Building a Rocket Drone 

Would the propellers cause drag when you ignite the rocket? And yes build a bigger and faster one!

Another banger James - love the rocket videos :)

Hi James , it’s me Anthony Stama the kid who emailed you that’s building a 3-D printed jet F 22 (edit wow this is the most likes I’ve ever gotten. Thank you.🙏🏻) edit 2 I did not expect to get more than five likes. Thank you.

Cool! I think you can combine the fins with the drones arms to reduce drag. Also a 5 inch should hit around a 100mph to begin with, check your config. Higher pitch props will be better for the top speed but drone props don’t come in very high pitches so you might need to check out some airplane props. Looking forward to seeing where this goes 😃

Sweet! Hope you're well, James. On my 5 inch, running 6s, I get 106mph with a GoPro strapped on. That's with freestyle props, not racing. You managed to go well over that. Maybe you should build one that will lift the Turbine and fuel!!😂

I fly quads, should say, your drone is kinda very slow in stock.. modern stock 5 inch setups fly 100 mph quite easily, without cones and rocket motors. 6s, 1950kv motors, 5146 props give 180km/h and that's quite typical setup

GO BIGGER!!! Maybe something with multiple rocket engines and more powerful electric motors. Edit: Used the wrong wording. When you speak eight languages, getting everything is difficult sometimes. Thank you for the correction.

Ukraine and Russia have entered the chat

Great Video! Nice to see you get help from Emma. Hope this enables you two to approach even bigger projects!

The take that space X got me cracking up 😂

I watch so many of these project type channels I’ve gotten ridiculously good at seeing a pcbway sponsor coming from a mile away lol

It’s so nice to hear a young person who speaks well.

Ukrainians watching this and taking notes…..

This reminds me a lot of Thunderbird 1 from the 60's Thunderbirds show. An awesome build!

1:12 for this speed, you don't need a rocket engine.. My normal FPV drone can fly around 120mph fast...

19:49 I say not only bigger drone, and bigger rockets, but MULTIPLE rockets. In two stages. Both will be cluster rockets. Ramp up the challenge to 11! LETS GOOOO! (also good job on this model.)

My drones already do 135+ mph without rockets...

Dude! From here in the States we congratulate you and, mostly, the spirts of you two! Carry on!

this man is going to be SO valuable in the drone wars.

Nicely done! If you want to improve the system, bury the rotor spars in the fins. That'll fair in both the fore and aft of the spars and sharply reduce the drag.

Excelent work! Greetings from Ukraine 😉

I’m sure combining stabilisers with motor arms could save weight and improve aerodynamics.

So.. Rocket = awesome Drone = awesome.. Rocket drone = Double awesome... But when is the Reliant project?

you should make this a series

501 Missed calls from Lockheed Martin

Autolevel mode is worth putting on a switch. That way when you’re camera is facing the wrong way, you have a safe mode to land. Same for trying to land that rocket body. Fly in acro, land in autolevel.

Love your vids bro

As a pyrotechnician, I tested the same thing 3 years ago. It's cool to see that others have come up with the same idea.

You know we all want you to go BIG!!

You can prevent the plastic that melts from sticking to the rocket motor by adding a layer of baking paper in between the plastic and the engine. It will still melt, but it wont stick and just harden again once the engine cuts out.

BUILD IT BIGGER!!! PLEAAAAASE

Lovechild between drone and rocket 😄

Killer concept. I wonder how much ordinance this could carry with some long range wings? Fire the rocket to defeat countermeasures at the last minute, type thing. Slava Ukraine!

Soon as I put FPV goggles on and it felt backwards I'd tell my assistant "suddenly it's all backwards!, take them back off so I can try to save it!" Beyond that, some DJI gear would help with content/video quality.

