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[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

Found this on one of my favourite sites **LINK**

i didn't know autogyros got so big

Edited By rActive on 13/01/2013 22:38:26

[001]

The Fairey Rotodyne wasn't an Autogyro.

[001]

Double post-not me.

Edited By Chris P. Bacon on 13/01/2013 23:18:33

[David Gilder]

As I recall, the rotodyne had a powered rotor enabling it to land like a helicopter but still took off more like a conventional aeroplane, albeit a short take off!

(I could be wrong!!)

[Simon Chaddock]

The Fairey Rotodyne was indeed an autogryro in flight and a pretty fast one at that.

The rotor was only powered by tip jets for vertical take off and landing which made it a pretty big single rotor helicopter as well.

As a young lad I was mighty impressed by it when i saw it at Farnborough.

The initial test flights were made as a true autogyro (I believe using just air in the tip jets to get the rotor turning) but its intended mode of operation was always VTOL.

 

Edited By Simon Chaddock on 13/01/2013 23:47:40

[Mowerman]

The Rotodyne rotor was powered by tip jets which were extremely noisy and effectively prevented its intended use operating from city centers.

[001]

Alright, so I was wrong again! The Fairey Rotodyne was a helicopter with wings that converted to an 'autogyro' with height and speed'. Not really the definition of an autogyro.

The Platt LePage XR1 on the same site, certainly was not an Autogiro or Autogyro.

[Simon Chaddock]

Mowerman

It depends on your definition of noisy. It certainly wasn't the noisiest plane at Farnborough!

The early 707s were just as loud and actually spread it over a much larger area during take off but it was profitable & American so that was all right!

In reality the cost penalty of a specialist aircraft flying city centre to city centre just did not make economic sense, particularly as there were no such airports in existence.

Remember BEA (the most likely customer) was a nationalised airline and could be 'instructed' by ministers to buy planes developed at the states expense in spite of unfavourable operating costs. Noise was a convenient and powerful argument to avoid this situation.

[Richard Harris]

People rave about Concord or the Harrier but the Fairey Rotodyne is one of the most revolutionary flying machines to ever be designed, way ahead of its time.

I think the reason for the hydrogen peroxide tip jets was to eliminate torque and the variable pitch props tomove it around in the hover. A friend at the field also told me that the centrifugal force created through the rotors was used to move the fuel to the tip jets to reduce weight. The engineers did do experiments with silencers I beleive, but to no avail.

There would have had to be some kind of rotorary joint to supply the fuel from the tanks to the jets, that in itself is a feat of engineering!

 

I believe it is the largest autogyro to date followed by an American Pitcairn.

 

 

 

Interesting link RcActive

 

Rich

 

 

Edited By Richard Harris on 14/01/2013 16:34:58

[Simon Chaddock]

Richard

Not hydrogen peroxide but ordinary jet fuel, same fuel as its Eland turbo props.

High pressure air was taken from the turbo props comprssor stage and ducted to the rotor tip where it was mixed with fuel and ignited. A sort of rotor tip after burner.

The rotor hub was indeed complex, not only conventional cyclic and collective pitch controls but air and fuel as well.

[Lima Hotel Foxtrot]

If I recall correctly off the top of my head and without doing a quick google, Autogyro was a brand name (or maybe an unofficial term coined by Cierva) and Gyroplane is the correct technical term for what we commonly call Autogyros. A bit like all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs.

[Richard Harris]

Simon,

I must be getting muddled up with something else with H202 jets , interesting stuff! did I read that this was just a small version and that infact if the funds were granted the finished example would have been far larger in size?

Rich

[Pat (rActive) Harbord]

The Fairey Rotodyne looks straight out of Eagle Annual. One day everyone will travel this way.

Edited By rActive on 15/01/2013 07:11:50

[Simon Chaddock]

Richard

The Napier Eland in the prototype Rotodyne was not a particularly successful turbo prop with a questionable reliability record but it was the most powerful available.

The 'production' Rotodyne Z would have used the RR Tyne and carried 75 passengers instead of 40.

[Richard Harris]

That would have been big and even louder!

I knew I had seen H202 tip jets on something

Rich

[John Olsen 1]

A book I had as a boy showed a chopper with ram jets on the tips of the rotors, although I don't know if it was ever built. You would need some means of getting it up to speed before the ram jets would start.

H2O2 is nasty stuff, I wouldn't want to sit that close to a tank of the stuff. There was a guy once built a motorcycle with an H2O2 turbine, I think it was the starter for an aircraft gas turbine.

John