Scouts and mappers
Long span, high aspect ratio, INAV or ArduPilot in the bay. They fly waypoints, take overlapping photographs, and come home on a lost-link script. Endurance is the weapon.
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Dossier 04 / Wing and rotor
Single-engine drones
One motor, a wing or a main rotor, and the older virtues of aviation: cruise, glide, and hours on station. These machines look more like aeroplanes because they are aeroplanes.
The wing still earns its keep
A fixed-wing UAV makes lift by moving forward. Once it is at flying speed, the motor only has to beat drag. That is why a foam scout the size of a model can cross a parish on a pack that would give a 5-inch quad ten minutes. The wartime parallel is exact: a Wellington stayed up because the wing did the holding, not the engines.
Most small scouts are pushers. The prop sits behind the wing so the nose stays clear for a camera, just as a photo-recce Mosquito kept glass in front and merlins out on the wings. Puller layouts exist where cooling and simplicity matter more than a clean lens.
You must keep flying speed
There is a stall. There is a takeoff run, or a hand launch, or a catapult. Landing is a flare onto grass or a belly skid, unless the airframe is a VTOL hybrid with extra lift motors. Students who only know quads are often caught out by this: the sticks no longer mean “go there.” They mean “set attitude and energy,” the same as a Chipmunk.
Helicopter UAVs
One main rotor and a tail rotor, or a coaxial pair. Better hover efficiency than a quad, harder to tune, useful when you need lift and a small footprint. The swashplate is back.
The awkward cousin
Lift motors for the airfield, a pusher for the cruise. You pay in weight and complexity and gain a scout that does not need a strip. Tailsitters are the other answer: the whole airframe stands on its prop, then pitches over.
Control surfaces instead of a mixer ballet
Elevator sets pitch. Ailerons (or spoilers, or wing warping on some foam) set roll. Rudder coordinates. The flight controller still runs a loop, but it is trimming an aeroplane, not balancing four hover discs. Autopilots such as PX4 and ArduPlane speak the language of airspeed, altitude hold, and loiter – instrument flying, not stick fighting.
Radio and video work the same way they do on a quad, with one practical difference: the aircraft may be a dot when you need to recover it. A good compass, a return-to-home path, and a video link that still paints the horizon matter more than peak roll rate.
If you want the opposite machine – hover, gates, and a cockpit that never looks at the ground from outside – read how FPV drones work.