What is VTOL?
Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) is becoming a dominant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) type. At first look, the VTOL looks like just an airplane. Indeed, it is an airplane with a wing. However, the fixed-wing airplane needs a runway. Although a pilot can throw small UAVs, they need a dedicated runway to carry payloads. The runway is the very problem — building or using a runway is expensive!
As we are interested in UAVs, we wish anything that can fly could take off vertically, just like multirotors and helicopters. If so, we can save the time, effort, and money of flying fixed-wing aircraft.
Now, it would be an excellent question if one asks why don’t we keep using the quadrotor type. If we think about the energy consumption of the multirotors or helicopters, they use all the energy (fuel and battery) to defy gravity. If the power is out, they will crash. However, with the fixed-wings and forward velocity, the aerial vehicle can fly in the air without any power. They are called gliders. Also, even during the flight, the fixed-wing aircraft only uses energy to keep a certain airspeed. Then, the wing will take care of the gravity.
There are many types of VTOLs
Jet Type
Tilt-Rotor Type
Tailsitter Type
Among the above, a tiltrotor and tailsitter could be more suitable. As a tailsitter can be easily built compared to the tiltrotor, for some reason, I wish to build a tail sitter first.
Why do we plan to develop one from scratch?
To begin with, I purchased a low-cost Chinese-made model made of foam. However, the elevon (elevator + aileron) is too small. This won’t give us good control authority. So, I decided to build one from scratch!
First Attempt
Using some aluminum structures and cardboard, I build a prototype. As it is a prototype, I’m not planning to fly this model at the moment. Let’s see how this is going to turn out.
