Cycloidal Rotor Airplane: The Cycloplane

Cycloidal rotor propulsion is being used on new vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, but how about using a cyclorotor for forward flight instead of purely hovering? I strapped a few cyclorotors on a simple RC airplane design to put it to the test versus a regular propeller, and the results are explosive. Patreon: Jude’s channel: My hovering cycloidal rotor drone: Balancing an inverted pendulum with my racing drone: The cyclorotor isn’t really a new concept; it has been used for tugboat propulsion for quite some time. It works by pitching the blades around their rotation so that they each always have a positive angle of attack relative to their motion around the spinning axis. One potential advantage they offer while operating in air is that their ‘tip’ speed is much lower than a conventional propeller for the same thrust, so they can be much quieter. With the proper mechanical linkage and servos, their thrust vector can also be rotated almost instantly for increased maneuverability. Will cyclos ever replace regular propellers? Probably not. But that won’t stop me from continuing to explore them in future videos—so if you enjoyed, please consider leaving a like on this video and subscribing so you don’t miss more videos like this one. 00:00 Intro 00:29 How a Cyclorotor Makes Thrust 01:32 Designing a New Cyclorotor 02:35 Building the Cyclorotors 03:16 Thrust Stand Testing 05:40 Cycloplane Build and Flights 07:19 Cycloplane Explosion 08:06 Conclusions #Cyclorotor #Cyclocopter #Drone