Fairey Rotodyne
| Fairey Rotodyne | |
|---|---|
 Fairey Rotodyne prototype |
|
| Type: | Transport helicopter |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
November 6, 1957 |
| Commissioning: |
Flight tests ended in 1962 |
| Production time: |
Was never mass-produced |
| Number of pieces: |
1 |
The Fairey Rotodyne was a combination aircraft made by the British manufacturer Fairey . To achieve higher speeds, the unusual design combined the concept of a transport helicopter with additional wings and a blade tip drive .
The primary purpose was to transport passengers between metropolises in close proximity to one another . With take-off sites centrally located in the cities, external airfields would not have been required. The development order was placed by the British Ministry of Supply in August 1953. The first flight of the only prototype took place on November 6, 1957.
The main features of the Rotodyne were the box-shaped fuselage with an almost square cross-section, a four-blade rotor that was powered by a hot blade-tip drive during take-off and landing, short wings with a shoulder- wing design to which the turboprop engines were attached, and a double tail unit at the stern.
To start, the propeller turbines were coupled with compressors that supplied compressed air for the hot blade tip drive. The air was pressed through the hollow rotor shaft and the rotor blades before it was mixed with fuel in a nozzle at the tip of the blade and burned. With this design, a torque compensation , as otherwise with a tail rotor , can be dispensed with.
After take-off, the conventional propeller turbines accelerated forward. When the speed was sufficient, the blade tip drive was switched off and the lift was now generated by the rotor and the wings, which rotate freely according to the autogyro principle. For landing, the procedure was carried out in reverse.
The prototype has been demonstrated several times in Farnborough and at the Paris Air Show. On January 5, 1959 , he set the world record over the closed 100 km route for rotor aircraft at 307 km / h. The flight behavior was good. The British European Airways (BEA now British Airways) ordered initially 6, the British air force 12 Machines and the New York Airways 5, the US Army was interested.
The main point of criticism, however, was the enormous noise development of the blade tip drive. Air traffic and landings within a big city, between high-rise office buildings, were therefore practically impossible to implement. Attempts were made to solve the problem by means of specially developed silencers, but without any notable success. Furthermore, new deployment concepts should still lead the project to success, for example through landing areas on the roofs of high-rise buildings.
Fairey was taken over by Westland in 1960 . The BEA canceled its orders because of the lack of possible applications; the British Air Force canceled due to cost reasons. The program was then discontinued in February 1962.
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | 2 |
| Passengers | 57-75 |
| length | 17.90 m |
| Rotor diameter | 27.40 m |
| height | 6.76 m |
| Rotor area | 591 m² |
| payload | |
| Empty mass | |
| Takeoff mass | 15,000 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 17,000 kg |
| Cruising speed | |
| Top speed | 343 km / h |
| Service ceiling | |
| Range | 830 km |
| Engines | 2 × Napier Eland NEL3; 2100 kW each |
See also
literature
- Keith Hayward: A very large & awkward baby. Whitehall & the Fairey Rotodyne. In: The Aviation Historian, Issue No. 23, pp. 38-49.
Web links
