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

Now, with wings!

[ellisDtrails]

Will a dainty girl walking on the beach do the first commerical for this?

multi-purpose

[Bazman]

What a bizarre-looking bird. Looks like it can be used to provide aircon in the hangers when its not flying.

Baz

A video?

[DirkDaring]

Well this site should be /.'d in about 35 seconds for the rest of the day.

Dirk

Re:A video?

[HiQ]

thousands of slashdotters their requests spawning
this server
flies
no more

Hold the phone

[ekrout]

The FanWing is a whole new way of getting off

Jeeves, buy me a dozen!

Re:Hold the phone

[HumanXX]

I certianly wouldnt like to get off on that, those spinny flappy things look like they could do some serious damage. You may get one good night but there certainly would not be any more.

------------
Human Experimentation musical experiments, just not as we know it.

Flying Cars

[Orclover]

So affordable flying cars by next year then? We are a bit overdue.

Re:Flying Cars

[xiaix]

I do not want to see flying cars until people learn to drive the ones that don't fly. As dangerous as these "I am the only person on the road" mentality drivers are, imagine them with an "I am the only person in the sky" additiude. Goody, another whole dimension to cut people off in.

Re:Flying Cars

[i0chondriac]

Oh yeah. Quite nasty! Imagine getting top ended, bottom-swiped... etc. Double parking could become quadruple parking (or even worse!) The horror!

Re:Flying Cars

[zbuffered]

I say make 'em get pilots' licences, or some modified form thereof. That'll cut down on the soccer moms and grandparents and who(m?)ever else causes all the problems on the roads today.

Re:Flying Cars

[Ghengis]

Driving tests should be harder. There should also be more of a follow-up (re-tests every several years,) and stiffer penalties for violations. Living in Atlanta, where traffic lights are merely a suggestion, is like running a gauntlet daily!!

Re:Flying Cars

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Unlikely. However there's always cartercopters which has demonstrated speeds of 180 mph and should have a top speed of about 450 mph, lands on a dime and can easily autorotate down if the power goes out (unlike a helicopter, where it is a major incident). Significantly it looks much safer than a helicopter, and outperforms helicopters (except a CarterCopter basically lacks hover, since it has an unpowered rotor, but for transportation, who cares?).

That's the nearest thing to a flying car I know of right now- unlike the other systems, this one seems to have fewer drawbacks.

Re:Flying Cars

[vaguelyamused]

Autorotating in a helicopter is not a major incident except when you have to do so abruptly at low altitude or low speed. Autogyros fly around all the time using nothing but autorotation. There's no reason that autorotation in a CarterCopter would be any "easier" than in a regular helicopter, they both work on the exact same principle.

Re:Flying Cars

[CXI]

I'm not certain if it's really all that much safer. In the first place, you can autorotate and safely land a regular helicopter, assuming you have enough altitude. The "safety" feature of the Cartercopter is that the rotor is always autogyro. But, they are selling it as a VTOL aircraft, so what they do it spin up the rotor on the ground and disconnect it from the transmission when you leave the ground. That means you have exactly 5 seconds of lift to gain airspeed or you drop like a rock. When landing vertically, you have a little more energy to use, but you are still pretty much 100% committed. If you screw up, or catch a gust of wind, too bad because you can't pull out of your landing. This note also scares me: "at speeds slower than 30 mph, the aircraft will begin to sink even at full throttle".

That's safer!? Certainly not in VTOL as it requires more skill than a helicopter due to the limited amount of kinetic energy. Although it is marginally better in STOL because there is no "dead man's zone."

Re:Flying Cars

[Lumpy]

I think flying cars is an excellent idea IF the common person could afford it.

first off the common man can afford to buy and fly an airplane. you can buy a used 2 seater aircraft for $29,000 to $49,000 and a nice piper Warrier 4 seater sedan for a little over $100,000.

this is for aircraft that have been very well taken care of. New is out of the question... piper is completely nuts wanting about $350,000 for the piper warrier equivlant today. but remember.. that flying. espically private aircraft are a toy/luxury. very few places in the world is it a requirement for life.

if you are able to get it to become a needed item.. and by doing this you need to start buying your politicians today... almost EVERY city will institute a no fly zoning policy or start charging fly-in-tolls. your local government is more corrupt than the feds... you'll betcha they will want to tax the hell out of it.

Re:Flying Cars

[Chaswell]

Ever driven in Colorado? I am sure other states are the same but it was really obvious in CO. There are these great high altitude roads that are scenic drives, absolutely beautiful. But there are no guard rails, no shoulders to the road, just a few thousand feet to drop. My wife was positive that this was Colorado's way to help the less able off this planet. Watching an oversize "winnie" drive along these roads with 60 mph gusts is just gut wrenching. My new beetle just loved it though.

Re:Flying Cars

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Autorotating in a helicopter is not a major incident except when you have to do so abruptly at low altitude or low speed.

So you're saying aurototation is simple except when it isn't. Great.

There's no reason that autorotation in a CarterCopter would be any "easier" than in a regular helicopter

Well Cartercopter is a gyrocopter, so it's always autorotating. At low speeds/altitudes CarterCopter gyro is up to speed, so there's no drama at all- in stark contrast to a helicopter. At high speeds you are flying on the stuby wings and the rotor is slowed right down, but you can make sure you are at high altitude, so you've got plenty of time to spin up the rotor. Flown sensibly there's no necessity to ever be in a dead-zone.

Re:Flying Cars

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Although it is marginally better in STOL because there is no "dead man's zone."

Not marginally, its a lot better. It's an aircraft with a 30mph takeoff speed, lands in pretty much its own rotor, and can takeoff in not much more. There's no dead zone that you can't avoid, and it has a maximum speed far higher than a helicopter. These are not exactly bad things.

But even going back to the VTO aspect, what happens when a helicopter loses power on takeoff anyway? You're often screwed right? If you do VTO in a Cartercopter it's if anything safer. And landing. Compare this to a glider for example. Who says you change your mind? What kind of idiot changes their mind 3 seconds before landing?

Re:Flying Cars

[florescent_beige]

Its called an auto-gyro. Idea's been around for years. I guess Cartercopter sounds better or maybe its just an ego thing. Anyway, its not a bad idea, but not a new one either. The problem is, auto-gyros can't hover, although they have short take-offs and almost vertical landings.

