In this video we will look at modern Gyrocopters and how electrification is helping to elevate their performance. We look at: 1. Modified Rotor blades 2. EDF 3.Powered Rotors 4.Regeneration 5.Lift from Wings
Aviation has alway been a delicate balancing act between efficiency, redundancy, speed and safety. I like the redundancy that a hybrid electric gyro could provide as we try to introduce air mobility into the future of traveling.
Gyrocopters -- or autogyros -- have been part of the homebuilt and utralight market here in the States since before the FAA had regulations regarding what we now call ultralights. The problem, as noted here, is that autogyros have been notoriously slow and short ranged. I'm particularly interested in whether any of the new generation of gyrocopters sport multiple rotors. I recall seeing and hearing Hughes/McDonnell Douglas helicopters with six blades producing significantly less noise than Bell and Sikorsky machines. The Hughes machines were also fast and efficient. Anyone got any ideas?
@@johndemeritt3460 You got me interested in the multirotor thing, i dont know nothing on the topic so when I searched i got confused, what i see is or two "pushers" rotors side by side or two of the big rotors overhead, so i wanna know what you mean when you say "multirotor" since i am confused now kk.
@@maickelvieira1014, I'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression: I meant helicopters with more than two or four rotor blades. The Hughes 500 had five or six blades as I recall . . . Looking at the Wikipedia page for the MD-500 series aircraft (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Helicopters_MD_500), the MD-500 had a five blade main rotor with a diameter of about 27 feet (8.33 m). This allowed the rotor to turn so the blade tips didn't reach supersonic velocity, making for a quiet helicopter.. That said, I can see where a twin side-by-side mast, intermeshing rotor design, like that on the Kaman I-Max or the HH-43 Huskie of the Vietnam era would be effective.
These machines are simple and very cheap to run. They have none of the issues that helicopters have with complex rotor tilting mechanisms or drive. My father always said that the military never used them because they were too cheap!
I've been flying gyros in the UK for some 10 years. The attitude people have towards these machines only makes us gyronauts feel special😅 The magnetic reduction of rotor speed in high speed flight would be a very helpful development imo.. AutoGyro of germany have had an electric gyro available (cavalon) since 2010, but it doesn't have any such rotor control system.
They really need to upgrade the eCavalon with better batteries and powered rotor. Yeah there is a negative attitude towards Gyros even though its a very practical flying machine
It never occurred to me that going electric on a gyrocopter would open the door to such possibilities. Wow. I hope to see this develop further. Now if only you could bring the price down to make them affordable....
Once the craft is off the ground, you can't power the rotors without spinning the fuselage in the opposite direction. If your propulsion motor goes out while in flight, you cannot turn on the rotor motor to bring you down because the fuselage will spin. Just come down with autorotation.
those with dual pusher propeller/fans should be able to compensate for the main rotor torque. Well depending on which pusher motor does fail, it might need to reverse thrust, that's odd (pushing backwards) but doable with any remaining pusher motor.
@@pisoiorfan There are few that have two pusher props, but your point is right. Manufacturers may decide to build their gyrocopters with two pusher props just to get that ability.
Very interesting, especially the view of recuperating energy during flight. That is very sensible and with new technology such questions can now be addressed and solved. Thank you 👍💪✌
Been a fan of gyrocopters since the early 80s when I bought the plans for a Benson Gyro, then in the late 80s I was able to fly some gyros, but then got scared of their safety record and put the idea up on the shelf. The idea of electric Gyro fascinates me again.
Interesting proposition but I feel you made a few shortcuts. All gyros have pre-rotators, they are necessary because the rotor needs some initial rotational speed to accelerate with relative wind during ground acceleration. What makes jump gyros different, is they have a collective pitch system, while conventional gyros have simpler fixed collective pitch rotor heads. This allows jump gyros to accelerate the rotor on the ground at full speed without generating lift with low pitch, then disengaging the rotator to avoid torque effects, and then only, effectively jumping by increasing collective pitch abruptively. This is done only on rotor inertia !
I was thinking about the same. The jump looks pretty much like how a helicopter does and there must be some rotor pitch changing in the progress. I feel like in a pitch changing rotor would also serve like flaps in conventional aircrafts.
I remember the AVIAN which was developed by ex AVRO employees laid off after the ARROW interceptor was cancelled. Many other AVRO employees went to the NASA space program to work on the MERCURY and GEMINI space capsules. I saw the AVIAN at a nearby airport but never saw it fly.
Could the battery and / or maybe some super capacitors be boosted from a ground based electricity supply to achieve the initial rotation speed for the 'jump' takeoff? This would relieve the drain on battery for forward flight.