To boost the speed of your future projects, consider drawing inspiration from NASA's X-43 aircraft design. Imagine a hybrid vehicle, part plane, part rocket: initially, it uses a rocket to gain speed and altitude, then transitions to using its propulsion system to build on that momentum. This approach could potentially achieve speeds up to 300 km/h. While I haven't tested this concept in real life, theoretical simulations using software like OpenRocket suggest it's a promising strategy.

What about instead of rocketing the whole drone with the rocket, you detach the rocket (just literally use the drone as a launch pad)? Would be a good use of a titanium strike plate and then just need to design a nice latch system to hold it up until you get ready to fire the rocket

If only you'd painted it silver and blue to make it more like Thunderbird 1...here's hoping you actually do real life Thunderbirds stuff!

Nice James! Nice work and great video material!

"Take that SpaceX" had my dying🤣

Defense contractors are taking notes on this video for sure

Hello James my name is Lloyd Harrison I am 10 and I've been whatching your videos for so long .my suggestion is that you could make a bigger rocket which could go for higher altitudes. Good luck on your next project.

Hey, avid fpv drone pilot here, just wanted to comment that I came with a nice gust of wind at a downward swoop from about 500 meters high with the dji fpv and managed 186 kmh, I'd recommend you do the same , take it high, swoop down with the wind, then engage the rocket, also try to use lighter parts anywhere you can Edit: maybe heavier might actually not be too bad either.... If you do see this comment and try it with success, please give me a shout :P Furthermore: maybe give it dual control surfaces so some servos to use control surfaces like an airplane, and maybe a rat trap mechanism of sorts that folds the arms with props down and out the way, then kind of glide it down... i dunno this last part is a very far stretch.

Would love to see a bigger version, absolutely love your videos!! Engineering FTW!

I think you should not start talking within the first half second of the video as RU-vid sometimes fades in the sound (seems to be some kind of A/B test) and thus makes the first one or two words that come too early hard/impossible to understand.

I’ve got a video idea: What about adding a VR to an RC plane?

Try make thunderbird 1

I.... did not think that would remain controllable. Excellent work!

I see you’ve updated your radio to something decent, now you need to stop using 8 year old motor technology, use Xing or Tmotor stuff will make it much faster. A stock Xing 2306 send my wing to 220mph without much effort last year.

Loved to watch this! 6S battery with some high speed props (higher attack angle and biblade) should see you being less restricted at the top end. Looking forward to the next one

Please continue working on this. A suggestion; try a body wing configuration and use some kind of ducted variable blades for propulsion possible, and/or one central prop behind the quad props at the bass. I've got many more ideas. Or a "fan jet trainer"

Go for it! Bigger faster greater thank you.

Well done, James and Emma! 🙂👍 If you rotate the motor support arms by 90° you should be able to improve the aerodynamics even further. At present they're face on into the airflow. You can also smooth the shape of the fins. Then, if you use a transparent rocket nose, you can mount the camera inside without needing that draggy bubble canopy. Additionally, if you can keep the weight down, you can lengthen the fuselage to reduce drag further. A longer rocket will have proportionally less drag for the same overall volume than a shorter, stubby rocket body like that one. The same principle applies with ships, aeroplane wings and land-based vehicles. Can you also shorten the motor support arms and move the whole propulsion platform further toward the nose? With all of those things in place, and the correct rotors, you might even exceed 100 mph without using the rocket motor. Just think; 250 km/h might be achievable with a rocket motor added.

Not to rain on your parade, but with the right combination of parts you can build a 5 inch racing drone that goes faster than this rocket drone.

maybe for your next vid you could make a rocket go as high as legally possible and maybe start a collab with other youtubers and get permission to go to space!

Some terrified 18 year old conscript hiding in a trench while rocket-powered kamikaze drones explode around him: "WHO KEEPS COMING UP WITH THESE INFERNAL MACHINES?!" 1 year earlier: "WEEEEEEE DRONE GO SHOOOSH"

Brilliant, looks very 1960s Sci Fi. Fireball XL5 anyone.