The great thing about AG's is the simplicity of the drive train. The probem that plagues all choppers is where to put the engine and how to get the power to the rotors. Probably the most common solution is to put the engine on the roof (like most of Bell's line, which minimizes the drive train length, but then, well, you have an engine on the roof, creating a lot of drag and looking stupid. Some put it behind the cabin (a la MD helicopters , which is great drag-wise and looks groovy, but then you get a gear box about 4 inches from the back passengers ear plus a long drive shaft from behind the passengers up to the roof. Its nightmarish.

Re:Flying Cars

[andrew_0812]

I know what you mean, but from what I have read, those currently developing flying cars (Moller, MACRO Industries, etc...) are all planning on haveing them computer controlled. Basically, you would enter a destination address (GPS or something), and the car would take you there.

So, I guess I do not want to see flying cars until people learn how to program computers better than Microsoft. Nothing worse than being at 30,000 feet and having a General Protection Fault - Please shutdown and restart your flying car. If problem persists, please use parachute.

Re:Flying Cars

[TheLink]

OK so they're not as bad as giving nukes to everyone. But a flying car typically can take out far more people and stuff than a normal car - just the potential energy of being much higher up is bad enough. Add in the fact that there's no equivalent of road barriers and emergency lanes for flying vehicles - say you have problems midair in the city you can't really pull-over can you?

Also, humans don't appear to have any innate flocking instinct. You can get a million flamingos to fly in various flock patterns and paths without colliding with each other, but try get humans to do that.

So I personally think consumer level flying cars are a bad idea. Even masses of above average humans won't be able to fly and maintain them safely amongst other masses. I doubt you can get masses of people to do it safely.

It's not like slowly getting people used to flying- e.g. performance envelope of flying chickens - that won't sell. It's like a jump to eagle speeds and altitudes with 1 ton inertias - no stopping on a dime. Eagles and other birds have had a long time to slowly get things right.

I don't trust computers to get it right either - especially since computers and sensors still have to be maintained.

Also if you look at the passenger airplane safety - despite all the training, equipment and controls, they're often worse than cars on a _per_trip_ basis. They win in safety just because of distance travelled.

In the typical "rose tinted view" of free flight in cities, when you have consumer grade flying cars and pilots you get the worse safety of both worlds - many short-medium trips, low level flight, no open air space - lots of cables wires and obstacles around, and lots of other unpredictable flying vehicles around.

So I argue that they'll remove too much more than just the plain idiots.

Re:Flying Cars

[Lobsang]

Even though I crave those, I'd really hate to see human controlled flying cars. Can you imagine your old granny driving something at 300MPH and having to worry about not two but three dimensions? :)

They'll have to be fully automated. All the "driver" does is to point and click at the address he/she wants to go or else chances are he/she won't get there in one piece anyway. :)

Re:Flying Cars

[puppetluva]

Also, humans don't appear to have any innate flocking instinct.

Tell that to the people who invested in Boo.com or Dan Kamen's Segway Human Transporter.

Re:Flying Cars

[susano_otter]

first off the common man can afford to buy and fly an airplane. you can buy a used 2 seater aircraft for $29,000 to $49,000 and a nice piper Warrier 4 seater sedan for a little over $100,000.

What is your definition of "common man", and who is your crack dealer?

The prices you quote are for luxury items that have little or no ROI for the "common man". For the kind of money you're talking about, I could maybe justify buying a high-end SUV, on the grounds that it's arguably useful.

Sure, I could probably scrape together enough cash and loans to buy a plane, but then what? Me and my family live on ramen noodles for the next five years while we pay off our cars, home, student loans, and the airplane? I'd have to find a second job, which would leave me no time for flying lessons, which would be another expense anyway. And without lessons, I can't get certified (another expense), which means I can't even use this 5-digit folly that you tell me I can "afford".

I look forward eagerly to the day when the common man can trivially own and operate a luxury vehicle such as an airplane, yacht, or whatever. But it is the considered opinion of my budget that this day has not yet come. You are grossly mistaken, both about the common man, and about the amount of crack you smoke on a daily basis.

Re:Flying Cars

[susano_otter]

Would you be willing to explain your reasoning behind the statement "evolution explains morality"?

Its inability to do exactly that always struck me as evolution's weakest link. I'd be happy to learn that I haven't fully considered the issue, if you're willing to instruct me :)

(Caveat Emptor: I will most likely debate your points, so if you're not interested in the possibility of lively discussion, you may not want to reply. I promise to be civil and open-minded, though.)

Re:Flying Cars

[machine of god]

Also, humans don't appear to have any innate flocking instinct.

My friend has a theory about birds and that. Basically any bird that did not have the flocking ability was quickly killed for being so damned annoying. You could see how it wouldn't take long for no birds without flocking ability to be left. I figure it could be the same for people. I mean seriously, they have psychic driving don't they? (look for the new jersey part)

Re:Flying Cars

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I think the VTOL with CarterCopter is safer than you seem to think. And they are still developing the system and its flight controls, so there is much scope to deskill this operation if it proves tricky.

In a Cartercopter doing vertical take off, you intentionally and always lose power immediately after takeoff.

Nonsense; you're adding airspeed and increasing lift all the time.

In any case you do NOT have to do VTOL in a CarterCopter, unlike a helicopter. And its horizontal takeoff and landing is better and safer than normal fixed wing takeoffs, and it uses hardly any runway at all; heck it can land on the taxi ways.

The idiot who is about to run into something.

No aircraft can help someone like that.

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

From a military perspective (and it is always about that in aviation), the payload to power ratio is impressive. I can't imagine it is fast though, or very easily maintained, but hey that is what prototypes are for.

Re:Wow...

[bpd1069]

From a military perspective (and it is always about that in aviation), the payload to power ratio is impressive. I can't imagine it is fast though, or very easily maintained, but hey that is what prototypes are for.

There are many applications for this innovation for the military. Think Recon/Surv drones. They need no excessive payload as they are filled with electronics and cameras. The payload/power ratio would allow for more fuel as opposed to payload thus allowing longer flight times.

On a non-military tangent I am interested in its flight ceiling. This could be of use to researchers studing the upper reaches of the atmosphere. With extended flight capabilities and remote operation it could be far more useful than precurring a retrofitted commercial airliner or military aircraft.

Hate to see this thing flying through a hurricane though...

Re:Wow...