@@ElectricAviation Even if it's a very short power tether that just spins the rotor blades up enough to provide the initial jump. This energy is not then taken from the onboard battery. The system could be installed at regional air taxi hubs.
that is good news, because we need to see this potential brought forward as Im sure it will provide a safe VTOL personal vehicle, and has variations in scale too such as Fairey Rotodyne. Likewise we have learned that we can avoid the speed cap imposed due to retreating blade stall by the wings shown in your examples. This could see 300 mph vehicles which will have an impact on range. Cheers
I always saw gyros as the most efficient VTOL solution, now with these new developments, they secure that spot. The only way other VTOL options can compete is at higher speed, maneuverability and depending their design; they may land on more closed or urbanized places, but with the drawback of higher energy consumption, cost and noise.
They probably could have specific air taxi stations for VTOL vehicles and perhaps they could use fuel cells instead. Fuel cells might improve energy to weight ratios and range.
@@jason8ification for any air vehicle who wants to achieve more than 90 min of nominal power and fast recharge, hydrogen is a must. But for widespread adoption to replace a percentage of cars, noise reduction is still the hardest thing to accomplish.
Crazy idea that probably wouldn’t work, but I want to put out there. Some sort of, for lack of a better word, extension cord that supplies the rotor with the large amount of electricity it needs for vertical takeoff, without having to have that much more battery weight. After it reaches a specified height, the cable disconnects and the copter goes on its merry little way.
The most obvious application is an electric motor to pre-spin the rotor before takeoff. The second is the ease of implementing Fly By Wire and Throttle By Wire to create anti torgue to allow a small amount of rotor power during takeoff and landing.
The Kurds in Northern Iraq adopted gyro-copters for their traffic police as when they land there is no prop-wash stirring up clouds of dust and causing accidents. That was about a decade ago now, I can't remember the make but they seemed to like them at the time. Given their greater efficiency I am surprised it has taken this long for ducted fans to catch on.
@@gormauslander I based that statement on a conversation with a friend who makes radio controlled model aircraft, he's a big fan of the ducted propeller. Ducted fans have been adopted for airships, although at relatively low speeds drag is less of an issue. They have started adding similar shrouds to ships propellers (well they did in the 1980s, I came ashore in the early 1990's) 'to increase efficiency', but of course on ships weight is less important and at 10mph drag is negligable. This chap has a video on prop designs that suggests there are potential advantages to adding a duct but I am not a mechanical or hydraulic engineer. Modern advanced propellers such as those used on the A400 transport aircraft don't seem to be common, perhaps due to manufacturing costs
@@mikesmith2905 In trying to come to a conclusive answer about what scenarios they are actually better, I found no conclusion. Intuitively, it seems to me that no matter your prop size, disallowing the air to spread sideways and forcing it to continue out the back must necessarily waste less energy and convert more movement into propulsion. But people keep not using them, so there's gotta be something i'm missing
The beauty of electric motors is a very high power to weight. This is especially so if you only run for a short time at maximum, as in a jump take off.
I want to know SOOOO much more about this! Doing some napkin math here... take sport copter 2 gyro but use the engine to run a generator. Replace the turbo fan with a pair of electric ducted fans that run off the generator. Add a small wing and the brilliant motor on the main rotor described in the video. ChatGPT reckons that could be twice the performance?
As per MyFluffyClouds post below, I would suggest mains power could be applied to a VTOL, for tens of metres after takeoff from a skyscraper, by having a pole run down the inside of the building. This would have a electrical power connection to the aircraft, and be raised up, by mechanical or electrical means, to match the rate of climb, thus not adding to the take off weight. If sufficiently substanstanial, it could even push the VTOL upwards.
Brain storming now - maybe for landing also, pole raised with some means to connect to VTOL, maybe the aircraft's connector hangs below, and is guided to the pole's connector by a cone.
The ducted fan is an obvious thing that doesn’t seem to be used as much as I’d expect especially on turbo prop aircraft or even drones where the improved efficiency and noise reduction would really matter. The Harrier Jump Jet was the most obvious use of a ducted fan and the simplest VTOL aircraft ever developed by the military.
Maybe something like the Fairey Rotodyne should be revisited with more modern technology. Change the propulsion to turboprops and drop the rotor tipjets for an electric motor.
@@ElectricAviation whilst you're on the ground it's possible to power the rotor, but ad soon as it's airborne the torque reaction is too large to be useful
I wonder how many of your followers remember the Fairey Rotodyne? Is there a chance, incorporating the advances in technology, that such a machine could make a comeback for local urban mass transport?
Good video Sir, have been wondering why no single seat battery gyros around, the torque alone from battery would make a lot of sense for a jump start. Just a simple auto blade angle of attack adjuster needed!
