Today and tomorrow the Gamera team from the University of Maryland will be making official attempts at the Sikorksy Prize. If this prize wasn”t hard enough already, the competition is certainly making it so!
Friday was quite an incredible day on several fronts. The massive snow storm, that pretty much shut down Toronto, ended up being a real blessing for us. With the evening soccer cancelled, we had an extra few hours to fly, giving us an excellent chance to make a strike for the prize. After many trimming flights, we started began testing the controls, but unfortunately upon full actuation the blades were thrown out of balance and a rotor ended up striking a line and snapping a spar. Of course this is the nature of flight testing, and the nature of any real challenge.
This Friday, February 8th, we will be making another attempt at the AHS Sikorsky Prize. Following our flight tests two weeks ago, we have made modifications to the truss in order to keep the rotors more level, and to prevent the bracing lines from going slack under the higher drive loads seen during a harder sprint.
Yesterday, was an extremely exciting day! We did not end up making an attempt at the AHS Sikorsky Prize, but we were definitely getting close enough to taste it! In out trim flights leading up to the attempt we managed a steady 5 foot climb and a flight that lasted about 30 seconds. You can watch our best flight here. When we tried a higher powered climb, the rotors were quickly thrown out of balance and the flight was blown down. Our best guess is that higher forces on the drive lines are deflecting the structure and causing crucial bracing lines to go slack. With the lines slack we lose our torsional stiffness and it’s easy to have a ground/line strike with one of the blades. We’ll be addressing the issue and back for a second attempt in a couple of weeks time. Continue reading below for a full summary.
On Friday, January 25th, we will be making an official attempt at the AHS Sikorsky Prize. For updates throughout the day, you can follow our twitter feed @AeroVelo.
One of the last modifications we made before we started flight testing two weeks ago, was to reduce the friction in the control system.
As we’ve seen in the past, small imbalances in lift can easily throw a blade sky high while driving the other one into the ground. When we actuate the controls, the lift on both blades of a given rotor should increase or decrease evenly. But if there are large amounts of static friction in the control line it could lead to one canard moving move than the other and throwing off the balance. So we set out to measure and reduce the static friction between the rotor hub and the canard at the tip.
The Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI, The World Air Sports Federation) has awarded the 2012 Prince Alvaro de Orleans Borbon Grant to AeroVelo for the Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter Project! We would like to extend our extreme gratitude to the FAI for this great honour and for their ongoing support. You can read the FAI's release here.
Hi Everyone,
This week we performed another day of testing at the Soccer Centre with the Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter. We conducted five flights overall. The first three were to trim the rotors without canards, balancing each blade and equalizing lift. The final two flights were to balance the rotors with the control canards installed, with the final flight including a control effectiveness test. In the continued lead-up and preparation for an attempt on the AHS Sikorsky Prize, we had two main objectives:
Hey Everyone!
This Friday we conducted a very successful flight testing session, culminating in a 25-second flight. We came into the day focused on taking our time, and getting each step done correctly before moving onto the next objective, as opposed to the more rushed atmosphere in which summer flight testing was conducted. Our goals going into the day were:
Hey everyone!
We wanted to send out a quick update on some of our improvements from this week. Here's what we've been working on:
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone that supported us during our Kickstarter campaign earlier in the summer.
This week we received the order of patches and t-shirts, finished up the engineering drawings and put together a beautiful set of framed Atlas ribs. We’ve shipped all of the packages, so depending on where you are in the world you should be receiving it sometime relatively soon. We hope that everyone is pleased with their rewards! We’re certainly pleased with how they turned out and it’s great to have the opportunity to give something meaningful to the people that have supported us.
We've just uploaded video of our best flight so far. Check it out at:
On September 3rd, Atlas demonstrated the first controlled, non-tethered, flight of a human-powered helicopter. The flight lasted a total of 17 seconds, during which the drift of the helicopter was controlled by the pilot through the actuation of control surfaces on the tips of the rotors. The flight represents a significant step in satisfying the requirements of the American Helicopter Society Sikorsky Prize. With a little further refinement, we'll be back out for a second round of testing.
This week we spent several days at The Soccer Centre optimizing the rotor and canard angle settings (Angle of Attack, in aerodynamics) in an effort to save power. Throughout trimming and flight testing in August, the rotors were set at or just below the angles for which they were designed in HeliCalc (our design and optimization program). However, given the various realities of constructing the rotors (fairings and adapters, the final airfoil shape, surface textures) we weren’t sure whether this was actually the best angle for the lowest possible power. With our extremely ambitious schedule we didn’t take the time to do the trimming studies required to determine the perfect angle settings, thinking we would have plenty of power margin. We’re finding out now how much energy could have been saved!