[mpe]

From a military perspective (and it is always about that in aviation), the payload to power ratio is impressive. I can't imagine it is fast though, or very easily maintained,

Easily maintained is likely to be an issue for a military aircraft, speed might not be, depending on the intended application. Wonder what its radar cross section is like though.

Re:Wow...

[thrillseeker]

There are many applications for this innovation for the military. Think Recon/Surv drones. They need no excessive payload as they are filled with electronics and cameras. The payload/power ratio would allow for more fuel as opposed to payload thus allowing longer flight times.

A reconnaissance platform needs survivability. A design such as this does not appear to offer any sort of low-observabilty, or alternatively, high speed for defensive requirements. This particular design could be brought down with the lowest-tech of weaponry. That said, it might serve well as a surveillance platform for peacetime uses, if it had loiter time that made the development effort worthwhile - if such a wing/propeller design could handle heavy weather well, and hold together for long periods of time (you are rotating a large mass at a high speed in this design). A development effort for a large passenger-carrying aircraft such as depicted in the google cache of the photos can be a several hundred million dollar process to meet FAA certification requirements to have people on board.

Because of the design expense, an aircraft needs to be focused to a particular market segment. However, paraphrasing Bill Lear, who designed the Lear jet, the trick is to discern that market before others. This particular aircraft has a unique wing and lift-engine design, but that doesn't mean at endgame that it'd be a worthwhile development effort, since the technology in use now has made great strides in efficieny and cost. But it's certainly worth studying at a certain level of investment (of time and money), since who knows what will turn out to be the better mousetrap.

Capitalizing on such technological improvements in design approach, material availability, market desire for a particular platform, etc, is hard work and a lot of luck to make it a cost-effective endeavor considering the (necessary for safety) expense of certification.

Disclosure: I work in the business - www.avtechgroup.com

Re:Wow...

[gruhnj]

A reconnaissance platform needs survivability. A design such as this does not appear to offer any sort of low-observabilty, or alternatively, high speed for defensive requirements. This particular design could be brought down with the lowest-tech of weaponry. That said, it might serve well as a surveillance platform for peacetime uses ...

For the reasons he already stated, this design would alos be unsuitable for peacetime recon. It may be even more important during peacetime than war for the plane to survive. If the plane goes down, its an international incident that may lead to war. Becuase of the instant implications, the plane needs to survive a few hits from the enemy. If they shoot at you but dont get you, most governments wont broadcast the info to the rest of the world, essentialy saying to others "See? They did it and so can you?" IF OTOH, they get the spy plane/drone, they broadcast it instantly as evidence of imperalism by the offender.

Secondly our current "peacetime" activities aint so peaceful. Iraq, Israel, Afganistan to some extent are all peacetime activities, but we get shot at quite a bit.

PFC Gruhn
Fort Lewis, Wa
I Corps, U.S. Army

Re:Wow...

[budgenator]

not to mention that those big squire-cage fans would have a lot of sharp radar refleecting angles and their rotaional speed would just SCREAM on a doppler radar.

I do think this would make cool model airplanes, but I suspect the concept will not scale very well.

But is it scalable?

[HBPiper]

It is a neat concept and works well on the model. But it just feels like scaling it up to the point where it will lift meaningful weight will prove it to be not efficient.

Re:But is it scalable?

[Seahawk]

If it doesnt scale, we will just make a cluster of them instead!

Re:But is it scalable?

[drudd]

Burns: Model?

Re:But is it scalable?

[MtViewGuy]

I'm concerned it's not scalable to something larger, either.

First, we have to consider the weight of a larger Fan Wing. That could result in a quite heavy contraption.

Second, scaling up the Fan Wing to something bigger could result in a lot of mechanical complexity.

Finally, the Fan Wing could be quite noisy when scaled up.

Lacks any ability to glide

[wiredog]

Can't autorotate (like a helicopter) either. Ouch.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[tolan-b]

according to the FAQ they are working on this, and seem confident that they'll be able to get it to work well enough for a reasonable emergency landing.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[richie2000]

How does it work? The FanWing has a cross-flow fan at the leading edge. The fan pulls the air in at the front and accelerates it over the trailing edge of the wing. By transferring the work of the engine to the rotor, which spans the whole wing, the FanWing accelerates a large volume of air and achieves a high lift-efficiency.

We have clear evidence of the success of the design. Video clips of flights are available on this site and successful wind tunnel tests have been conducted at both the University of Rome and at Imperial College, London.

The wind-tunnel tests have shown that we have an unusually efficient wing. Documented efficiencies for the first prototypes were found to be in the order of 20 grams of lift per watt of input power. This means that with this original concept, even before any real research and development, we were already looking at a lift of 1 -1 ½ tons of weight in the air with 100 hp. And since those early stages there have been demonstrated in the most recent wind tunnel experiments some marked improvements in efficiency, flight speed and autorotation. (emphasis karma whore's)

The flying prototypes show many actual and predicted strengths:

• Short take-off and landing capability with clearly predictable vertical-take-off possibilities
• Reduced sound emission
• Reduced fuel consumption
• Simple, inexpensive construction with no high-tech requirements for basic manufacture
• High manoeuverability
• Stability in flight - because it's not sensitive to the angle of the incoming air
• No stall
• Simple control system

</KARMA>

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[Thud457]

I haven't seen the article yet (slashdotted, natch), so cut me some slack.

But they could use an emergancy parachute system in case of failure.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[Observer]

Cirrus Design SR80 had a complete parachute system for the light aircraft, but that's hardly a scalable approach, and dropping even a small general aviation plane on a parachute over an urban area is distinctly second-best to being able to glide towards some reasonably open space *before* deploying the 'chute.

(Hm. A quick Google search indicates that Cirrus is actually manufacturing their planes. Good for them, innovation in any field is welcome.)

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[AlecC]

Not only have they been manufacturing their planes for about two years, but the first use of the aircraft parachute for real happened about a month ago. Engine failed, parachite worked. Pilot and passenger walked away - the definition of a good landing.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[nhavar]

autorotation aside I wonder if a mechanism could be devised to change the angle of the individual fan blades to transform the wing into a solid and glide friendly wing.

I wonder what this design does to birds?

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[richie2000]

I wonder what this design does to birds?

Probably the same as a lawn mower does to mice - mincemeat.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[richie2000]

They too do match, witness the and tags for another example. Fix your script, kiddie. :-)

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[dasmegabyte]

Your post crashed Xerces due to bad XML. You should have excaped that ampersand in "Copy & Paste."

