OK. What!?! Vortex Ring State! It's the helicopter variant of a stalled wing. I had not heard of it yet, when I fist encountered the effect. It comes down to this: if you descend vertically, and you do that relatively fast, you get into the downwash of you own propellers. That will cause your props to loose lift, and you descend even faster. Your natural reaction would be to throttle up, because you are now descending more rapidly than you planned, but that makes the downwash - and therewith your predicament - only worse! The only thing you can do is pitch or roll to move out of that vertical column of air, not necessarily with more throttle. Only: you have to think of that, and act on that, before you hit the ground... I didn't. It caused my quad to "land" on one arm, and that was a touch too much... So now I had to go shopping for a new frame arm. I decided that buying a new frame would be a better option, because it is not that much more expensive, and I could imme...
This blog is all about my flying adventures with unmanned vehicles like drones, and model airplanes. Initial focus will be on my self-built drone project. As time progresses, I'll fly different drones and airplanes, undoubtedly, because this is such an addictive hobby!