A personal "helicopter"

[CanAm]

What do you make of this?

[HoHoHo]

I guess if you're a crap pilot you're going to be guaranteed being hit by quite a lot of fast moving knives and becoming a chip rather than two or three like a normal chopper.

The bouncy ball suspension/seat looks a bit Heath-Robinson is you ask me

[Chuck328]

That old adage "If it looks right it'll fly right" springs to mind....


Wouldn't want anything more than a fart for a breeze on that either for fear of upsetting it, and me!

[anonymous-user]

Why saddle the tech with a dumb and heavy human? Much better when autonomous !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-dkonAXOlQ&fea...

[AV12]

Interesting, although you'll look like some sort of comic book arch-villain arriving somewhere.

No cover from the elements and I don't fancy a sea landing on one of those - it would have to be way inland for flight for me

I'd have a go having said that

[Geneve]

Looks like an accident in waiting

[0a]

I really want one for some reason.

[dr_gn]

Bedazzled said:

Even just playing around with an R/C heli, I really don't like the idea of a pilot sitting in the same plane as the main rotor blades; as shown here (@3min, NSFW contains some expletives)

I'd feel uncomfortable too, but it's very unlikely they'd snap like that - they're solid blades on the O/P video rather than pivoted, and there's not much that could damage them.

[mrloudly]

Model heli's generally don't do that if built correctly :-) This guy's one of the best http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N--uP8Y1gn4

[dr_gn]

Bedazzled said:

Wow that heli has some power, amazing flying too, it's like break dancing in the sky. Here is my favourite, a bit slower so I can actually see what he's doing!

In the vid I posted the heli suffers a blade failure, the root was still attached in the blade grip, I wouldn't want to be in the way. I've also seen a heli jettison its blades after the feathering shaft bolts worked loose; someone forgot to loctite them...

I think the blade broke because it hit the canopy (or the canopy hit the blade). Becasue it's pivoted rather than one piece there will always be a degree of slop in the pivot which wouldn't be there in a solid blade. The roots of a solid blade are much thicker too.

[mrloudly]

Some of the latest "700" class electrics are kicking about 6bhp weighing about 6kg RTF

It's the same as anything, if you use crap parts and assemble the head, indeed heli, poorly, they will fail...

I screwed up on a large (2m rotor 26cc petrol) Vario benzin trainer. Wound the head speed up well past the published safe limit and the grips let go
heli was about 100' up at the time. What suprised me was, although the blades departed, being light they very quickly lost their energy. The bang woke me up though!!

Now fly 700 Class electrics (same power/size as the Goblin). You just have to respect them, they will kill you!

[mrloudly]

The stability is augmented by very hi-tech gyro systems. Is a Segway un-stable? Same principle but in three dim's Roll, pitch and yaw. At the end of the day you've got sixteem brushless motors with sixteen ESC's and 32 batteries (2 x 6s each motor 44v DC). I'd be quite happy to sit on it, never get me off the floor though LOL