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[richie2000]

Oh God, I have just created the Xerces-crashing post... The humanity! The trolls! What have I done? (zoom out to reveal hero standing on the edge of a cliff, crying out into the void)

Apart from the notion that bad input should be ignored, not crashed into, I had to google to figure out was Xerces was. Cool project, but you should probably submit a bug report. Even if it's bad XML, the parser shouldn't crash.

-1, Bad XML. Bad, bad XML.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[dasmegabyte]

Well, when Xerces find a problem it throws an exception since it can't keep going. Since all you basic XML app does is run the parser, the exception causes the app to exit with a return code of 1. Which isn't really a crash, but close enough.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[b_pretender]

"It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage. "

Kind of like your typical passenger laden 747 often glides to safety if there is an electrical or engine failure?</sarcasm>

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[PD]

And the plane landed in a bunch of mesquite trees. The thing is designed to hit the landing gear, with a lot of resulting damage to the airplane, but none to the passengers. The trees popped a few holes in the composite, but did little structural damage. It should be easily repairable to fly another day.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[mysticgoat]

I wonder what this design does to birds?

It looks like the design would tend to blow birds and trash up and over.

Propellers and jet engines suck. Fanwings don't.

Re: Lacks any ability to glide

[Corvus9]

Large passenger planes are able to glide quite well. Less than a month ago a large Airbus 330 lost power over the atlantic and was able to glide for an hour, all the way to the Azores.

A CNN report of the event. I have heard of others.

Re:Lacks any ability to glide

[AB3A]

Uh, no. The birds would suffer a similar fate no matter what kind of aircraft they hit.

The Fanwing is a new name on an old concept: It's called an autogyro. And yes, there are many folks reexaming the autogyro as a less expensive and more reliable alternative to the helicopter. Unfortunately, many don't realize why the autogyro isn't more popular until they look more closely at the performance envelope.

Autogyros can be more efficient than helicopters, but inevitably they are less efficient than fixed wing airplanes. They also suffer from the same problems as other rotary wing aircraft.

As the forward speed of the main rotor wing tip approaches the speed of sound, they lose lift. Rotorcraft are speed limited in ways that fixed wing aircraft are not. The Cartercopter is one of the best attempts at reaching efficent speeds and cruise that I've seen.

For examples of other autogyros see Gyrobee and The Popular Rotorcraft Association

It's not revolutionary, it's merely evolutionary. Beware of those who claim otherwise. (Note: Moller has been working on these designs for decades and not one has been sold commercially as a working aircraft in any capacity --even experimental)

Use

[EyesWideOpen]

The site's moving slow so I didn't get past the home page at fanwing.com so this is probably answered on the site but what I want to know is what the uses of plane like this would be. The cockpit seems awfully small (again judging only by the image on the home page.)

Anyone know what the planned uses of this type of plane are?

Re:Use

[Martin Blank]

There are no manned prototypes as yet, but the article suggests cropdusting, cargo, and people transportation. One of the mentions it has is that a 200hp engine could lift about two tons, albeit at only 100kph.

Re:Why is this news for nerds?

[Marillion]

Let me suggest that fluid dynamics and related fields of computational fluid dynamics and areodynamics are very nerdy.

The site sure isn't

[StefMeister]

/.ed already

Re:The site sure isn't

[sporktoast]

Google's caching of the primary pages wasn't very helpful. Too many frames and redirects to go through to get to a page that had any real information.

Try Google's Images to get at least an idea of what we're talking about.

Re:The site sure isn't

[srmalloy]

/.ed already

Slashdotted into oblivion; all that's there is a text banner and link to the hosting service, New Global Net Internet Services. We killed another one.

Their website was hosted at U. Twente

[jalet]

It seems their web server was in the same building than security.debian.org , because it too doesn't show any sign of life anymore.

As a former Rotary Wing Aviator...

[GMontag]

My Right to autorotate shall not be abridged!

Otherwise it sounds cool, might get one for my ex-wife ;-)

It's only downfall...

[Jungleland]

> It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage

I'm sure they could add some kind of parachute system, like what is being developed for the ISS lifeboat!

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.

ornothopters.

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's how those things in Dune get invented. I guess we'll have to beware of the Harkonnen

(Been a while since I read Dune, so don't whine about the spelling).

Re:ornothopters.

[The Original Yama]

No, you're thinking of this.

Re:ornothopters.

[Grab]

Ornithoptors are a nice idea, and again, a few ppl have made working balsa-wood models of them.

The problem is that nifty techniques often don't scale. In the case of ornithoptors, flapping a plane-size wing requires stronger materials than are ever likely to be available. Be interesting to see if this gadget will scale to passenger-size aircraft.

Incidentally, I'm not sure how the bloke making these things reckons they'd be good for in cities. The wings are huge!

Grab.

Paddleboat?

[VTg33k]

Ha, it looks like someone took one of those Mississippi River paddleboat steamers and built an airplane around it...

Anton Flettner buys a lawn mower!

[richie2000]

Flettner's brief brush with fame came back in the twenties when he figured out how to get lift from a rotating cylinder. He also built a ship which used rotating cylinders to provide thrust.

Now, the scary part is that I wrote a report on this maniac/genius back in high school and I remembered his name so I could google for it...

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:Anton Flettner buys a lawn mower!

[orthogonal]

Place the cylinder on a table, and press down on it hard with 8 fingers.

Eight fingers?!?? You have eight fingers?

Bart?

Re:Anton Flettner buys a lawn mower!

[boatboy]

Quick! Someone tell me first aid for a pen in my boss's eye!

Re:Anton Flettner buys a lawn mower!

[Daniel_Staal]

Quick! Someone tell me first aid for a pen in my boss's eye!

Well, that depends. If the eyeball has not been puncured, remove pen and flush with water. If the eyeball has been punctured, cover the other eye, strap boss down so he/she/it does not attempt to move or remove the pen, empty supply closet, charge a first class ticket to country of your choice on your boss's credit card, and get out of town. Oh, and call 911 from the airport.

Application #12 : Flying Combine Harvester

[NZheretic]

Just ad it to the list.

I've got a flying combine harvester

nope!

[e8johan]

"...particularly suited to inner city applications ... it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage"

No way, bad idea! I've seen more people that I need to running out of gas to recognize this as a *bad* idea. The ability to glide is *important* and very useful when things seriously seizes to function

Re:nope!

