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. With our testing results last week, including sufficiently low measured power numbers, we are confident that Atlas has what it takes to capture the prize. Of course… Continue Reading
Controls Refined with Reduced Line Friction
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… Continue Reading
FAI AOB Grant Awarded to AeroVelo, Supports Continued Testing in 2013
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. The… Continue Reading
January 18th Testing Report, Sikorsky Prize Attempt January 25th
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… Continue Reading
Awesome Testing Session Friday, Including 25-Second Flight
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… Continue Reading
Further Improvements and Canard Testing
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: Smoothing the Control System Response We learned from testing this summer that we had plenty of authority with our control system. However, we knew there were some issues with imbalances in… Continue Reading
Kickstarter rewards shipped!
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… Continue Reading
Flight Video of 17 Second Controlled Flight
We’ve just uploaded video of our best flight so far. Check it out at: http://youtu.be/pJYISQ-EAIw 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… Continue Reading
Rotor Trimming Optimization Yields 20% Power Savings!
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… Continue Reading
Rotor Surgery for a New and Improved Design
This week we undertook a small bit of surgery, which should simultaneously resolve three of the critical issues we saw in the first round of flight testing. The end result is that the rotors will be tilted up more at the root, which will, first, give them more ground clearance and help prevent the ground… Continue Reading
