3 ms·

Yeah... but is scaling down the 'single big rotor' mechanisms used by real helicopters that difficult? would it be more expensive than developing a lightweight

• dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Yeah... but is scaling down the 'single big rotor' mechanisms used by real helicopters that difficult? TL;DR: Yes. TS;WM (Too Short, Want More): The top-and-tail rotor design relies on varying pitch on the individual blades of the top rotor at different points in their rotation (rather than varying speed on separate rotors) for translation, varying pitch (the baseline/average pitch of all blades throughout rotation) of the main rotor for lift, and pitch of the tail rotor for rotation. Quad/octorotor designs get all of that by just vary rotor speed without the additional machinery needed to vary blade pitch, which makes the vastly easier to build at small scale.