Is that a Reliant Robin in the background? Put some rocket boosters on that! Lol

You are ready to impress the secret service bro! You have the perfect tool and age for the job.

Love your work! However, on this project I would go in an opposite direction, i.e "send" the drone initially with the rocket (possibly with folded drone arms), then, near the destination reachd, switch to drone motors for controlled loitering/landing...

What you need to do is build a high altitude rocket which launches almost vertically before leveling off and extending wings to glide far and back to the ground

I've always wanted to see a drone with a rocket motor aimed sideways. That is, the drone just hovers, and the rocket moves it forward.

Hello - I am Ali and I teach in the field of electronic engineering and PhD in atomic physics. I see your video from Iran and I love you very much. I wish you success.😍🥰

Dude, that was VERY IMPRESSIVE!!!! You absolutely need to keep testing this idea!

You can get actual model rocket motors that are just that, Booster. You tape them together with celephane tape in series and as the flame front hits the join, the heat melts the tape, empty rocket falls off, next Booster in series ignites. But don't forget, the more boosters the heavier it gets. Great video!

17:05 when you pushed full throttle it reminded me of something like a bassboat going onto plane and going perfectly flat

I think mil-sim reenactors would love to own a drone like this that simulated a javelin missile. Shoulder fired, looks cool and flashy, flies into the air, seeks a target, then comes to a graceful hover just above, signalling to it's target that they've been eliminated by dropping a payload of Jolly Ranchers with paper streamers attached with the inscription, "GG, you're dead!"

I thought of something, similar to that with rocket motors and props back in the 70's even built a frame for them in the early 80's. It's funny but i had the idea for the drone back then lol. Nice work and results :)

It's a UAV, unmanned aerial vehicle. Would love to see more of this! :)

That was much smoother than I was expecting 😅 I thought the rocket would outpace the props and become uncontrollable. Looked great though 👌🏼

I think a big source of drag is the flat area at the back of the rocket body, where you transition from the large diameter tube to the smaller diameter rocket motor. You're dragging a ton of air behind that flat area, so I highly recommend putting a conical cap to make the transition smoother. I am really interested to see this design evolve! Good work as usual!

giving me thunderbird 1 vibes!

My first rocket airplane was the A-10 warthog (1990). I've also built rocket propelled R/C cars. I used titanium plate to not melt the plastic car (2003).

For the landing, I would bring it close to the landing area through FPV, switch to stabilized mode (easy to assign the mode to a switch on your RC with Betaflight ) at a safe height, let it stabilize itself into a hover, remove the goggles and fly it line-of-sight through the landing. Maybe you could try to use ducted fans (EDF) instead of propellers to reduce the drag? Some people have already built EDF drones, they fly ok but, as the power consumption is higher than the propeller drones, the flight time is reduced without offering any advantage. In your project, maybe you'll get higher speeds?

Many flight controllers can control servos, if you have a spare channel on the tx/rx you can use a knob to control the pitch of the fpv camera using a single axis gimbal. Some flight controllers also have support for controlling gimbals using the gyro so you could set whichever angle you want (and some allow for combining gyro with a channel input for modifying the target angle) and have it maintained while in flight, that way you could have the camera pointing horizontally, or slightly down, out of that bubble cockpit so you get a good view no matter the attitude of the vehicle. Very cool project :)

If you can figure out how to combine the 4 motor mounting points with the 4 stabilizing fins of the rocket, you can make it more aerodynamic and lighter.

Quick tip for multi rotors - have a switch for Angle mode, it’ll auto-balance the drone and you can just bring it down safely Unless of course you enjoy mini missile strikes on the countryside

Feels like that setup could run faster even without rocket booster

I'd be tempted to build a larger single ducted fan OR quad ducts (4 tubes) inside the fuselage with 4 flap controlled vents on cardinal sides that give you thrust-vector control, and on the nose have air intake vents that can be closed off during rocket powered flight. The drag co-efficient improvement would be immense....... thus it becomes more of a control/engineering challenge.... but it's a hella interesting one if you can pull it off.

