This plane is simply a tube built around an electric ducted fan with enough statis thrust to take off vertically. It takes off, but it's not really controlable, so it keeps going up and up, gobbling up 17 Amps. That's why it has a parachute for landing.

design/construction: Yann LeCun, July 2004.
motor: GWS EDF-64 with a Feigao brushless motor
battery: 3-cell 1300mAh I-RATE Lithium-Polymer.
radio: GWS receiver with 3 GWS Pico servos.

Here are three movies of the first three flights of the X-15.

First flight: A tiny hop, to test things out (485KB)

Second flight: obviously not enough compensation of the torque created by the fan (550KB).

Third flight: not really a controled flight, but it keeps going up and up. I cut the motor and reached for the parachute switch but I couldn't find the damn switch. The X-15 crashed on soft grass and broke a spoke of the ducted fan's stator (1,260KB).

I made a few more tests after replacing the stator, but the X-15 failed to take off. I later found out that the motor shaft was slightlty bent during the crash. This reduced the thrust enough to prevent the X-15 from flying.

Since the control system was obviously sub-optimal, I scrapped the whole plane.

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