[terraformer]

It's /.'d already so I have no idea what the application for this plane is but I suspect military based on the secrecy of the project. That said, most new govt built planes have a few shared characteristics. The most relevant here is they are fly by wire since they posses the aerodynamics of rocks. The F177a stealth F/B is a great example of a plane that could not fly without the intervention of a computer to make thousands of adjustments a second. In this case the design was for the stealth capabilities but also the F16/18's are not terribly aerodynamic either and have low wing thickness. As a result of these aerodynamic features the stall speed is very high and requires thrust in most circumstances. I do not pretend to understand this fully but apparently these aerodynamic "features" (in this case not a codeword for bug...) allow for amazing manuevuers such as the Mig29's 45 angle of attack. see here and here and it's ability to do a tail-slide (when the nose is actually behind the tail while the plane is moving forward or graphically like this \ moving > slightly) This was performed at a show in 1998 (see here)

Re:nope!

[e8johan]

"... inner city applications ..."

Maybe you saw the movie Hotshots or something, but Migs and such tend to a) fly around friendly cities or b) fly over and bomb enemy cities. I would not concider them apropriate for inner city applications.

google cache for images...

[leehwtsohg]

some images of the plane on google

Re:google cache for images...

[Hawaiian Lion]

and here's the article

Re:Why is this news for nerds?

[uberdave]

Or: They were put there. Buy a man.

Interesting videos, too bad it's ./'ed

[Anonymous Coward]

I managed to grab a couple videos from the (lagging from the start) site before the webserver came to a grinding halt. The R/C models fly nicely, they have impressive stability, especially at low speeds (in fact, it looks like speed matters less than with traditional wings).
They make buzzing noises, a tad like mosquitoes.

From the article title, I thought this was about the "rotating fans" lifting-body aircraft I had read about a few years ago in specialized press... At least the one in this article does not look like a UFO.

Inner City Applications?

[Hairy_Potter]

So the Fanwing is especially suited for inner city applications? I'm guessing it's all chromed up and has a CD player that goes boom boom boom boom da boom.

Re:Major downfall (no pun intended)

[passthecrackpipe]

Helicopters autorotate.......

Parachutes possible

[Outland Traveller]

I seem to remember a report of the first successful real-world use of a emergency parachute for light aircraft. A cessna-like plane had its engines cut own and the pilot was able to parachute his entire plane to safety.

Perhaps that is a valid solution for this fanwing bird.

Re:Parachutes possible

[clickety6]

But I understand they are touting this as a plane for heavy cargo so how big a parachute would you need - and how much room would be left for the cargo? !

Re:Parachutes possible

[tramm]

Outland Traveller wrote:

I seem to remember a report of the first successful real-world use of a emergency parachute for light aircraft. A cessna-like plane had its engines cut own and the pilot was able to parachute his entire plane to safety.

It wasn't the first successful use, BRS claims over 100 saves. It wasn't a Cessna, it was a Cirrus SR-22. And the engine didn't die, the left aileron fell off.

Re:Parachutes possible

[delcielo]

There was an unsuccessful deployment earlier this year (July?) that resulted in an A.D. (Airworthiness Directive, read - mandatory maintenance). An unrelated A.D. was also issued this year regarding the trim system on the airplane. Complying with this second A.D. necessitated removal of the left aileron.

The pilot who successfully used his BR chute over Dallas was in fact picking his airplane up from the maintenance shop after having them perform the work for the A.D.s. Apparently somebody hadn't tightened/safety-wired the bolts that hold the aileron to the wing. It separated, causing him to use the chute, which thankfully worked.

The ntsb.gov page that gives the synopses of accidents can be found here. Just click on the link for synopses, and search for sr22's in 2002.

How is this different from an ornithopter?

[sam_handelman]

i.e. it has propellers on the wings, just like the pinion feathers on the wings of a bird. It fles like a bird, therefore.

Does that not make it an ornithopter? Do the wings flap? I can't tell from the bullettin article.

The more detailed page is slashdotted, I only read the article, so it is very posible I'm missing something.

Re:How is this different from an ornithopter?

[PD]

The wings don't flap. The fan is a long tubular structure that rotates.

Think of a squirrel cage fan the size and shape of a paper towel tube. It's in the front of the wing and rotates so the top is pushing air backwards. At the back side of the rotating fan is a triangular wedge that fills out the airfoil shape.

Too Light?

[BoBaBrain]

There's an entirely new principle of flight called the Fanwing

It sure is a radical design, but I can't imagine it could carry much of a payload.

Check your toy store for even later versions

[LM741N]

Model plane manufacturers had almost perfect replicas of the stealth fighters years before they were officially announced to the public.

Same for the SR-71, and many others over the years. These guys have really good contacts inside the military and/or contractors.

Of course I'm sure thats all illegal now and will get you permanently detained and/or dissappeared here in the US.

Re:Check your toy store for even later versions

[smagoun]

Are you sure? Testors, for example, released their "F-19 Stealth Fighter" with much fanfare in 1986, back before the F-117, B-2, Have Blue, etc were made public. The F-19 model looked nothing like the stealth aircraft that were later made public, and it turns out there's no such thing as an F-19.

Testors released models of the F-117 *after* it was made public, I'm fairly sure. Same goes for the other manufacturers.

(Of course, the "F-19" is still a bit of a mystery - maybe it's real after all. But I doubt it.)

Mirror with picture

[infolib]

Latest mirror from the Internet Archive.

Another Osprey Detractor

[handorf]

Because it's an easy target, I guess. Big money, ambitious project, several setbacks, no supporters anymore. It just happens to be the perfect tool for what it needs to do... that's all.

Give designers a contradictory set of specs (long range/endurance, high speed, VTOL, high capacity) and you get a vehicle that's a bit odd and a bit difficult to build and maintain.

OTOH, I'd trust my life to an osprey ANY DAY over something that can't glide when the engines quit.

Re:Another Osprey Detractor

[drinkypoo]

Except it is possible to put a parachute on a plane these days.

I wouldn't use these for intercontinental flights, but I sincerely hope we will be using either a VERY LARGE jet (or even a blimp) for that (I want a shopping mall in the thing) or something supersonic, as a matter of course, before very long at all.

Re:Another Osprey Detractor

[srussell]

The fact that the Osprey glides didn't save the people who were killed in the crashes. IMHO, if plane A tends to crash and kill people, and plane B doesn't, then how much better A glides than B is irrelevant.

