Slashdot Mirror
DraganFly III Gyro-stabilized RC Helicopter
Pronoun54 writes "It hovers! It spins! It spies!
The Draganflyer III weighs just 17 ounces with its high-tech stabilization system. "As an eye in the sky, the Draganflyer III can be used indoors or out, up to a mile away, to take aerial views of real estate, promote products at trade shows, or give the guy in the next cube a close encounter he won't soon forget." "One more advantage of the Draganflyer III: if you're grounded by bad weather, you can still open the throttle and hover indoors." Their site has videos of this thing in action both indoors and out. Seems like it can move pretty fast at top speed." The Times has a piece talking about the piezo gyroscopes (including purty pictures) that the chopper uses to self-stabilize.
I had a similar craft called the "UFO", which was maybe 50% larger than this one, but exactly the same design. Four props, two counter-rotating, with fancy stabilization electronics.
I've flow planes, gliders, gas helicopters, electric helicopters, and mini helicopters, but this 4-bladed craft was harder than any of them.
The problem is with yaw stability. Any time I tried to do a fast straight flyby, the craft would slightly rotate (yaw) in the wind. It's exceedingly hard to visually see which leg is the "nose" and keep it forward.
That, and the flight times are abysmally low. The four motors weigh quite a bit, and use a huge amount of power to stay airborne.
That, with the difficulty in forward flight makes one prefer hovering, where power is used even faster.
All in all, a nice idea, but I threw mine out after crashing it repeatedly from disorientation. I even tried spraypainting the nose leg orange, no luck. It's that very slow sneaky rotation that gets the controls all goofed up.
A helicopter has a tail fin that helps orient it nose-to-the-wind in flight. This craft needs something like that before it can fly figure eights with the same ease.
Aren't the real deals hard to fly?
I cannot speak for the RC ones, but nothing was as infuriating as just trying to hover a R22. While building time to get my instrument ticket, I had the chance to pick up some helicopter time. Seemed like an easy thing to do, right? After all, I knew the airspace - all I had to do was learn to use some new controls. Many weekends later, I came home to celebrate... I hovered! Nothing ever made me swear like trying to get something to just stay in one spot.
I cannot imaging trying to control an RC version from a third person perspective....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Wonder if they could apply fuel cell tech to this to make it fly longer and "recharge" quicker.