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Australian-Built Hoverbike Prepares For Takeoff
Zothecula writes "Adventurous motorcyclists might be familiar with the thrill of getting airborne at the top of a rise, but the Hoverbike is set to take catching some air to a whole new level. With a 1170 cc 4-stroke engine delivering 80 kW driving two ducted propellers, the inventor of the Hoverbike, Chris Malloy, says with its high thrust to weight ratio, the Hoverbike should be able to reach an estimated height of more than 10,000 feet and reach an indicated airspeed of 150 knots (278 km/h or 173 mph). At the moment these are only theoretical figures as the Hoverbike hasn't been put through its paces yet, but Malloy has constructed a prototype Hoverbike and plans to conduct real world flight tests in a couple of months."
The most epic race series. Get this thing running and get it running NOW!
Hoverbike Applications:
Aerial Cattle mustering
Search and Rescue...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
With MAGIC!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
more like "useless, but cool "
I hope somebody with money to burn backs these guys to get it to actually work.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Or you could just turn? I bet you're one of those people that slams into the car in front of you with both lanes on either side wide open.
I sure wouldn't want to faceplant into the cuisinart on the front of that thing.
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Why are you flying so low you can hit a kid anyway?
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Just rev up and give him a hair cut on the way over.
# Airspeed Vne - 150 KIAS (untested)
# Hover (out of ground effect) - >10,000ft (estimated)
seriously slashdot, theres a difference between actual news and pure backyard bullshit.
anyone with even the most remote fucking grasp of physics and flight
should be comfortable debunking his claims as a complete lie.
most commercial helicopters stall out at anything greater than 8000ft; most of the ones flying around my city stick to around 600-800 ft ceilings..
The CH-47 Chinook twin rotor helicopter is used by the USAF to rescue climbers
on Mount Denali (McKinley) in AK. It can reach an altitude in excess of 19000 to land at an elevation of around 18000.
The biggest problem at that point is restarting the engines,
so a special storage device directs pure oxygen into the engine inlet to restart.
the highest altitude helicopter currently in existence is the AS350. A pilot named Didier Delsalle of France landed it on the summit of Mount
Everest (8,850 meters) in 2005...and the record is entirely speculative/disputed.
finally, A blackhawk military helicopter with a 1700 horsepower engine still only goes ~190 kias.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Or you could, I dunno, stay more than 6 feet off the ground? With a 10k ft. limit, I don't think too many children are playing in the clouds.
In case I'm being chased by a thug with a meat tenderizer on his head.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
This thing seems like it would be unstable in roll, with the thrust apparently happening at or below the cg height of the vehicle. There might be some gyroscopic stability but I doubt that is enough for the vehicle to be safe under gusts or even manuevering, even though the guy claims some marginal instability is ok in the FAQ (what is the time to double a disturbance in roll attitude for this setup?). For what it's worth, I'm a fourth year aerospace engineering student.
Which is exactly what they said about the first motorcycles, cars, airplanes, helicopters, submarines, etc...
I mean who would want to ride in some loud mechanical contraption when the horse and buggy are still around?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Because the gov't isn't going to allow these things to fly unrestricted probably. It really should be called a helibike.
...although the manned ones would probably still get you.
I don't know how they'd catch you, though...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
How would he maintain lateral stability in that thing? Flap his arms? Looks like it would roll over as soon as you gun it. There doesn't appear to be any engineering to take that into account. What is this guys hoping this thing will fly on, hopes and prayers?
How exactly to they expect this thing to stop?
I see this scenario playing out:
1. Guy goes too fast on hoverbike
2. Kid runs after ball, runs in front of bike, then realizes the guy is riding at least 50 ft above him, then he gets his ball
3. Bike makes no attempts to stop since it is far above the boy on the street
4. Bike passes kid harmlessly remaining upright and under control
5. Kid looks at oncoming car in horror
6. Mel Gibson runs over kid and yells, "You Abo scum will not grow up to sleep with me wife!
FIFY
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
So there's my flying car. About damned time.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
How many kids do you know that play with balls at 10,000 feet of altitude? Or did you even bother to read the summary?
