For such a vehicle to work, there needs to be a huge volume of air being projected downward.
Unless helicopter blades pop out from this thing prior to take-off, I’m not seeing it working at all, as displayed. The vents look barely large enough to do engine cooling, let alone provide lift or control.
They’ll make up the lack of area with velocity, making for 250 mph rocks and sand coming out from under it.
Its why the picture I posted above of it landing on a beach is so clueless.
from the article.
This from the article.
“We love a beautiful design as much as anyone, but the Bellwether Volar is so long on style and so short on substance that we’ve gotta call it like we see it: a designer’s wet dream and an engineer’s sticky problem. When flight footage of the half-size prototype, flying untethered, drops in January, we may learn more and change our tune, but if it turns out to be a big quadcopter with a pretty shell on it, it’ll be hard to get too excited.”
So, right now it’s just a RC Model. I like the idea and I’m glad they keep trying. I don’t know why they’re insisting on fans and ducted fans. I suppose they’d rather carry batteries for fans than fuel for jet power.