This is cyclogyro is named as "Fire wheel". Its first stable free flight suceeded on August 25, 2011.
It flies by 2 cycloidal propellers. It also uses 2 screw propellers to trim longitudinally. The maximum total thrust of rotors is 2200g and takeoff weight is 1300g. This allows fire wheel to soar into sky very fast. We also tried cyclogyro with 4 cyclodal rotors and succeeded with tethered flight. For this version the takeoff weight is 1200g and the maximum thrust generated by 4 cycloidal rotors is 2000g. This is a big step from tethered flight performed 4 years ago. We have verified that cyclogyro can fly with good stability and enough thrust. The flight test also showed that cyclogyro has very good maneuverability with low noise. It is a good choice for UAVs or MAVs. Please feel free to contact us at "julius_hu@hotmail.com" if you have any enquiries.
@XCFlyingBlog two heli blades would provide a lot more stability, if there was only one it would have to be reversing it's spinning direction fairly rapidly, with two you can just increase or decrease the power on each heli blade to give you your turning power
melvster100 3 months ago
Why does it have two helicopter style rotors in front and in the back, surely one would have sufficed for controlling the craft's horizontal stability? The two cycloidal rotors rotate at very low speed and their blades are very small - it appears that in fact those 2 helicopter type rotors provide almost all the lift
XCFlyingBlog 4 months ago