The Raptor E1 has been VTOLized not much more to day.
There is a penalty of ~ 1 hour in endurance and 0.9 Kg in weight from the VTOL modification. However as the power train was further optimised to draw less than 8 ams at cruise at 16.5 m/s endurance for payloads of ~ 1 Kg is still up to 4-5 hours.
Had to use the Copter default PIDs to get the QUAD mode to work, the standard QUAD rates were too aggresive for our setup but it flies great in QLOITER.
Yes, took off at QSTAB and there was ~14 knot wind.
But QHOVER keeps it steady. In general prefer to take off in QSTAB rather than QHOVER or QLOITER and then transition to a more stabilised mode prior to transition to FBWA.
Yes, they key was the low drag NLMF fuselage design and the airfoil optimization. Once this was set we have been improving power train ever since. So we have gained significant experience working with low power requirements for Cella Energy [hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer UK] and Horizon Energy Systems [Singapore]. So we have tried pretty much everything from 32" props with 80-120 KV motors at 6S to 18" props with 270-320 KV motors. The current setup is performing pretty well with power consumption at 16.5 m/s between 3-8 Amps at cruise.
not much more to day.