Cycloidal Rotor Airplane: The Cycloplane

Cycloidal rotor propulsion is being used on new vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, but how about using a cyclorotor for forward flight instead of purely hovering I strapped a few cyclorotors on a simple RC airplane design to put it to the test versus a regular propeller, and the results are explosive. Judes channel: My hovering cycloidal rotor drone: Balancing an inverted pendulum with my racing drone: The cyclorotor isnt really a new concept; it has been used for tugboat propulsion for quite some time. It works by pitching the blades around their rotation so that they each always have a positive angle of attack relative to their motion around the spinning axis. One potential advantage they offer while operating in air is that their tip speed is much lower than a conventional propeller for the same thrust, so they can be much quieter. With the proper mechanical linkage and servos, their thrust vector can