Monocopter

[9] A single jet engine was to be provided for forward flight, and was to be equipped with thrust vectoring for steering in hover and for anti-torque control in lieu of a tail rotor.

A single prototype was built, but work was stopped in 1962 due to lack of interest on the part of the West German armed forces.

[13] Monocopters, in which the entire aircraft rotates about its center of mass as it flies, present advantages and challenges as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the designer.

Edward Miller of Pennsylvania began experimenting with them again in the late 1990s, as well as Francis Graham, a Kent State University, Ohio, physics professor.

Francis Graham wrote a book, Monocopters,[21] with some theory of their flight characteristics, in 1999, sold by Apogee Components of Colorado Springs.

Ed Miller went on to build the largest high power rocket monocopters ever flown,[22][23] with 8 foot large fiberglass-covered wooden wings, and also sells them.

Chuck Rudy flew a large monocopter with a hybrid rocket engine, using solid and liquid fuel.

[25] Joseph Peklicz of Martin's Ferry scaled down the monocopter into a kit form using small model rocket engines[26][27] and sold many to individuals and schools.

Monocopters that rotate entirely had no practical purpose prior to 2003, but, due in part to Graham's book, that would change.

Patent 7,104,862[28] was awarded in 2006 to Michael A. Dammar of Vera-Tech Aero RPV Corp. of Edina, Minnesota, for a monocopter military reconnaissance device that was remotely controlled and took short exposures.

Another remote-controlled monocopter, which could fly indoors on an electric motor, and which uses the Earth's magnetic field as a reference, was developed by Woody Hoburg and James Houghton at MIT in 2007–2008.