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Exactly. All stable, multi-fans have triangle or quadrangle arrangement to create a stable platform.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxktEwqxbC0
Draw a triangle on paper. Next, draw a square.
Very good. Now, draw a line.
If the problem doesn't leap out at you immediately, you are lacking in the ability to perform some very basic assessments.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
When I look at the design, its lack of stability and a rider sitting above the fan, only one thing comes to mind - what a perfect candidate for the darwin awards.
Airplanes have to ability to glide to an extent, helicopters can auto-rotate. I seriously doubt that the rotors on this are big enough to auto-rotate, or that the designer made the calculations necessarily in order to design something that can auto-rotate.
You could use a parachute but parachutes take time to deploy and slow your decent so while effective at higher altitudes, at lower altitudes, like say the altitude at which you would be herding cattle, an engine failure would leave you heading towards the ground without enough time to deploy the chute.
I'd fly this is there were 2 engines such that one engine could power both fans, and 1 engine had enough power to at least hover and make a safe decent. Even then, I'd still probably bring a parachute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Ul6-mQh8g
You want only two? They better have the "wingspan" of a Chinook!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It's a beautiful piece of kit. If this were a Deviant Art sculpture project, I'd be in. The fact that these jokers think it'll actually FLY makes it better.
Looking forward to more tests. I also think this thing will kill a lot of pilots. But whatever.
um.
1. Guy goes too fast on hoverbike
2. Kid runs after ball, runs in front of bike
3. Bike attempts to avoid kid by GOING UP IN THE AIR
4. Bike, having access to the third dimension, is not concerned with Kid or Ball.
About as many as the number of hoverbikes.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
- Very safe. The hoverbike was designed with safety as the over-riding factor in all design. If you have ever flown and pre-flight checked a helicopter you will appreciate the simplicity of this design. With so many parts on a helicopter - and a large number of single parts that could alone cause catastrophic disaster if they should fail - it is just a matter of time. The hoverbike has as many components as possible with triple redundancy which requires at least 2 other components to fail before you might have a serious airborne failure. This combined with a massive reduction in total parts (compared to a helicopter) and the hoverbike becomes safer and cheaper.
- Parachutes. With the hoverbike you have the choice to wear an emergency parachute and have two explosive parachutes attached to the airframe, with a helicopter you have no such choice. The hoverbike in it's current configuration cannot autorotate (with adjustable pitch propellers it can) but this should not be viewed as a discredit to the design. Engine failure in a helicopter or plane by no means assures you that you will survive a autorotation or glide, as air crash statistics show. The option of removing yourself from the vehicle and descending via parachute to the ground may well save your life
- The propeller blades will have on the next revision (and certainly the final product sold) a fine mesh over the entire ducting, which will stop any wandering hands or large debri from entering the duct.
WAH! TRIPLE REDUNDANCY WITH FEWER PARTS! ZOMG!
THE OPTION OF REMOVING YOURSELF FROM THE VEHICLE!
I want the optional GIANT GYROSCOPE HELMET!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Why don't the blades have a deeper pitch/depth to them. From what I've heard, this increases the efficiency of the wind sucked underneath.
It's the same with cooling fans. Manufacturers (apart from the previous few) always make the blades super thin. It's really dumb, and it causes them to be much louder and waste more energy. Compare:
http://www.skytopia.com/stuff/fan.jpg
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...but in New Zealand, we tinker round with these bad boys
:-)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/29/1257212/Martin-Jetpack-Climbs-5000-Feet-Above-Sea-Level
"Call that a knife? THIS. Is a knife."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqghpm4gXf4
---
How exactly to they expect this thing to stop?
By hitting a tree.
