Fanwing Planes?

waimate writes "Up until now, there's been fixed wing, or there's been rotating wing, and that's it. But now thanks to Patrick Peebles, there's an entirely new principle of flight called the Fanwing. Initially developed in secrecy and flown only at night, as reported in this Bulletin article this machine combines the many of the attributes of helicopters and conventional aircraft, but not by combining the worst aspects of both like the V-22 Osprey. The FanWing is a whole new way of getting off the ground, particularly suited to inner city applications. It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage. Includes videos of the prototype in action."

Comments

Re:It's only downfall...

[SEWilco]

If you look a little further, you'll find it can autorotate. I only saw a glide ratio of 2:1 to 3:1, although they hope to improve that...but it's better than no gliding.

Incidentally, where they mention "ballistic recovery system"...that is a parachute. The "ballistic" part refers to a parachute which an explosive launches from a mortar tube, for faster deployment.

Re:Anton Flettner buys a lawn mower!

[micromoog]

...lift from a rotating cylinder...

This effect is easy to see yourself:

1. Take a cheap ballpoint pen (the kind that's just a light white uniform plastic cylinder with plugs at each end for the pen part and end part).
2. Take it apart, so you're just left with the empty cylinder.
3. Place the cylinder on a table, and press down on it hard with 8 fingers.
4. Allow the cylinder to slip out from under your fingers, away from you. If it's done right, it will be moving away from you, but with a very fast rotational motion towards you. The rotation will cause it to lift and float gently across a room.

Re:autoratation

[GMontag]

The sprag clutch is a one way clutch. If power is applied it engages and drives the shaft to the rotor mast (if I remember correctly where it is located. for this discussion it is just important that it is in tthe drivetrain). When power is removed it disengages and allows the system to turn without the friction of the "dead" or reduced RPM engine dragging it down.

A sprag clutch failure does result in rotor RPM being coupled to engine RPM. An engine failure at this time would be catastrophic.

Yes, landing with no power is reliable, since you WILL land if you loose power ;-) The main thing you are looking for when you loose power is a clear place to land and you don't need much room since you can land, safely and reliably, no power, within the dimensions of the aircraft and without a "slide" or runout.

We would usually practice autorotations in conjunction with a simulated forced landing, with the instructor chopping the throttle while announcing "forced landing" and the response is to call for the governer switch to be set to emergency as you drop the collective and setup an approach to your selected landing spot. During the process, the engine is providing no power to the rotor system, but it is sitting at idle waiting to be "run up" again in case of an emergency or completion of the maneuver.

The only time that I "banged one up" was practicing night low-level (50') autos and I was landing hard on an asphault strip. Cracked a skid shoe (metal part under the skid for flight school aircraft because of the extra wear the maneuvers put on the aircraft) in the process.

Some time before I stopped flying the Army stopped doing auto's to the ground outside of flight school and unit instructors since the statistics were lining up that we were breaking more aircraft on landing than the number of engine failures were producing, or something like that.