Should I ever find myself in the unlikely position of having to choose between riding in the Osprey or in the FanWing, I'll base my decision on the ratio of crashes-to-flights.

Strictly speaking not a new principle

[Beautyon]

This is not an entirely new principle, its more like a linear ducted fan. or a Stretched turbine

A new principle would exclude fanning, flapping or any kind of turning of wheels (circular motion) to create thrust. This is a beautiful project, but it is really a derivative of Leonardos helicopter, which was an Archimedes screw for air.

When there is propulsion generated without circular motion (props, turbines, ducted fans), or without shooting something out of a tube like rocketry, then we will be talking about something that is really new.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[pokrefke]

From the bits of the website I've been able to see, it's not much at all like the Kyosho DF (I had the electric F-16 and the glow-powered F-86). Kyosho uses the fan to produce thrust, lift is generated by the wings.

The Fanwing is producing both lift and thrust from the same device.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[Bazzargh]

Its the *lift* that is being generated that is interesting, not the forward thrust. In the ducted fan you point to for example, lift is generated by the wing shape. In the fanwing, its from the rotation of the fan (the Magnus effect).

Note that in airscrews and turbines, thrust is generated in the direction of the axis of rotation. In the fanwing, both thrust and lift are perpendicular to the axis of rotation.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[Beautyon]

thrust and lift are perpendicular to the axis of rotation

You mean like this?

Like I said, this is an old idea.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[Bazzargh]

I have 2 questions:
- does the paddlewheel keep the steamer afloat (generating lift)?
- Is there room for a card table on a fanwing? My, that is a fiiiine power to lift ratio Mister Maverick... ;)

On topic... you have *got* to see this video of another unusual flight concept, the rotopter. Would you go in any vehicle that moves like that????

Also, the cycloprop actually *is* a plane working on the same principal.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[TomRC]

Hmm - you want a NEW principle?

How about a wing that causes air atoms to quantum tunnel from the top to the bottom?

The little gray men told me that was how their flying saucer worked.

Re:Strictly speaking not a new principle

[dublin]

Also, the cycloprop [brtrc.com] actually *is* a plane working on the same principal.

Actually, the CycloProp coscept only looks similar. Mechanically, it's very different, in that it's rotors are a true cycloidal drive (meaning their angle of attack is controllably varied in a cyclical fashion as the rotor makes a complete turn), while the FanWing uses static blades/vanes to produce a similar effect.

The cycloidal drive is much more mechanically complex, but has been used in marine applications for around a century, and is now favored as a marine drive for some types of tugboats and ferries, due to its ability to instantly provide thrust in any direction. One advantage this approach would have over a FanWing, is that a CycloProp-type aircraft could conceivably be a true VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) craft, while the FanWing would likely be an STOL (Short Take-off and Landing) craft at best.

you missed one

[nikko]

>waimate writes "Up until now, there's been fixed >wing, or there's been rotating wing, and that's it.

What about ornithopters? None are in production, but several are in development, as has been reported on /.

What a great idea

[gabec]

... link directly to videos on some poor shmuck's site. Surely they'll be able to withstand the onslaught of /.'ers. Oh wait... :P

And other modifications include...

[fmaxwell]

Ironically, the first thing that they'll do is put a big wing on the back of it.

HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna

[smagoun]

For comparison, the current model of the Cessna 172 (single piston engine 4-place general aviation aircraft) has a 160HP engine with a max takeoff weight of 2450lbs. The max useful load (which includes fuel, I think) is 837lbs. Cruise speed is 122kts, which is about 230kph.

Does the 2 tons that the fanwing can lift include the weight of the craft, fuel, etc. or is that 2 tons of cargo? The site is down...

Re:HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna

[the bluebrain]

That's 20 grams of lift per watt, or 1600kg for an 80 kW engine - total. Compare that to your data of the Cessna, ~126kW for ~1200kg (or ~800kg for 80kW), and it comes out to about double.
Feh. I was expecting factor 10 or so :)

Re:HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna

[Shadow Wrought]

I have not had the chance to fly one of the new production 172's yet, but I know the older ones cruise closer to 100-110kts.

The useful load does include fuel, which is typically 42gal of fuel max (there are some that have extra fuel tanks, but I do not believe that those are standard on the newer production versions). At 6lbs/gal, that comes to 252lb of fuel if you top it off, leaving 585lbs of pilot, passenger, and luggage to play with;-)

Re:HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna

[Preposterous Coward]

Standard fuel load in recent 172 models is 53 gallons.

The bottom line is that in a 172 you basically can't carry four normal-sized adults plus a full fuel load. Of course, there's always the 182 if you want more capacity and a constant-speed prop too.

Re:HP/lift: fanwing vs. cessna

[Shadow Wrought]

So they did up the fuel on the new ones. I had a feeling they might have but I wasn't sure.

As for the bottom line, you are absolutely correct. A 172 with full fuel can carry about 1.5 passengers. I'm lucky because my fiance and her kids are light.

I wonder if they can get around the non-glide thing with the parachute system utilized by the Cirrus?

Re:Major downfall (no pun intended)

[Beowulf Smith]

Actually, ever since the jet age really got going in military aviation, very few military jets have the capability of gliding very well either (of course, we all know that being able to steer while falling is not the same as gliding, right?). Today's jets are so heavy that without engines they come down awfully fast. I would say, judging by some of the previous statements, the main reason the military might not consider using this craft is the slow speed, which would make it a rather easy target. However, I can't be sure about that since the page is completely /.ed and the google images don't give me much of an indication.

not exactly

[Ender Ryan]

Helicopters autorotate. I'm not sure how the physics work, but I think the forward movement of the copter can spin the blades, allowing it to "glide". Helicopters can in fact make safe landings after an engine failure. I'm not sure, statistically, how well helicopters can make these safe landings compared to airplanes, however, some airplanes are terribly bad at gliding after an engine failure.

I can't get to the site, but someone who did mentioned that this new "bird" can autorotate, and they're working on making improving it's autoratation ability.

Re:not exactly

[GMontag]

Pretty close actually.

When we autorotate, the aircraft moves down through the air gives the effect of air moving up through the rotor blades keeping them turning and allows for maneuvering. Not necessary forward motion, but you do need forward motion to stay in the optimum range.

When nearing the ground the inertia of the blades is enough to allow for an increase in collective pitch and a soft landing (if they were kept at the proper RPM by the proper airspeed/descent).