From the FAQ:
From the summary of vehicle regulations for ultralight aircraft at http://www.ultralightflying.com/ultralight-vehicle-regulations/ultralight-vehicle-regulations.html:
The two items I've emphasized above in bold conflict with current specifications of the prototype: A 30 litre fuel tank and a 150 knots indicated airspeed max. And, the dry weight (105kg) is skirting perilously close to the maximum permissible dry weight of an FAA ultralight, too. They can't afford to add 10kg to the weight of the prototype before going production, or it busts that standard too, and if they're going to a more robust prop design or a bigger engine, it could happen.
And, btw, anyone care to speculate what the power-off stall speed of a direct-lift non-autorotating rotary wing aircraft might be?
So, no, if nothing else changes, the FAA will not accept the Hoverbike as an ultralight.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
To compound this problem, I don't seen any way to direct airflow sideways in the design.
His two ass-clown sons need a place to rest their no-nos.
Why are you flying so low you can hit a kid anyway?
The kid is playing hover ball with his jet pack you insensitive clod.
We're way behind on schedule already. They should have happened now.
I really, really hope that this guy and the jetpack guy manages to create a safe and working product. We need flying cars in this world. Why? It was promised so long ago!
01 REDEFINE REALITY.
you don't know what autorotate means in terms of helimacopters?!!!
"Cannot autorotate" means if you lose power to the rotors, you have no lift. ie, you plummet, rather than glide.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
..at least, not under U.S. rules. The bottom speed is slow enough, but the quoted top speed is much too high. Those who point out it probably can't fly as high as quoted are dead on target. Helicopters quote two values: hovering in ground effect (HIGE), and hovering out of ground effect (HOGE). The reason they're quoted is that there is a real problem in getting altitude performance from a rotary wing aircraft. Like all too many new aircraft announcements, the numbers we are quoted appear to be paper calculations, likely by someone not all that well qualified to do the calculations. One of two things is likely to happen: the thing will slide quietly into oblivion, or we'll hear of this spectacular crash. Let's hope it's the former, not the latter.
From a pilot's point of view, that looks hideously unstable and unbelievably unsafe... But I'd sure as hell go fly it. It also looks AWESOME...
In comparison, with the Hoverbike, "Contrary to popular belief, having greater mass above the centre of pressure does not mean an unstable craft (yes it is less inherently stable than below)."
Or, in the immortal words, "one of these things is not like the other."
I expect that the Hoverbike is has about the same static lateral stability as a real bike: not very much. I suppose you could market it as "relaxed aerodynamic stability", although without fly-by-wire and computer stabilization, it doesn't sound like it'd be much fun to ride.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'd rather take this one, because it isn't vaporware...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
It's getting classified as an ultralight, so riders won't need a pilot's license.
For whatever *that's* worth
We'll have to see if this is any less vaporware than the Skycar
http://www.moller.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=58
I dunno, I want the hoverbike, but I do love The Leader and his Movementarians.
Monstar L
Or more importantly, the Chinook has swash plates, so the rotors themselves can roll the aircraft.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I see, um, fatal flaws. Mainly the ability to self-right, glide or auto rotate. Basically, anything that might go wrong will result in a uncontrolled flight into terrain.
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Please explain by how pointing out the same has been said in the past about other vehicles that I am making "it sound like machines can still be built by amateurs and be safe". I neither implied nor inferred that anywhere, and was wondering how you came to that conclusion.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Lots of people would disagree with you.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
The rotors would add gyroscopic stability to the thing in the same way as the wheels on a bicycle make it easier to keep upright when moving. It could well be enough stabilisation to make riding this no more difficult of a balancing act than cycling - depending of course on the weight of the rotors, etc.
It seems like the Hoverbike seems to be a lame attempt to cash in on the success of the Martin Jetpack.
