It has been a great help receiving donations from all of you and injecting these as best I can into parts needed, however  ~ $75 a month + my own income is just not enough to keep the Hoverbike going at any reasonable speed.  I don’t want to give up on this project – its too good, and I’ve invested a lot of personal funds into it, I/we just need to recognize that more help is needed – hence this post.  I have wasted a lot of time trying to secure investors and with little success, but what this project needs is many hands – and enthusiastic ones at that – to continue the build and testing, to offer new ideas and methods and bring to the table more that just one person can do.

I’m looking at moving the Hover-bike and all my gear to the UK in August this year, so if your university department, company or community engineering team want a challenge, please contact me – Chris Malloy at community < at > hover-bike.com.

Please, relevant and serious offers only – more spam I don’t need.  You will need to:

- Be located in the UK – or under special cases wider Europe

- Outline your proposal – why and how your team can help

- Give a referenced background of who you and your team are, and what projects you have previously worked on

- Be willing to enter into a legally binding partnership with me  (don’t worry, this is just to ensure you don’t try to unlawfully seize any assets not agreed prior to any contract between us)

- Upkeep my pledge to give away a prototype once the $1,1oo,oooAU donations ceiling has been reached on the website

That’s it really.  Just a small/large team, who wants to work on something fun with lots of potential, either as a UAV or manned craft.    Maybe even an ex-team from scrapheap challenge!

Please be sure, I am not seeking people to work on this for free and have me take any rewards.  I am more than happy to listen to any realistic offers and work any partnership into a binding document, whether it’s factoring a university departments liability and awards, to a local community group dividing up between members.

All the best

Chris Malloy

Thanks to all you that have supported the Hoverbike development so far, through either donations or kind words.

Progress has been very slow over the last few months as I have had little money to spend on the Hoverbike development.  Somebody though, has had the money to spend!  Now there is a new Hoverbike flying around out there – see the link below to the aerofex vehicle:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A4ut_4fG6A

Good on them.  Will be great to see how they go with this.

I guess this is where I say something about how close the Hoverbike is to safe (untethered) airborne manoeuvring to all those ‘potential’ investors that wasted my time over the last year…

Kind Regards

Chris Malloy

Anyone out there in the Sydney area up for lending a hand and partnering with the Hoverbike?  I have a bit of volunteer help, but nobody at the moment that can help with what I really need.  That is:

A real partner in the project, this includes helping with design and fabrication, revenue sourcing and testing.  You would need to be capable of mechanical design and  fabrication - aluminium and carbon fibre (carbon fibre not necessary as long as you have the fabrication skills – I can show you the rest)

I need to make parts test etc, and just do not have the time nor money to outsource.  I work on this almost entirely by myself, so it would be good to have another person working side by side, if even just for the motivation it provides.  I cannot pay you, but depending on what you can bring to the project, appropriate shares in the company.

The workshop is located in the Hornsby area.

Please send your (appropriate) email to community (at) hover-bike (dot) com   or call.

Sorry guys, if your located outside of Sydney or Australia, given the nature of the help I need it would be best that your were located nearby – unless of course you  have a bit of money and would like to bring me, my workshop and the Hoverbike to your country!!

Thanks again for the warm support everyone has offered

Chris Malloy

P.S  I get a lot of emails, at any one time, so please – there might be a delay in getting back to you.

Slowly I am getting to the next test flight!

I’ve written some code to fly my model Hoverbike (see linked video).  This is just the beginning before I hand it over to somebody more experienced than I in autonomous flight control systems.   Just need to test a couple little things before I implement them on the big bike.  I want to make this as easy and safe to fly as a motorbike or car, and this requires a little bit of help for the non-pilot, and more authority than normal on the control surfaces.

If any body is interested in purchasing a model like this one, please email me and register your interest at sales(at)hover-bike.com  If I can get enough of you to sign up, I should be able to make this at a similar price to something like a Ardudopter Quad-copter.  Building a few of these would help fund the development of the full scale Hoverbike, as this costs a lot of money and this is my biggest developmental hold up.

All the best

Chris

Scale model test

Personnel from the Army G-3/5/7 operations and technology office flew to Sydney Australia to see a demonstration of the Hoverbike a couple of weeks back.   I’ll keep you updated when I can divulge some more information.

Chris Malloy

The current testing has been going well. I have new gearboxes, driveshafts, exhaust and control systems, and all are in and functioning as intended. The new gearboxes needed a slight modification as there was a little bit too much play on the pinion shaft. The driveline is now running very smooth and much quieter now with the new exhaust (no longer my own custom one, but taken from a R1 bike)

Have made a couple preliminary test flights this last week.  These have been to test the functionality of the new control system.
The first flight I found a large amount of yaw to the left (never noticed this with the tethers). Had to stop the test to figure out what the cause was as the Hoverbike should be torque neutral. Found it to be the chassis twisting from the engine torque causing about 1.5 – 2 degrees twist in the airframe. Not immediately noticeable but found it and fixed by pre-setting the props to be aligned in the same plane once at operation rpm.
The next flight I got to check out the new control system for the yaw, roll and pitch, now that she does not turn to the left on lift off. I had excellent control on height with the ability to control height within a couple of inches. The pitch and yaw was good being not too sensitive nor slow to react. The roll however was good but my new control input needs to be modified as every time I corrected for the roll I inadvertently made changes to the yaw – what a pain! This is because as you push down on the handle bars to correct for roll you can turn the bars slightly in the process without noticing thereby adjusting the yaw which means now you have to correct both etc etc.
What I will have to do now is modify (again) the controls so that the yaw is separate from the roll, this way when I make small changes to the roll I do not effect the yaw.
I guess I tried to make the controls too simple!

Just a little bit longer now… Seems every time I am just about to show to the world the hoverbike in a stable free hover, I need to make just one more small but time consuming adjustment.

Chris Malloy

Thank you to all for your support both financially and otherwise. Most of the new parts on the Hoverbike (gearboxes etc) are on there and working because of you guys.

Cheers!