11:15 that went from a funny laugh to a scared out his pants laugh

Nice missile, you could fly it over the suez cannel to make it into an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile).

That's a brilliant first showing for the concept! My first thought for getting more speed out of this setup is some kind of lightweight (foam or 3D-printed) fairing on the rear face of the drone arms and motors - I'd say at a ballpark guess that in the current config they have at least double the drag of the rocket body once you get up to speed. If you search up some of the recent world-speed-record quad designs here on YT, you'll see they all have it. If fairing just the center of the drone (by adding the rocket) gave you such a decent increase in speed, fairing the rest should too.

Look at that beautiful green field, and those vibrant yellow flowers, you could make a ghibli scene with that alone. speaking from az.

BIGGER QUAD WITH MORE POWERFUL ROCKETS!!! Break the sound barrier!!!

so, the reason it went faster is because you had the camera pointing directly upwards, and all four motors were pushing thrust directly behind the drone, this is commonly done when trying to make record fast drones, Id say if anything the rocket frame slowed it down a bit. But fair play to ye for getting the drone up and running in one week!! my first drone was like 3. lol.

This has so much potential in drone warfare.

You have to be very careful here dude, this is a guided rocket, also known as a missile. This is VERY illegal.

Cool to see Emma becoming a regular! Hope you two continue to build awesome things together!!!

Just my first thoughts upon seeing the idea, my concern is the blades 'windmilling' and adding extra drag. Being able to feather the blades like aircraft do will help reduce it. If you have VP airscrews and your engine fails, the main step in the checklist is to feather it so it is quite the difference.

James have you considered building an rc oblique wing, it was a prototype nasa aircraft that had a rotating wing to optimise itself for subsonic flight with its wing at 90 degrees to the fuselage and supersonic flight with the wings rotated so that one side is swept forward and the other back. Somehow it didn’t fly in circles but unfortunately was never used to much effect as it ran out of funding otherwise it may well have changed the way we make planes forever as it has the pros of a swept wing but none of the cons of the complicated mechanism required to sweep the wings. Just an idea as you seem to be doing a lot of speed related projects at the moment. Love the channel 😃

MORE, POWER, POWER, POWER.

I make motor mounts out of PLA all the time. Just slide a bit of cardboard (like a toilet paper roll) in between the motor and the PLA wall and it acts as a heat sink and insulator.

From an FPV Pilot: *oh, my god LOL* ahh, warms my heart seeing new pilots play the "wobbly" game in BetaFlight

oh yea now we talking!! gives you a waay better platform than the blackbird with its strange phallic appendage haha can't wait for rocket number two!!

Could you combine the fins and prop arms, putting the propellers further down towards the center of mass? I think that would be more stable at higher velocities.

Great video. I'd really like to see you do it again, except add a second rocket engine. The smallest one that you can detonate separately to launch a parachute So you can watch it float down at the end instead of the what looked to be risky crashes (So you'd have to attach two detonators, and then you could use the big engine as your speed boost, and then when you want to land, you launch the 2nd rocket, which would split it open and deploy the parachute)

Wow, this is such an amazing build! I'm so impressed with your creativity and skill. Thank you for sharing your work with us!

Working with another mad scientist while hopefully push your experiments to madder, faster projects with quicker development times. Looking forward to the future.

Bigger one. Experiment with the fins originating in the arms for the drone to see if you can reduce your drag load more by letting them draft off each other..... or it makes horrible turbulence and dies.

"take that spaceX" LOL this made my day

If you build a version with strong motors, you might want to consider leaving the original carbon fiber plates in the build. I'd think the 3d printed plate is much less stiff, which would mean increased vibrations in the long arms and a harder time stabilizing the quad for the flight controller.