{"id":114528,"date":"2020-10-16T07:44:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T14:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/the-watfly-atlas-evtol-what-that-flies"},"modified":"2020-10-16T07:44:36","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T14:44:36","slug":"the-watfly-atlas-evtol-what-that-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/10\/the-watfly-atlas-evtol-what-that-flies","title":{"rendered":"The Watfly Atlas eVTOL: What, that flies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Of all the many eVTOL personal flight machines<\/a> we\u2019ve seen lately, this one\u2019s caused the most discussion in the now-virtual New Atlas office. The work of a young Canadian company, the Atlas is a 4-rotor manned multicopter design, in which all four of its ducted rotors are inline along a single wing.<\/p>\n

My first thought upon seeing it was \u201cwhy?\u201d Every other design places props on at least four corners, indeed sometimes even more spread out in designs like the Volocopter. That ensures it\u2019s easy to maintain stability in a hover against shifting winds, with the instant torque of the electric motors driving the props able to respond and re-balance the aircraft in fractions of a second.<\/p>\n

On second look, though, the Watfly design might have more to it than meets the eye. It\u2019s based upon a less common drone design \u2013 the tailsitter \u2013 which could confer its own advantages. Tailsitters give you the efficiency advantages of winged flight \u2014 and some of the same control surfaces \u2013 without a lot of the complexities of many tilt-rotor designs. The whole aircraft tilts once you\u2019re up to speed, and you fly on the wing for the majority of your journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the many eVTOL personal flight machines we\u2019ve seen lately, this one\u2019s caused the most discussion in the now-virtual New Atlas office. The work of a young Canadian company, the Atlas is a 4-rotor manned multicopter design, in which all four of its ducted rotors are inline along a single wing. My first thought [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}