I was imagining a propeller-driven aircraft with front canards and wings, where the wingtips and canard tips could each house a pair of embedded/recessed electric rotors for vertical lift.
So that would be 8 electric rotors in total: 2 in each wingtip, 2 in each canard tip.
Slats could be used to cover the electric rotors during horizontal flight.
So the main propeller would be regular combustion piston engine, and the vertical lift would be battery-electric. Thus a hybrid-compound aircraft.
The combustion engine pusher-prop gives you range and speed, while the battery-electric gives the distributed power useful for the quad-copter style of precision landing.
You'd probably only need 5 minutes worth of battery power to do your vertical landing, since you should be able to land anywhere with precision.
So I'm imagining that the battery mass doesn't have to be extravagant.
Takeoff would mean starting the combustion prop first, and then either taking off like a regular aircraft from an airstrip, or else using the battery-electric vertical lift for takeoff and using combustion prop thrust to achieve enough horizontal airspeed for conventional wing lift to take over.
Landing would mean either landing at an airstrip like a regular aircraft, or else slowing towards stall speed but activating the battery-electric vertical lift rotors just before that, and doing a quad-copter style landing.
Batteries could be charged by the combustion engine, including during flight, so that the batteries would be fully re-charged for landing at the end of the flight.
If some abort situation were to occur soon after takeoff, there would be enough reserve battery power to spare to enable safe landing.
Help flesh out this idea with further improvements, or else critique it to point out the impracticalities.
So that would be 8 electric rotors in total: 2 in each wingtip, 2 in each canard tip.
Slats could be used to cover the electric rotors during horizontal flight.
So the main propeller would be regular combustion piston engine, and the vertical lift would be battery-electric. Thus a hybrid-compound aircraft.
The combustion engine pusher-prop gives you range and speed, while the battery-electric gives the distributed power useful for the quad-copter style of precision landing.
You'd probably only need 5 minutes worth of battery power to do your vertical landing, since you should be able to land anywhere with precision.
So I'm imagining that the battery mass doesn't have to be extravagant.
Takeoff would mean starting the combustion prop first, and then either taking off like a regular aircraft from an airstrip, or else using the battery-electric vertical lift for takeoff and using combustion prop thrust to achieve enough horizontal airspeed for conventional wing lift to take over.
Landing would mean either landing at an airstrip like a regular aircraft, or else slowing towards stall speed but activating the battery-electric vertical lift rotors just before that, and doing a quad-copter style landing.
Batteries could be charged by the combustion engine, including during flight, so that the batteries would be fully re-charged for landing at the end of the flight.
If some abort situation were to occur soon after takeoff, there would be enough reserve battery power to spare to enable safe landing.
Help flesh out this idea with further improvements, or else critique it to point out the impracticalities.
