Shrediquette - the award-winning multirotors by William Thielicke

Recently, I tested some 12" propellers as I want to make a 12" hexrotor (nothing special, existing 3rd party frame). There are some different opinions about these propellers, but I was missing a direct comparison. I tested 3S (12 Volts) and 4S (16 Volts) and measured the thrust and the current on a test stand, simulating hovering flight. I used a RCtimer HP2814(3536)-710KV motor and an AfroESC 20A slim speed controller. Here are the props I tested: The propellers under test: APC Multi Rotor 12x4.4" ; Xoar Electric precision 12x4" ; Maxxprod EPP 12x4.5" ; Aeronaut CAM Carbon light 12x5" ; Graupner E PROP 12x6" The results clearly show that the popular Graupner E PROP isn't really the first choice for hovering. It requires about 13% more power than the Aeronaut prop for the same amount of thrust during hovering flight. I think the chord length is too small close to the tip (I know that high aspect ratio wings have less induced drag, but her...

I found some images of my TV show appearance (to be broadcasted on 31.07.14) in the web: Images taken from TVinfo.de (note to the copyright owners: if you don't want to see your images here, drop me an email!) Hosts and celebreties Yogeshwar and me GEMiNi flight in the studio Quiz show elements Die große Show der Naturwunder am 31.07.2014 um 20:15 Uhr auf ARD Heiß her geht es diesmal in "Die große Show der Naturwunder". Frank Elstner und Ranga Yogeshwar präsentieren ein geniales Löschmittel und einen neuartigen Flugroboter, der die Natur zum Vorbild hat.Zu Gast sind Comedian Guido Cantz, die Schauspielerinnen Stefanie Stappenbeck und Marie Bäumer sowie Fernsehkoch Horst Lichter. Sie stellen sich den Quizfragen, müssen aber auch außerhalb des Studios ran. via TVinfo

The 2014 International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Competition ( IMAV 2014 ) will take place on August 12-15 in Delft, The Netherlands. I am very happy that I can join this event again this year (after my longer 'baby-break' last year). Just as in the previous IMAV competitions, I'll team up with Tumba. He will use several autonomous and FPV-controlled "Alpha" quadrotors and I will take some FPV BOLTs and GEMiNis with me. This year, the competition is especially fun, because the organization committee from TU Delft decided to combine the indoor and outdoor competitions in a single event. Tasks include to create a photomap of a village, detect obstacles, street numbers and open windows, and to finally enter some houses and explore the rooms. This might be pretty challenging, depending on the wind conditions and the video link quality. You can have a look at the competition rules here. I am very much looking forward to the event, and I expect to see...

Maybe you've already heard of the HEXO+ follow-me copter. The kickstarter campaign recently ended and it was really successful. Check it out here: HEXO+ on Kickstarter As you might already guess from the look of this hexrotor, I was involved in designing the airframe and selecting the electrical components for this project. Here are some pictures of early prototypes: The idea was to make something pretty aerodynamic. The booms are flat plates (each is a very stiff and light sandwich of glas fibre / balsa end-grain / glas fibre) that are arranged parallel to the airflow of the propellers (8"). They hence have very low aerodynamic drag, similar to the body of the copter which is tilted 30° with respect to the propeller plane. Unfortunately, my time for supporting the development of the HEXO+ project will be very limited in the future. But as I really like these kind of projects, I'll try to stay involved somehow.

A few weeks ago, I was invited as a guest to the " Große Show der Naturwunder" with Frank Elstner and Ranga Yogeshwar (guests in the show are Guido Cantz , Stefanie Stappenbeck , Marie Bäumer and Horst Lichter . Produced by FirstEntertainment GmbH ). I am giving a short demo flight with the GEMiNi and video goggles. Ranga Yogeshwar also does a short interview with me. The show will be broadcasted on the 31. Juli 2014 at 20.15h in the ARD . It took around 4 days to produce this show, so my partner, my twin (gemini) girls an me spent a very nice week in a lovely hotel in south Germany. I really enjoyed the time over there, it is so interesting to get insights in such kind of TV productions! Here's a description of the "multirotor part" in the show.  I can not show pictures of the show itself or give further details, but here's an image with the host Ranga Yogeshwar (as I expected, I was impressed that he is such a clever and friendly person)  at th...

On the 30th of october 2013, Prof. Klaus-Peter Neitzke and me gave a talk and flight demo during the "Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften Nordhausen" (Long Night of the Sciences). The talk was titled " Fliegen am Limit und dahinter . Die Indoor -Flug-Show mit Flugrobotern", and we really had great fun during the presentations and the flight demo. I presented some of my PhD work on the aerodynamics of the flapping flight in birds, and Klaus-Peter talked about multirotors and control loops, actually the things he does with his students at the university. In the end, we had a pylon-race-deathmatch, which was pretty tough as the space was very limited. We crashed often during this race, and I was surprised how robust the GEMiNi actually is...Thanks to the Fachhochschule Nordhausen for giving us this opportunity! Here are photographs and some more information (in german however...): Photo: Karin Lehmann, Peter Blei Photo: Neitzke Photo: Neitzke Photo:...

We had a small multirotor-meeting here in Bremen last weekend, and there were also some people that were up for a FPV-competition. So the GEMiNi had its first opportunity to do what is was built for: Race! A track was quickly built from chairs, tape and some other stuff we found. It was a lot of fun (well I could do FPV-competitions every day because I like it very much to fly "for a reason"), and the GEMiNi finished first. See the video here: https://vimeo.com/75664628