I love the way these companies put an electric motor in an aircraft and call them "Silent". That is such BS. Anyone that's seen in person an electric motor driven prop or EDF knows this is not at all the case. Quieter than a turbine or piston aircraft, yes, but not even remotely silent.
If the Rotar is powered by motor while being in FLIGHT, meaning it is not free spinning as usually for Gyrocopters. Wouldn't there be a need for an extra tail rotar? Wouldn't that add complexities ?
Great stuff as always, though I do have to laugh when people use "groundbreaking" to describe an aircraft. That's not usually what I'm looking for in an aircraft.How does that Luminati thing generate lift without it's rotors? It has no wings.
Ah, the gyrocopter… let me guess, the next brilliant idea will be the ekranoplane? There is a reason gyrocopters are not used in commercial aviation, and the reason isn’t that they are too good.
@@ElectricAviation Yes, but then it's kind of a helicopter. I suppose if it's just for takeoff you can still call it a gyrocopter, but doesn't it need all kinds of controls for the blades? The takeoff could get uncontrollable with just a 'dumb' rotor.
I suppose you've never been onboard a gyro. Among pilots we call them "petrol to noise converters...." Modern Gyros have sacrified everything to speed and handling. The result flies well trough tubulence like an anvil, gets as much speed as it could, BUT has such a poor efficiency. A 500kg gyro glups 25 liters an hours of gasoline, with its engine almost at full throttle all the time (you can't fly "cool" in these). For sure converting these to electric is a DUM idea, unless you want even less range compared to a normal airplane (wich will not be practical before batteries reach 500wh/kg at least). In theory you could make a better efficiency gyro, with a vey large rotor but in this case no pilot would want to fly it, because you would have awfull gyroscopic reactions, vey poor handling, manoeuvrabbility, and you would be shaken by gusts like crasy.
Precisely said, a helicopter and quad copter are much more efficient than a gyro because at least the power that goes to lifting them also goes to propelling them forward, these things fly as if they're paragliders with a wing that makes as much lift induced drag as possible, all the lift of the rotor comes from the engine pushing it through the air which means the rotor takes away so much of the potential flight efficiency this thing would have to begin with. There's a reason most companies tackling urban air mobility are going the multi rotor route, and are using an insane amount of redundancy in lieu of autorotation.
He did mention that gyrocopter development has been neglected for a long time, hopefully the new developments are to improve the problems you mentioned.
Have you seen my commute? God forbid they would broaden the highway with 1-2 extra lanes ever. Air travel is messy but there comes a point where the environment cultists have impeded, hindered and regressed development of road infrastructure in an metropolitan environment to such just plain dumb degree, when driving your commute have become so stupid, that air travel, how cumbersome it may be, starts to look appealing an even affordable.
1:30 in, and unmitigated crap. Gyros are great fun. I flew mine for 10 years. They are utterly useless for 'urban air mobility'. They are very power-hungry and inefficient and all the bullshit in the world will not change that. Your pretty renderings do not, and will not, exist. The pictures are pretty, but pure fantasy.
I dont know, compared to todays gas prices in any country, besides the U.S. who enjoy petrodollar privilege, and with city tolls, X ammount of energy addon taxes, carbonemission taxes that are on a retarded level like in feminized countries like Sweden where people never object, compared to that is it really that much difference in price? Arent prices for driving commute for non-americans starting to approach a level where you might as well just pay for aircraft travel for your commuting?
Batteries are stupid for electric, flying vehicles. You need hydrogen fuel cell electrics. Hydrogen can be stored in metal hydrides that don’t need heavy containment tanks. America hss enough natural hydrogen for 200 years and it could be generated using hydrolysis with electricity from using geothermal sources of heat. That would create a complete green energy loop of hot underground water creating electricity to produce hydrogen in vehicles that extract the energy and turn the hydrogen back into water and also clean the air which must be filtered to be used on the fuel cell. This is the perfect power plant for electric flying vehicles like these gyrocopters. I wonder what big energy corporations might not want you to know or think of this?
this is kinda ridiculous, there is nothing to compensate for the rotating torque of the rotor's motor. the moment you turn that motor on and the wheels are off the ground you'll spin out of control and die.
No gyrocopter has ever had this problem, and if the gyro rotor has added power in flight, this can be compensated for by differential thrust from two propellers or by the rudder. Torque to the gyro rotor won't be a lot.
Limium is cool but it cant auto rotate you back to ground line most of these can. It had redundant battery but what do you do if some weather phenomen or other unforseen event just knocks out electricity completley? The Lilium has wings so i guess it wont drop straight down like a rock but gliding it down will be as successful as most airplanes who try to glide down when their out of fuel. I love lilium n joby but being able to autorotate is a pretty big deal fir safety. Thats why i like the Jaunt Air Mobility aircraft. Not as sexy as Lilium but the best next gen e-vtol imo
