Watch This RC Jet Thrust System Dance https://hackaday.com/2024/07/19/watch-this-rc-jet-thrust-system-dance/ #Thrustvectoring #dronehacks #3dprinted #how-to #EDF #jet #rc

Model Rocket Nails Vertical Landing After Three-Year Effort https://hackaday.com/2024/07/10/model-rocket-nails-vertical-landing-after-three-year-effort/ #transportationhacks #flightcontroller #thrustvectoring #modelrocket #rocketry #toyhacks #landing #spacex #imu

Model Rocket Nails Vertical Landing After Three-Year Effort https://hackaday.com/2024/07/10/model-rocket-nails-vertical-landing-after-three-year-effort/ #TransportationHacks #flightcontroller #Thrustvectoring #modelrocket #ToyHacks #rocketry #landing #SpaceX #IMU

If your "fighter jet" has canards, it's not Fifth Gen. Sorry not sorry.

#ThrustVectoring

BPS.Space Succesfully Lands A Model Rocket https://hackaday.com/2022/08/05/bps-space-succesfully-lands-a-model-rocket/ #thrustvectoring #flightcomputer #modelrocketry #joebarnard #bps.space #mischacks

Mini Falcon 9 Uses NASA Software https://hackaday.com/2022/07/26/mini-falcon-9-uses-nasa-software/ #thrustvectoring #spaceshuttle #gimballock #quaternian #software #control #falcon9 #rocket #model #space #pid

When Sticks Fly

When it comes to hobby rotorcraft, it almost seems like the more rotors, the better. Quadcopters, hexacopters, and octocopters we've seen, and there's probably a dodecacopter buzzing around out there somewhere. But what about going the other way? What about a rotorcraft with the minimum complement of rotors?

And thus we have this unique "flying stick" bicopter. [Paweł Spychalski]'s creation reminds us a little of a miniature version of the "Flying Bedstead" that NASA used to train the Apollo LM pilots to touch down on the Moon, and which [Neil Armstrong] famously ejected from after getting the craft into some of the attitudes this little machine found itself in. The bicopter is unique thanks to its fuselage of carbon fiber tube, about a meter in length, each end of which holds a rotor. The rotors rotate counter to each other for torque control, and each is mounted to a servo-controlled gimbal for thrust vectoring. The control electronics and battery are strategically mounted on the tube to place the center of gravity just about equidistant between the rotors.

But is it flyable? Yes, but just barely. The video below shows that it certainly gets off the ground, but does a lot of bouncing as it tries to find a stable attitude. [Paweł] seems to think that the gimballing servos aren't fast enough to make the thrust-vectoring adjustments needed to keep a stick flying, and we'd have to agree.

This isn't [Paweł]'s first foray into bicopters; he earned "Fail of the Week" honors back in 2018 for his coaxial dualcopter. The flying stick seems to do much better in general, and kudos to him for even managing to get it off the ground.

#dronehacks #bicopter #centerofgravity #drone #dualrotor #gimbal #gyroscopicprecession #thrustvectoring #uav

Three-Stage Thrust Vectoring Model Rocket With Tiny Flight Computers

Flying a thrust-vectoring rocket can be a challenge, and even more so if you stack multiple stages and a minimalist flight computer on top of it all. But [Joe Barnard] is not one to shy away from such a challenge, so he built a three stage actively guided rocket named Shreeek.

[Joe] is well known for his thrust-vectoring rockets, some of which have came within a hair's breadth of making a perfect powered landing. Previous rockets have used larger, more complex flight computers, but for this round, he wanted to go as small and minimalist as possible. Each stage of the rocket has its own tiny 16 x 17 mm flight computer and battery. The main components are a SAM21 microcontroller running Arduino firmware, an IMU for altitude and orientation sensing, and a FET to trigger the rocket motor igniter. It also has servo outputs for thrust vector control (TVC), and motor control output for the reaction wheel on the third stage for roll control. To keep it simple he omitted a way to log flight data, a decision he later regretted. Shreeek did not have a dedicated recovery system on any of the stages, instead relying on its light weight and high drag to land intact

None of the four launch attempts went as planned, with only the first two stages functioning correctly in the test with the best results. Thanks to the lack of recorded flight data, [Joe] had to rely on video footage alone to diagnose the problems after each launch. Even so, his experience diagnosing problems certainly proved its worth, with definitive improvements. However, we suspect that all his future flight computers will have data logging features included.

Thanks for the tip [BaldPower]!

#microcontrollers #toyhacks #guidancesystem #modelrocket #rocket #thrustvectoring