The fastest ground vehicle on earth is not driven by wheels, but by aircraft jet engines. At the world record speed, they run on the edge of an aerodynamic razor between the downward pressure that limits the speed and the lift off that may lead to death and destruction. [rctestlight] wanted to know what it took to drive RC cars at very high speeds, so he built a duct fan driven car with aerodynamic control surfaces and aircraft flight controllers.
This high-speed vehicle is built on a 1 / 14 scale RC four-wheel chassis, powered by four EDFs (electric duct fans) mounted on a long aerodynamic foam plate shell. It also has an aircraft like tail with electronic wings and rudder for stability and control at high speed using the ardupilot flight controller. The flight controller is set to be stable on the roll and yaw axes and only fixed trim on the pitch axis.
[rctestlight] increased the speed of the car to 71 mph (114 km / h), which is fast for most RC cars, but far lower than the RC car speed record of 202 mph. It is still difficult to maintain a straight line, and the rough road certainly does not help. He hopes to re-examine this challenge in the future with larger motors and high-voltage batteries.
If you want to do more than drive in a straight line or drive in a reverse direction, your friends are the biggest downforce. This can be done by careful aerodynamic design, or simply adding fans to draw the car to the ground.