QuadCopter Design

Airplanes and helicopters have always interested me. At many times, I have had more pressing or fascinating interests, but currently one of my passions is radio control helicopters. While RC airplanes have long held a special place in the lives of retired airline pilots, the field of RC helicopters had recently garnered much attention from a younger, livelier crowd. RC helicopters can be flown much like in a video game, adding to the appeal for younger men and women. Also, a great deal of time and skill must be put into flying a helicopter through various acrobatics and stunts. Along the same lines, I have recently been researching various new designs for a helicopter and have come up with an excellent new design.
This design could potentially revolutionize the world of RC helicopters, along with military unmanned aerial vehicles. The design uses, instead of a conventional main rotor and tail rotor, four duct fans. Duct fans use a more efficient fan blade and a duct around that blade in order to create a large amount of thrust while only using a small amount of power. This means that the ducted fan could be used in place of a conventional helicopter main rotor. The design that I intend to build utilizes four of these duct fans arranged in a rectangular fashion. This will give the aerial vehicle that I am designing the ability to take off vertically from the ground, much like a conventional helicopter. However, unlike traditional helicopter, this design will also have the ability to move the duct fans forward so that all of their thrust moves the plane forwards instead of upwards. This essentially makes them like conventional jet engines, and in this direction the duct fans could potentially travel much faster than a helicopter ever could. To make this device feasible, an automatic system will take the vehicle off of the ground for the user, and then allow the user to fly it like a regular airplane. The advantage of this system is that the user could take virtually any size quad copter off from nearly any place (including backyards, small parks, and living rooms), and then fly it around like a regular RC airplane.
There are, of course, many advantages to an aerial vehicle that can take off vertically and then fly as efficiently as a conventional airplane. This design appeals greatly to a military perspective, as the design could hover anywhere for extended time periods, then fly efficiently to a new location, unlike either an airplane or helicopter.