Axel Ladaique
FR

November 2025 – May 2026 · resuming soon

D.E.D.A.L

An experimental drone (the name is French for “experimental drone with localised take-off and landing”). It takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter, then tilts its motors forward to fly like an airplane.

Flying mass
About 2.4 kg
Motors
2 × T-Motor MN5008, 18″ props
Battery
6S Li-ion, 4.5 Ah
Maximum thrust
About 3.5 times its weight

Two ways to fly

The two motors sit at the wing tips. In hover they pull upwards and the drone hangs in the air like a helicopter; each motor tilts a few degrees on its own to steer.

A central servo then tilts both motors through 90°: they pull forwards, the wing carries the drone, and it flies like an airplane with its ailerons, elevator and fin, at the end of a carbon boom about 70 cm long.

Top-view diagram: motors M1 and M3 at the wing tips with their tilt, tilt servo S6, ailerons, elevator, fin and carbon boom
Top view: the motors, their tilt servos and the control surfaces.
D.E.D.A.L resting on a tarp at the edge of a field

Design and build

The structure is 3D printed: fuselage, wing, motor mounts and tilt mechanism. The wing was studied in XFLR5 and in numerical simulation, and the motor and propeller were chosen from the maker’s measured curves: in hover, each motor runs at about 45 % throttle.

The brain is a Teensy board running dRehmFlight, an open-source VTOL flight controller adapted for this drone: control laws for both modes, logging of all flight data to an SD card, and live telemetry to the radio.

Fitting the wing in the field A motor nacelle and its propeller Propeller and motor close up The drone’s parts laid out before assembly Getting the drone ready to fly D.E.D.A.L assembled, ready to fly

Flight tests

Testing started with hovering, first indoors, then outside, in a field and at a model flying club. Every flight is logged to be analysed and replayed.

The transition, from hover to airplane flight, is the trickiest part. It does not always work the first time.

The drone on the ground after a transition attempt, nose damaged
After a transition attempt.
The drone’s broken nose, held in a hand
The nose, ready to be reprinted.

The steps

  1. The flight controller

    Adapting dRehmFlight to the tilting twin-rotor layout.

  2. First hovers

    First in a corridor, then outside, with the first motors.

  3. New motors

    T-Motor MN5008 motors and 18-inch propellers.

  4. The complete aircraft

    Wing, boom and tail fitted; hunting down vibrations and logging flights to the SD card.

  5. Flying in the field and at the club

    Outdoor flights, fifteen minutes of hover in the rain, first flights at the model club, and DEDAL Studio to analyse each flight.

  6. The first transition

    Flights in the wind, controller tuning, then the first switch to airplane flight.

DEDAL Studio

The drone’s software workshop. Every flight logged on the SD card becomes a session that can be replayed, measured, compared and turned into a video annotated with its own data.

Flights logged in spring 2026
12
Flight time logged
Nearly an hour
Measurements per second
About 500
Data points
2.5 million
DEDAL Studio, Telemetry tab: flight playback, GPS track, flight state, statistics, artificial horizon, 3D model, radio channels, motors and servos

Replay every flight

A flight plays back like a video, in slow motion or sped up. Everything follows the same cursor: the GPS track, coloured by flight mode (hover, transition, airplane), the artificial horizon and the drone’s 3D model, the radio channels, and the command of every motor and servo.

Alongside, the flight’s figures: armed time, maximum altitude and speed, load factor, minimum battery voltage, and the time spent in each mode.

DEDAL Studio, Graphs tab: four panels comparing the servos, the measured attitude and its setpoint, the radio channels and the pitch controller output

Every signal, side by side

Dozens of logged signals: measured attitude and setpoints, controller outputs, motors, servos, inertial unit, GPS, battery, radio channels. Drag them into panels to compare them, zoom into a single second of flight, and save the layout to run the same analysis on the next flight.

Above, pitch tuning: the two motor tilt servos, the drone’s attitude against its setpoint, the radio sticks and the controller’s response.

An analysis tab also sums up each flight: energy used and battery behaviour, controllers, vibrations, trajectory and motors.

Videos annotated with their data

DEDAL Studio draws a telemetry overlay frame by frame (flight mode, altitude, speed, battery, horizon, trajectory) to lay over the flight footage. The video and the log are lined up with two cursors.

Example: fifteen minutes of hover in light rain.

Live telemetry

Plugged in over USB, the radio passes on to the Mac the telemetry the drone sends it in flight: DEDAL Studio shows it live during tests.

The app is written in Python and JavaScript and opens like a Mac app. It grew test by test alongside the drone: every problem met in flight became a new tool to understand it.

The D.E.D.A.L model in the Perdix simulator, over a city

Also in Perdix

D.E.D.A.L also flies in the Perdix simulator, built from its CAD and flown by a model of its flight controller: a way to practise the transition without breaking anything.

Discover Perdix