather than one for each side.
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