The single most talked about thing I seem to see is more power in a lite weight power plant, well a couple of years ago Bob Kelly put me on to a UK website for backpack helicopters and that is the same dilemma, even more so.
As has been mentioned on this site, electric power is making strong headway giving more power and lots less weight, the batteries are the weak point. As some of you know I have been advocating several things since almost day one here, my main thoughts always how to conserve wasted energy.
The main approach in this has been to make use of several things in progressive, blended combination. There are many ways to do this and almost all are beyond my knowlege, time and resources, but I have continued to accumulate things I can work with.
After a lot of effort I think a method of reducing power needs has come to light in my mind, based on study and products I have purchased, I will present my thoughts and hope to draw from the wisdom of anyone on the forum that can and will contribute.
A lot of this can be adapted to regular planes in some form or another, but for now the lightest and least power requirement will be a backpack helicopter.
The first thing is to set a start point, and design the basic setup, which I'm thinking two, three blade counter rotating blade sets. An all up weight of 500 pounds (hope for a little less) the major power will be compressed air producing thrust at the six blade tips, electric power will assist the compressor setup.
I purchased a pair of 4.6 HP air motors and have been amazed at the small size, they operate at 3,000 RPM and pass about 150 SCFM. They are cast iron and weigh about 17 pounds each, to me the amazing thing is the physical size of the rotor and inner bore.
The rotor is 2.75" in diameter and 2.5" wide, the bore is 3.3" diameter. they have 4 vanes.
My thoughts are to scale up in size so that a vane motor operates between the rotor blades and the top set turns the housing in one direction, while the lower set of rotor blades turns the rotor in the opposite direction. The compressed air moves straight from the compressor to the tip discharge of the six thrusters.
We will look at the numbers on my next post. Keep your minds open
onder:
Later
Ron
As has been mentioned on this site, electric power is making strong headway giving more power and lots less weight, the batteries are the weak point. As some of you know I have been advocating several things since almost day one here, my main thoughts always how to conserve wasted energy.
The main approach in this has been to make use of several things in progressive, blended combination. There are many ways to do this and almost all are beyond my knowlege, time and resources, but I have continued to accumulate things I can work with.
After a lot of effort I think a method of reducing power needs has come to light in my mind, based on study and products I have purchased, I will present my thoughts and hope to draw from the wisdom of anyone on the forum that can and will contribute.
A lot of this can be adapted to regular planes in some form or another, but for now the lightest and least power requirement will be a backpack helicopter.
The first thing is to set a start point, and design the basic setup, which I'm thinking two, three blade counter rotating blade sets. An all up weight of 500 pounds (hope for a little less) the major power will be compressed air producing thrust at the six blade tips, electric power will assist the compressor setup.
I purchased a pair of 4.6 HP air motors and have been amazed at the small size, they operate at 3,000 RPM and pass about 150 SCFM. They are cast iron and weigh about 17 pounds each, to me the amazing thing is the physical size of the rotor and inner bore.
The rotor is 2.75" in diameter and 2.5" wide, the bore is 3.3" diameter. they have 4 vanes.
My thoughts are to scale up in size so that a vane motor operates between the rotor blades and the top set turns the housing in one direction, while the lower set of rotor blades turns the rotor in the opposite direction. The compressed air moves straight from the compressor to the tip discharge of the six thrusters.
We will look at the numbers on my next post. Keep your minds open
onder:Later
Ron
