[FabHK]

Indeed, the volocopter breaks with traditional heli modus operandi, but that's a good thing. It is much simpler to operate, with one control stick:

* rotate to rotate the craft (replacing rudder)

* move forward/backwards/sideways to move (translate) the craft (replacing cyclic)

* operate simple switch on top to ascent/descent (replacing collective and throttle)

(Disclaimer: 1. As far as I know, 2. I have crowdfund-invested 1000 EUR in it, so im biased :-)

[tempestn]

Out of curiosity, is there a button that's held while rotating the stick to rotate? The stick looks directional, so it wouldn't make sense to just rotate it and keep it rotated...

Anyway, sounds like a cool setup.

[FabHK]

My understanding is that when you rotate the stick, the angle controls the rotational (yaw) speed of the Volcopter (in other words, you hold the stick straight, it'll keep looking in a fixed direction, say north. Now if you twist the stick a few degrees, it'll slowly rotate in that direction (and keep rotating as long as you hold it twisted). If you twist it more, it'll rotate faster. If you let go (untwist), it'll stop rotating and maintain that heading.)

You can see this in this video of the first manned flight a year ago, at around 2:26.

You can also nicely see the thumb controlled ascent/descent switch at the beginning. Controls look super intuitive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs

[tempestn]

Ah, right, of course. That makes sense.