Three years ago, a young civil engineer named Yuyu Chen (陳健兆) left a high-paying job as an interior architect and borrowed his wife’s life savings so he could pursue his dream — to design and manufacture radio-controlled model helicopters.
“I was very excited,” recalled Chen, who has flown radio-controlled (RC) helicopters for the last 10 years. “Everyone has to work, but I wanted to do something for a living that would actually be fun.”
Three years later, Chen, 35, and his wife, Anna (陳淑菁), now run a small company that makes a new kind of battery-powered RC helicopter. Two of their models, the Poseidon 480XL and the Mars 480XL, have received enthusiastic reviews from hobbyist magazines and Web sites. A third model is in the design phase, and Chen’s company, which he named Gazaur, has sold more around 400 units, mostly in the US.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES
“Of all the electric RC helicopters, one product line truly stands out in terms of design,” wrote Tara Soonthornnont, an enthusiast who maintains the Web site www.electric-rc-helicopter.com. “This helicopter is very different from other electric RC helicopters. From its design and rotor systems to its body, the engineers have proven that it is not necessary to follow normal conventions to produce a successful model.”
Chen, who studied art in vocational school and later in Japan, was intrigued by a problem familiar to many industrial designers: How to make a machine that’s aesthetically more pleasing while at the same time improve its performance.
“Most RC helicopters are made by people with a background in mechanics. They’re built to work,” Chen said in an interview at his factory in Wugu (五股), Taipei County. “I figured that by using the methods I learned from studying architecture, where the entire design emanates from a concept, there were a lot of improvements that could be made.”
PHOTO: COURTESY OF GAZAUR
This was the essential insight behind his machines. Remove the canopy of most RC helicopters, and you’ll see a clunky, boxy frame that holds the engine and battery and supports the rotor, tail and landing gear. There seems to be no guiding principle behind the design other than to make something that works.
Like a student in an architecture class, however, Chen started with an abstract concept: a killer whale in the case of the Poseidon, an eagle for the Mars. The frames of both models look like the skeletons of these animals. They have smooth, bionic lines that, in addition to looking cool, contain fewer parts and are lighter in weight than those of ordinary electric RC helicopters.
The practical implication is that these frames — which are 60 percent aluminum and 40 percent alloys — are flexible and strong. They’re more stable in flight and offer better protection to the components inside in the case of crashes.
Chen applied the same problem-solving technique to design the landing gear. Wanting something that wasn’t rigidly mounted onto the frame and held together with screws, he thought of how Chinese temples were built with interlocking pieces to absorb the shock from earthquakes. Using this as a concept, he designed flexible landing gear made from interlocking pieces of fiberglass that bend to dissipate shock instead of directing it through the aircraft’s body.
Other notable features include counter-weighted tail rotor blades, which reduce stress on the tail, and a “floating flybar” rotor head based on a German design that has fewer moving parts and improves flight stability.
“I think that overall, the Gazaurs are without a doubt, the KING of mini helis,” Aeryk Hurley, a teenager who test-pilots the company’s helicopters in the US, wrote in an e-mail. “I have yet to fly anything that has handled better.”
While working on his first design, “My wife and I sold fruit on the side of the road in Danshui,” Chen said. He used Computer Aided Drafting software to design his helicopters and consulted a helicopter pilot and a professor of aerospace engineering at Danjiang University (淡江大學). He named the company Gazaur (嘉炤) after the Taiwanese word for flea, which in local culture is seen as an acrobatic animal, not an annoying pest. As is common with small Taiwanese industries, five factories and machine shops that make the parts for Chen’s helicopters became co-investors in his company. The whole process between quitting his job and opening his company took less than a year. “I never doubted myself,” Chen said.
Both the Gazaur Poseidon 480 and Mars 480 are similar in size to the popular T-Rex 450 and mini Titan electric RC helicopters. They use 325mm- to 340mm-long main rotor blades, a 4,000 kilovolt brushless motor and a lithium polymer battery. Originally priced at US$400, a basic kit now costs US$200. Combo kits, which come with a motor and ESC controller, are also available. Batteries cost around US$50. Hobbyists usually own three to five, because one battery is good for only five minutes of flight (though some experienced pilots can get seven or eight minutes of flying time) and can take as long as two hours to recharge.
Before flying an RC helicopter, first-time pilots should buy a flight simulator program, such as Real Flight G3 or Reflex FDR, and use it to learn how to make a computer-simulated helicopter hover without crashing. Otherwise, Gazaur spokesman Liu Hsinli (劉新立) said, “You’ll have to buy a lot of spare parts. And you might hurt someone.”
There are only a few places in the Taipei area where flying an RC helicopter is safe — and legal. One of the most popular is a park on Muzha Road (木柵路) next to the garbage incinerator near the Taipei City Zoo.
A skilled pilot can make one of Gazaur’s helicopters fly upside down and dart back and forth. But this takes months or even years of practice. During a recent demonstration, Chen, who is still in the hovering stage, had to bring along a test pilot.
To be sure, not everyone is keen on Gazaur’s helicopters. On another RC helicopter forum, www.helifreak.com, comments were mostly negative. “That think [sic] is but ugly [sic],” wrote one poster. Another said they looked like Air Jordan shoes “crossed with a transformer toy.” A third: “Thats [sic] like a turd flying around.” But one poster, who had actually flown one, said it “flies much better than it looks.”
Liu admitted the company’s radical designs are not poplar with older RC helicopter enthusiasts, many of whom have flown real helicopters. “Our market is mainly young people,” he said. “They love the way our helicopters look.”
To watch videos of Gazaur’s helicopters in flight, go to https://taiwanyuyuchen.mystrikingly.com/. To find a hobby shop in Taiwan that sells Chen’s helicopters, email Gazaur at taiwanyuyu@gmail.com.
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