Hybrid drones – VTOL

You may wonder why we spent so much time on takeoff and landing. Vertical Takeoff and/or Landing (VTOL) drones solve a lot of issues, but present a high degree of complexity. These drones can take off like a helicopter (or multicopter), fly like an airplane, and land again like a helicopter/multicopter.

The XplusOne (by Xcraft) takes off and can even fly like a quadcopter, but then it can transition into forward flight like an airplane. As you can see though, designing such an aircraft is incredibly difficult. Wind resistance from the wing (when vertical) can create instability during multirotor flight and transitioning to airplane flight can be equally difficult. However, the most difficult proposition of all is coming back to quad-flight for landing. How do you keep the aircraft from ballooning (gaining altitude) and then stalling into a crash? You should only attempt this when you have a high degree of funding and experience, because it's virtually guaranteed that you'll crash it several times before tuning your design to be just right.