Oct 23, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min · 12 segments
Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams met to review the week in Hackaday. Turns out, it was a week for tiny things, cybersecurity, nostalgia, and projects that would have been nearly…
Elliot WilliamsHostAl WilliamsHost
It's a single propeller that doesn't use the complicated like swashplate mechanisms that a helicopter does.
One is how to tip and the other is how to keep from spinning wildly out of control as the reaction against the drag on the blades wants to push the body of the helicopter the other way.
Most helicopters deal with that by just putting a tail rotor on it and fight against the turn and that problem is solved.
But going up, down, left, right and just basically steering the thing is done by cyclic control by changing the pitch of the blades as they're in different parts of their swing around the helicopter you know give it more lift on this side less lift on that side it tips over joshua's trick here is how can this be done without using a swash plate without using active control of the propeller blade and And he actually uses a trick we've seen before.
It has a 45 degree pivot on the helicopter blade so that it can kind of swing loosely and turn its angles.
And what he does is he uses the blade's own momentum and varies the speed of the motor.
So if the motor retards a little bit relative to how the blades want to go, they tip one way.
And so that's what he can use to do the cyclic control, speeding the motor up and slowing it down within each revolution.
Add to this, the other thing he's trying to do is make this as small as possible so he can fly it safely, you know, like in his living room or something.
And the previous research ones have diameter has been twice as big, three times as big.
But that means the swept area under the rotor disk swept area is like four to 20 times bigger, basically.
It's a single propeller that doesn't use the complicated like swashplate mechanisms that a helicopter does.
One is how to tip and the other is how to keep from spinning wildly out of control as the reaction against the drag on the blades wants to push the body of the helicopter the other way.
Most helicopters deal with that by just putting a tail rotor on it and fight against the turn and that problem is solved.
But going up, down, left, right and just basically steering the thing is done by cyclic control by changing the pitch of the blades as they're in different parts of their swing around the helicopter you know give it more lift on this side less lift on that side it tips over joshua's trick here is how can this be done without using a swash plate without using active control of the propeller blade and And he actually uses a trick we've seen before.
It has a 45 degree pivot on the helicopter blade so that it can kind of swing loosely and turn its angles.
And what he does is he uses the blade's own momentum and varies the speed of the motor.
So if the motor retards a little bit relative to how the blades want to go, they tip one way.
And so that's what he can use to do the cyclic control, speeding the motor up and slowing it down within each revolution.
Add to this, the other thing he's trying to do is make this as small as possible so he can fly it safely, you know, like in his living room or something.
And the previous research ones have diameter has been twice as big, three times as big.
But that means the swept area under the rotor disk swept area is like four to 20 times bigger, basically.
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