Quadcopters are great at hovering, but don’t have long range. Fixed-wing aircraft can travel long distances quickly, but don’t like to stay in one place above the ground.
Krossblade’s SkyProwler solves both of those problems. The hybrid aircraft is a remote controlled quadcopter with wings, or a plane with six rotors, capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).
After vertically taking off, its four quadcopter blades are retracted, as well as the landing gear. This allows it to fly unobstructed as an airplane. It can also take off like a normal airplane, then land vertically.
If that wasn’t enough versatility, the wings can be removed, allowing it to fly in “hornet” mode as a high-speed quadcopter. As with many popular quadcopters, one can attach a GoPro for filming, or you can use the optional “Eye” camera with integrated gimbal stabilization for video. Flight can either be controlled manually or through several automated options.
Currently active on Kickstarter, the Skyprowler craft has been in development since at least 2013 when VTOL and transition to winged flight was achieved. This type of transitional flight is still quite new in the radio control community, so it’s cool to see something on the cutting edge come together. A prototype can be seen above, but the results of more than a year of work, seen in the video below, is really impressive.
As highlighted in the video, you could use this to film exotic cars or surfing, but I personally look forward to better coverage of hand-to-hand marsupial combat.
13 thoughts on “This Vertical Take-Off Quadcopter is Like Your Own Mini Harrier Jet”
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I’m thinking less “Harrier” and more “V-22”, actually…
i think the article is incorrect, the quadcopter rotors do NOT retract, they continue spinning for lift. just by looking at it, i can tell that the two rear pusher props dont produce enough thrust to move the airplane forwards fast enough to generate enough lift from the wings to support full flight without the quadcopter rotors. but perhaps the quadcopter rotors themselves could rotate, eliminating the need for the auxiliary two. just a thought.
the video shows the quad parts folding in at about 20 seconds.
welp, guess i was really wrong
Really Wong
good one j-dawg, that joke is as original as your name. cheerio, mate
in addition, the positioning of the two rear thrust motors would never work by themselves. the weight balance would be so off if they were the only ones producing thrust in-flight.
You guys are intentionally building Skynet knowing exactly what’s gonna happen.
hard to kickstart that when I could just buy this
Peter from Flitetest already made this kind of thing 2 years ago.
Reblogged this on Denver Mini Maker Faire.
How aerodynamic does a model need to be? Can you make a viable X-Wing model?
An RC V-22 Osprey! Nice!