To me, the Hoverbike looks like a deathtrap: the pilot is sitting above the lift propellers and with a centre of gravity higher than the centre of lift and no apparent method for lateral stabilization it will tip over the moment the pilot leans to far to one side. In their FAQ, they attempt to brush off the stability issue by talking about fixed-wing aircraft: aircraft that don't hover and that have a large tailplane for lateral stability. Also, saying that the aircraft is safer because the pilot can leap off and use their own parachute just seems wrong to me.
Power needed to hover would go down with the square of the rotor diameter. Why not make them, say, 6ft instead of 4ft in diameter -- you'd need less than half the power.
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Scientists expect a breakthrough "when pigs fly".
Have gnu, will travel.
With a 1170 cc 4-stroke engine delivering 80 kW driving two ducted propellers, the inventor of the Hoverbike, Chris Malloy,
Wow, those are some impressive stats. He should be able to hover even WITHOUT the hoverbike.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
really?
This thread needs a LOT more comments about CONTROLLABILTY. That thing is going to be completely unstable. 10,000 feet? Ha! It'll flip before it gets to 100 feet.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Progressive would insure that ride...
Its a sad day when 90% of the comments I've read here are from trolls and doubters. Slashdot posts a fascinating article about a really cool new invention and if there is anywhere he should find support it should be here. If everyone says its "snake oil", "don't listen", "don't try", "go away" we'd never have the Wright Brothers who would easily be discounted as inventors tinkering in their workshops today.
He's already facing tough odds and breaking ground. An innovative technology community should understand that.
I know this will probably be marked trolling; just check yourselves. Support instead of heckle.
PS I'm a kiwi. I have no reason to support this team, but damn, tip of my hat to them. Bloody good job Aussie.
I've actually done a little experimenting with the gyroscopic effect of a bicycle wheel. It has to be spinning very fast or be artificially heavily weighted to be have forces large enough to help keep the bike upright. In actual practice, it doesn't help at all. If you don't correct with steering or balance changes, no amount of gyro force is going to keep a bike upright. Furthermore, the spinning wheel also opposes the turning of the handlebar which is the cyclist's primary tool for keeping a bike upright. It would actually be easier to operate a bicycle in the absence of gyroscopic forces.
The claim that gyroscopic action of a bicycle's wheels make it easier to keep a bike vertical is pure BS offered by teachers who aren't thinking carefully. They say it because it sounds plausible and that's what their teachers told them. Alas, it's just not true.
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The best feature is ensured weight loss. See, if you stop pedaling you fall and die. No excuse now, fatties.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
The reason for the tethers and the 3 feet max, is cause he needs to get it checked by the aviation authority of his state for airworthiness to be able to go further, something which takes a while to cut through the red tape.
They aren't built (in the sense of the GP), merely assembled.
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How exactly to they expect this thing to stop?
By hitting a tree.
Well, not sure I can fault that. It is a tried, tested and true method. ;-)
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Inanimate objects don't prepare things. Furthermore, the verb tense is wrong. Someone is preparing it. The infinitive tense of 'prepares' would be something like "He prepares more donuts every day".
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I was beginning to wonder when someone would state the painfully obvious. But I think the engineers for this project are going to face some nasty results if the machine fails, deploys the parachute, and the pilot is not tethered to the machine. I believe that the machine would land reasonably safe, but I would be surprised about the fate of the pilot. Its a cool looking device, I immediately thought, we'll see it demonstrated on the next James Bond movie.
I guess Larry could debate that with you on point?
"The reason for the tethers and the 3 feet max,"
/. I'd like to see some evidence of it working, and that means a video of it lifting off the ground to at least 10 feet.
You do realize there isn't even a video of this thing lifting off the ground, right? Only video they have is one showing blades spinning with smoke going through it.
I could attach two fans to a chair, doesn't mean it goes an estimated 190mph or above 10,000 ft.
Before showing up on
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2225174&cid=36390518 Yes, it appears they do, don't they, drinkypoo?
What kind of softcock anonymously stalks slashdot nerds? You are a sad man.
A very sad, sad little man.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?