If I remember correctly, 1500' per min in descent was pretty much normal until the last 50'.

Re:not exactly

[LordNightwalker]

but I think the forward movement of the copter can spin the blades, allowing it to "glide"

No, in fact what happens is this: they reverse the blades in direction: instead of "\" they turn them like "/". This causes the rotor to keep rotating in the same direction while plummeting down.Then, when they reach a certain altitude, they reverse the blade direction back to its previous position. The inertia of the whole rotor construction makes sure the rotor keeps rotating for a little while longer, but now creating downward thrust. When triggered at the right altitude you can land a chopper quite nicely this way.

Don't know the right altitude though, and it depends on the type of helicopter (weight, size and shape of rotor blades, ...), but I'm sure an apache helicopter pilot could let you in on the details. ;-)

... and thanks for linking to the videos.

[invi]

Come on, there's no need for a direct link from the articel to the videos hosted on fanwing.com. Perhaps I *too* could have a look at the pictures if the server wasn't slashdotted because everybody's trying to download the videos ...

Sounds like a Tom Swift invention

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

I couldn't see a picture of it since the site is slashdotted, but the description reminds me of on of Tom Swifts' (Tom Swift Jr) - his Ultrasonic Cycloplane!

-asb

Re:Sounds like a Tom Swift invention

[gl4ss]

slashdotted too.

that's why i hate tripod.. the minute there's something intresting it has used it's bandwith.

How It Works

[SEWilco]

The Slashdot article provides no hint of how it works, and now it's hard to reach the swarmed fanwing.com site.

It's a squirrel-cage fan along the leading edge of a wing.

The fan throws air over the top of the wing, rather than the air passively flowing over the leading edge. This produces much more lift at slow speeds.

Apparently it operates at slow speeds (100 kph, about 60 mph, is mentioned). I expect that at high speeds, when the forward motion exceeds the speed of the fan rotation, the fanwing behaves like a wing with ridges along the leading edge -- but air can leak through these ridges. A fanwing which starts moving too fast probably begins to lose lift from the leading edge, although it might gain some lift from the rest of the wing. But if a fanwing does not have thrust engines and only gets its forward motion from the fanwing, it can't move faster than the fanwing can push it.

autoratation

[Ender Ryan]

The article says this thing can autorotate, and they're working on improving it(someone else who read the article said this... I can't get to the article).

As a former rotary wing aviator, can you explain autorotation for us? Also, have you ever been in a situation where that was necessary? And last, how well to helicopters autorotate compared to winged aircraft gliding?

Thanks

Re:autoratation

[AlecC]

I am no pilot, but I can give a view of autorotation. Basically, the rotor can work both ways - rotor turns and drives air, or air running through rotor turns it. So if the engine fails, you declutch the engine and keep the rotor turning as yo descend - fast but not too fast. You use the enerdy of your descent to keep the rotors turning, keeping the rotors on shallow pitch - which also slows your descent. As *just* the right moment, you put the rotors into steep pitch, which rapidly converts the kinetic energy of the rotors into lift - which kills your vertical speed just befor you hit the ground - you hope.

Autorotaion is *much* hairier than gliding a plane, because you have to time things much more precisely, killing your descent at the right moment. But it is *much* better than the alternative (plummetting).

Re:autoratation

[GMontag]

Ah, I finally caught that when someone else posted a quote from the article. It was /. before I got to it and was at the mercy of the story poster.

I gave a short explaination in in this post.

Essentually, it is a controlled landing with a very rapid rate of descent until the last 50' or so.

Re:autoratation

[GMontag]

Very good description. And the way we "de clutch" the engine (in the UH-1Hs that I flew) was a "sprag clutch" that would allow the engine power to go to the transmission system but would disengage if it was not driving the rotor, thus not dragging down the trans/rotor/etc.

Sorry that I missed answering part of Ender Ryan's question. Yes, I have autorotated meny times, it is something we practiced in flight school and throughout the time I was flying. Since I began flying helicopters and then learned to fly airplanes much later, autorotation seems "normal" to me and gliding an airplane seems "boring". Just a perspective thing.

Re:autoratation

[PD]

gliding an airplane seems "boring".

Just gotta say that in anything that flies, boring is considered a good thing. Excitement can mean something is going very wrong.

Re:autoratation

[GMontag]

Very true. However, while flying a helicopter (not the fancy new ones *cough*blackhawk*cough* that fly themselves way too mch) one is constantly working, thus not bored. When I got to fly airplanes I had to work to stay awake!

Yea, I prefer things to go along as planned (never really happens) without any of the wrong lights coming on and with all the instruments "in the green", etc. but the feeling that an airplane does not "need" a person inside to keep going where it was pointed vs. the feeling of commanding the aircraft that will crash if you do not pay constant attention just seems too "steady state" for me.

Re:autoratation

[bill_mcgonigle]

Autorotaion is *much* hairier than gliding a plane, because you have to time things much more precisely, killing your descent at the right moment. But it is *much* better than the alternative (plummetting).


Could a GPS/radar-enabled autopilot auto-auto-rotate, that is know your altitude and adjust the pitch for you?

Re:autoratation

[Kombat]

Except when you glide a plane you better hope you are near an runway

Nonsense. You can bring a light airplane down on any flat surface that is a couple hundred feet long. I have personally landed Cessnas in muddy fields during flight test practice. It's bumpy, and not ideal, but it can be done. In emergency situations, all you care about is walking away, not saving the airplane.

Incidentally, landing into trees is preferable to landing on water. Skimming the tops of trees cushions the landing and provides gradual slowing. And if you're knocked unconcious, you'll hang in the trees till rescuers arrive. If you pile into the water, on the other hand, you might as well be hitting concrete at those speeds. Sure, there won't be a fire, but if you're knocked unconcious, you're as good as dead (drowning).

Re:autoratation

[jonbrewer]

Could a GPS/radar-enabled autopilot auto-auto-rotate, that is know your altitude and adjust the pitch for you?

Gyroscopes are what you need - Kamen's Segway makes great use of them for pitch adjustment.

Re:autoratation

[CaseyB]

Yes, I have autorotated meny times, it is something we practiced in flight school and throughout the time I was flying.

Do you mean declutching and "gliding" for a bit in midair, or actually landing with no power? Is it that reliable a maneouver?

Re:autoratation

[PetiePooo]

I went through military flight training in the late 80's. We would autorotate to the ground, not only in UH-1H (Hueys), but the little TH-55's as well (military name for a Hughes/Schweitzer 300).

