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This study aims to present details of the development and validation of the multicopter modelling code (MMC), a tool for the analysis of small-scale multicopters based on flight physics.

The development effort involved the study of aircraft dynamics and translating the equations of motion into MATLAB code. The authors also developed several auxiliary functions, so that the tool could trim the aircraft about a steady state, linearize the dynamic equations to produce a model that could be used for control systems design and carry out flight simulation.

MMC proved to be of good accuracy, producing results similar to those of other software such as AcuSolve, Overflow and the Rensselaer Multicopter Analysis Code (RMAC), which served as the motivation for this study.

The tool presented here provides an alternative to the aforementioned software, which are not freely available, programmed in MATLAB, a language well known to engineers and scientists.

This study seeks to: (1) examine the extent of interconnectedness prevailing between the cryptocurrency market, the stock market and the precious metals market. (2) Conduct thorough assessment of hedge and safe-haven qualities of broad range of precious metals and cryptocurrencies against returns on the African stock market.

This study applied two novel approaches that is Cross-quantilogram, an advanced statistical technique used to examine the relationship between quantiles of response variable and the quantiles of predictor variables, and TVP-VAR, a technique that captures the dynamic connectedness of variables under consideration.

It was found that the three markets are highly interconnected, particularly among assets under the respective financial markets. It was further revealed that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was the most resilient stock market, whereas Bitcoin, BNB, Silver (XAG) and Platinum (XPT) also exhibited notable resistance to shocks. Finally, the study found that cryptocurrencies and precious metals portrayed varying hedge and safe haven qualities under the various stock markets.

The high interdependency between the African stock market, cryptocurrencies and precious metals suggests that none of the markets is immune to shocks form the other market. The finding that cryptocurrencies and precious metals exhibit some degree of safe-haven and hedge potentials, albeit limited in certain stock markets, provides investors with alternative investment options during market downturns. Since most African stock markets, except the JSE, are net receivers of shocks, investors in these markets should exercise caution during periods of global financial uncertainty.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to explore the dynamic interconnectedness between seven carefully selected African stock markets, three distinct cryptocurrencies and four precious metals, while also assessing the hedge and safe-haven potential of the cryptocurrencies and precious metals against stock market returns. Additionally, the study stands out in recent literature by employing two novel approaches: the TVP-VAR model, which captures the dynamic connectedness among variables, and the Cross-Quantilogram, an advanced statistical method that analyzes the relationship between the quantiles of the response and predictor variables, all within a single study.