NASA Ingenuity Helicopter - Build Your Own Flying Mars Model Helicopter

As an RC helicopter enthusiast, the NASA Ingenuity helicopter has intrigued me so much, I decided to build my own little flying RC model of one.

Over and above showing what a little RC Ingenuity coaxial helicopter might be like, what I really wanted to show is a comparison of the similar and not so similar rotor system components between NASA/JPL's Ingenuity and a standard collective pitch RC helicopter of roughly the same size.

So if you're an RC helicopter enthusiast, or just love science and Mars rover missions in general, or NASA's Perseverance mission specifically; hopefully you'll find this information a little entertaining, while giving you a few ideas if you want to build your own Ingenuity RC helicopter to fly around.

The fiddliest & most time consuming aspect of my little model RC Ingenuity build was cutting & fitting the Mylar film over the 3D printed PLA frame. Mylar doesn't take any sort of glue well but tape works pretty good (both Mylar & clear).

Useful Links Below:

- NASA's Ingenuity Page:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/6-th...

- JPL's Ingenuity Press Kit Page:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_k...

- JPL's Mars Helicopter Technical Design Proposal PDF (this is awesome stuff):
https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Publi...

- RC Helicopter Fun's Micro Coaxial Helicopter Page:
https://www.rchelicopterfun.com/coaxi...

- RC Helicopter Fun's DFC Page:
https://www.rchelicopterfun.com/DFC.html

TIME STAMPS:
- Intro 0:00
- Why choose a coaxial helicopter for Mars 1:08
- The Ingenuity's rotor system up close 2:14
- Ingenuity's swashplate components 4:08
- The main mast 5:00
- Brushless direct drive motors 5:17
- Swashplates & Ingenuity's DFC control linkages 6:14
- Ingenuity rotor and swashplate locking arms 6:59
- Yaw control on coaxial fixed pitch vs collective pitch 8:03
- Little RC Ingenuity Test Flight 9:20

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