{"id":1117455,"date":"2026-06-15T11:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/?p=1117455"},"modified":"2026-06-14T07:39:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T14:39:25","slug":"custers-revenge-evtol-drone-brings-back-channel-wings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2026\/06\/15\/custers-revenge-evtol-drone-brings-back-channel-wings\/","title":{"rendered":"Custer’s Revenge: eVTOL Drone Brings Back Channel Wings"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have to be a pretty big aviation nerd to know about [Willard Ray Custer] and his channel wing concept, but if you are, you’ll be giddy to hear about the semicircular profile of the HopFlyt Cyclone drone’s tandem wings. <\/a>If you’re not quite<\/em> that much of a nerd, please keep reading, because it’s a really neat concept that never — er — quite got off the ground.<\/p>\n

[Custer]’s idea was pretty simple, and born of a shift in reference frame — he realized that only the relative wind over the wing mattered, not the airspeed of the entire aircraft. The same idea drives every blown-wing short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) project from the DHC-7 turboprop airliner to the An-72 cargo jet: air from the engines washes over the wings, creating lift. Where [Custer] went further is that rather than blowing air over a straight wing, he wrapped the wing under the propeller in a semicircle to maximize the area of lower pressure — and thus lift — creating the “channel wing” that bears his name.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, an aircraft with channel wings and powerful enough engines might be able to do vertical takeoffs just from the blown lift, but none of [Custer]’s prototypes demonstrated that — just excellent short-field capability. The HopFlyt drone would be the same, except that, being a tandem, it has double the channel wings of [Custer]’s more-conventional designs, and it’s also a tilt-wing to boot. In that mode, the added low-speed lift from the channel wing makes transitions easier than they otherwise would be — which isn’t anything to sneeze at, since transitioning from vertical to horizontal flight has always been the real bane of VTOL projects.<\/p>\n

They’re claiming a reduced fuel burn of 10% in hover and transition thanks to the extra lift from the channel wings. You can see their prototype in action in the demo video embedded below. We once featured a project that went even further, blowing air across a special hollow wing <\/a>for propulsion and blown lift. The easiest eVTOL project<\/a> still starts with a quadcopter, though.<\/p>\n

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