When it comes to hobby rotorcraft, it seems that the more rotors, the better. We’ve seen quadcopters, hexcopters, and octocopters, and maybe a dodecapper is buzzing somewhere. But what about going the other way? What about a rotorcraft with a minimum complement of rotors?
And so we have this unique “flying stick” bike. [Paweł Spychalski]Its creation reminds us of a miniature version of the “Flying Bedstead” that NASA used to train Apollo LM pilots to touch the moon, and which [Neil Armstrong] Some of the attitudes that this little device has found itself have been famously thrown out since the craft was found. The bike is unique thanks to the fuselage of its carbon fiber tube, which is about one meter long and has a rotor at each end. The rotors rotate against each other to control the rotating force and each is mounted on a servo-controlled gimbal for thrust vectoring. The control electronics and batteries are strategically mounted on the tube so that the center of gravity is at approximately equal distances between the rotors.
But can it fly? Yes, but only recently. The video below shows that it must have fallen off the ground, but it bounces a lot trying to find a stable attitude. [Paweł] It seems that gimbling servos are not fast enough to adjust the thrust-vectoring required to keep the stick flying, and we have to agree.
This is not [Paweł]The first expedition to the biker; In 2018 he received the “Fail of the Week” honor for his coaxial dualcopter. The flying stick generally seems to work much better, and even compliments him for bringing it down from the ground.