Tilt-Wing VTOL UAS

Project kickoff: May 2025

I wanted to challenge myself to design and build a VTOL plane that minimizes wasteful design. For example, having props strictly for vertical flight that are then just turned off for horizontal flight.

My idea is to build a tilt-wing aircraft with an inverted V tail. For simplicity, it will follow a similar form factor as my previous foam board plane, so I can focus on the mechanism and control design. The plane will sit/land on its wingtips and tail and operate in a tri-motor configuration, with two pull props out at the wings, and a pusher prop between the control surfaces of the tail. In horizontal transition, they all produce forward thrust.

Where am I at now:

The tilt mechanism has been designed, printed, and tested, and I can confirm it works as intended. It makes the removal of the entire wing a piece of cake for shipping purposes. With the rest of the fuselage mostly worked out, I am still working through some redesigns of the control surfaces. I found a much better way to print the entire wings in a very light weight fashion, so I am working through splitting them up to add in control surfaces and places to mount the motors. Once I have that complete, I will build the tail motor tilt mechanism. This will get me to a point at which I will generally know the weight of the aircraft, so I can better size my motors and props.

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