Fixed Wing Flight Versus Multirotor Flight

For those that are new to the RC hobby, you may have asked yourself, what is the difference between multi rotor and fixed wing flight. First let's define these two terms. Google

Fixed wing: Fixed wing vehicles is exactly what it sounds like. You have an airplane that has a fixed wing. It may be a conventional style airplane, or even a flying wing. But the principles are the same.

Multi rotor: A multirotor vehicle has multiple motors. They may come in various configurations such as quadcopter, hexcopter, Y-6, and many more.

Fixed wing aircraft fly by generating lift from their wings. Air flow over an airfoil creates a high pressure zone below the wing and a low pressure zone above the wing creating lift. The faster you fly, the more lift you generate. The motor produces the forward thrust to generate speed, and the speed leads to lift. Once in the air, control is provided by control surfaces. For a conventional airplane this may include ailerons on the wings to provide roll control, a rudder to control yaw, and an elevator to control pitch. Each control surface is actuated by a servo which receives commands form the pilot transmitter via the receiver. There are some variations on this model, for example there are some planes that do not include ailerons or rudder. Some planes only have an elevator, and the roll and yaw control is performed by twin differential thrust motors. If it is a flying wing, the control is provided by two elevons, a mix between ailerons and elevator.

Multirotors provide lift directly from the motors which produce thrust downwards, lifting the aircraft into the air. With the exception of the tricopter, most multirotor configurations do not utilize servos for flight control, they adjust the motor revolutions per minute (RPM). To examine the method, lets take for example a quadcopter in X configuration. The front left and back right motors spin in the clockwise (CW) direction, while the front right and back lef