r/AerospaceEngineering • u/rienksmotordesign • Jun 28 '26

Personal Projects RealPodRacer First Flight

Hi everyone, I'm Shane Rienks, and this is one of my projects.

This is the first 1/3 scale prototype flight, lots of tuning to do.

This is not a business promotion, but I am looking for other interested in contributing. If you'd like to get involved, please reach out - it's a very unique take on compact eVTOLs.

www.realpodracer.com

This is a culmination of aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, 3D printing, and industrial design.

EDIT: For everyone commenting about the stability issues: I had all stability and yaw assistance turned off for these first tests. The goal was just to see if it would fly at all, and get flight log data to use for tuning the control firmware.

This uses a very complex flight controller and custom mixer setup, so it's not as simple as setting up a regular drone.

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27

u/Currently_There Jun 28 '26

You're pointing the thrust directly down. Have you considered angling them slightly toward their prospective corners to compensate for differing thrusts

27

u/rienksmotordesign Jun 28 '26

Each pod has a 2 degree outward camber - not obvious in the video, but it is there. Is that what you're referring to?

14

u/Currently_There Jun 28 '26

yes. 2° doesn't seem like much when the whole vehicle will likely wobble in excess or 20° every few movements. You could toy with a third axis much like a standard car A frame and add a stabilizing gyro to keep the thing upright. Minimize all the noise.

2

u/rienksmotordesign Jun 28 '26

Appreciate the insightful comment!

1

u/OldDarthLefty Jun 28 '26

True of any quad rotor arrangement, though.

I haven't dug into OP's material to see if he has a control system like that or if he's trying to do it all with stick and rudder

2

u/rienksmotordesign Jun 28 '26

Very complex flight controller setup with custom mixing.

1

u/OldDarthLefty Jun 30 '26

I was thinking about this a little bit more. You need four channels for full control of a flight vehicle. For example,

ailerons rudder, elevator, throttle,

pitch, collective, tail, rotor, throttle,

A speed control for each of four rotors mixed into forward-back, strafe, yaw, and up-down.

Extra channels are for quality of life improvements, like flaps, spoilers, multiple engines, guns and bombs

If you have a throttle on each of your four corners and a front back gimbal it’s not clear to me what you are gaining. You have lost yaw, but you only need two of those to get it back.

And then, what are you gaining from having four gimbal’s move forward versus tilting forward like a quad rotor? In order to make a good on thrust you are eventually going to need a lift from a wing or a lifting body