There's two basic flavors of autorotation; from a hover and from forward flight. There's a whole range of the flight envelope that is unrecoverable, basically anything low and slow. Autorotation from a hover is simple. You let the thing settle towards the ground and just pull up before you collide with it. From forward flight is when you have to declutch and "glide" down with a flare at the end.

The TH-55's were light enough that we could pretty much stop our forward momentum before touching down, but the Hueys, being a bit heavier, would land with a fair amount of forward momentum left. They strapped these inch-thick steel bars to the bottoms of the skids for us students to grind off on the landing strips. Hours of fun!

Re:autoratation

[PetiePooo]

And yes; it's as reliable as the lift you get from a fixed wing. In fact, Rotorcraft are classified into two groups: helicopters and gyroplanes. Gyroplanes are esentially like weight-shift hang-gliders except that they have a rotory wing controlled by a stick instead of a movable wing. They require forward movement (i.e. an engine and propeller) to provide the auto-rotational lift on their rotary wing.

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.

Re:autoratation

[srmalloy]

Just gotta say that in anything that flies, boring is considered a good thing. Excitement can mean something is going very wrong.

What most people do not understand about light aircraft is that the propellor does not actually provide any thrust; it is there to cool the pilot. This is easy to prove -- just watch how much the pilot starts to sweat if it stops.

Re:autoratation

[qengho]

In emergency situations, all you care about is walking away, not saving the airplane.

As my brother the pilot told me, "A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing is one where you can use the plane again."

I can see many shreaded pets from this.

[jellomizer]

Looking at the model and if it is intended for common man use. I can see Cats finding there ways into this and perhaps little adventrous kids getting into the wings (A great place to hide). And the wings seem to be placed rather high so it it tough for an adult to look into these. And the sound this would be made if it was parked under an oak tree.

Re:Major downfall (no pun intended)

[mpe]

With no ability to glide after engine failure, I cannot see the military putting forth much effort (or $$) in an aircraft of this nature, but then again Helocoptors are the same way and we have thousands of those.

A helicoptor can auto-rotate it's main rotor. Which makes emergency landing (or even survivable crash landing) possible.

Besides, I think the military has enough aircraft in its arsenal as it is, we don't need another one to maintain.

Maybe they are interested in the design for drone usage, rather than manned aircraft.

Anyone notice the site's last updated date?

[Anonymous Coward]

Entirely new? I think not - especially given that the date on the main page says the site was last updated in early 2001(!). Additionally, Radio Control Modeler (RCM) and Model Airplane News (MAN), arguably the two most popular magazines covering model aircraft of all types, had an article about this back in 1999.....

Re:Major downfall (no pun intended)

[Hellkitten]

With no ability to glide after engine failure, I cannot see the military putting forth much effort (or $$) in an aircraft of this nature

That depends on the use. For unmanned drones not gliding is an advantage, since there would be nothing useful left if it fails (or is shot down) over enemy territory

No style points here.... but sell it to the NAVY!

[mustangdavis]

Although this is an interesting idea (looks as though it could be promissing), they'll definately have to package this a bit better. Is it just me, or is this thing just UGLY!!??!!

The article states that it doesn't need much room for take off .... I wonder exactly how much less. Could the NAVY use this on an aircraft carrier (for supplies, I don't think this will do well as a fighter plan in this day and age) without using the catapult? Hmmmmmm .......

In any case, I hope it's pilot doesn't fly into a large pack of birds ..... eeewwwwwww!!!!!

Maintenance

[siskbc]

As soon as they solve the pigeon effect clogging the rotors, I can't see this thing being hard to service at all. It's as simple as can be, and as mentioned in the article, not terribly susceptible to the properties of the wing. Reminds me of the old A-10 Warthog - damned ugly, but flew home once after getting half its wing shot off.

Re:Maintenance

[FatRatBastard]

Reminds me of the old A-10 Warthog - damned ugly, but flew home once after getting half its wing shot off.

Ugly? Harumph! I think they're the prettiest military planes flying (but I'm biased, I lived on a base with them for 10 years). Now, the F117, that's an ugly plane.

Spaghetti twirler

[bluesnowmonkey]

"He's developed a batch of inventions - an electric fork for twirling spaghetti,..."

I think that's sort of a "Hello World" for inventors.

Ornothopters flap

[FreeUser]

i.e. it has propellers on the wings, just like the pinion feathers on the wings of a bird. It fles like a bird, therefore.

Does that not make it an ornithopter? Do the wings flap?

Ornithopter wings flap. The fan wing does not flap, so it is in no way an ornithopter (nor does it resemble one). It is a fixed wing with a horizontal rotor inside which pulls air across the lifting surface and creates a vortex which lifts the plane. Think of a big combine built into the wing, spinning quickly, and you get a rough idea. The videos are pretty cool ... the full flight one shows the plane stopping and hovering a couple of times ... one of the nice features of having no stall that my plane, alas, cannot emulate.

It isn't a new "principle" of aviation by any means, but it is a new and very promising design. Unfortunately the patent will probably limit design improvements by anyone other than the original inventor for the next twenty years or so, but there will be some innovative uses and improvements despite that, and in twenty years, once the patent expires, there will doubtless by quite a hayday of new designs.

Re:Major downfall (no pun intended)

[sirket]

A helicopter can auto-rotate and land safely.

Performing an autorotation consists of:

1. Reversing the pitch on the main rotor blades. This causes them to build up speed and continues to provide drag to slow the helicopter down. It also causes a forward motion in the helicopter which helps to provide control and allows you to get to a safe landing space.

2. At the last second, the pilot will pull the control yoke backwards arresting the forward motion of the helicopter and adding more momentum to the spinning blades. At the same time, the pilot will reverse the pitch on main rotor blades again. The momentum of the blades will cause them to keep spinning forward, and the now positive angle of attack on the blades will generate significant lift arresting the downward motion.

In fact, the biggest problem is making sure that you do not over correct otherwise you can actually jump back into the air with no momentum left in the blades to stop you the second time.

Hope that helps.

-sirket

Glide ratio comparisons

[smagoun]

For comparison, a Cessna 172 has a glide ratio of about 9:1, which means you can cover 9 miles of ground for every mile of altitude. Mooney - whose aircraft are legendary for not wanting to come out of the sky - builds planes with a glide ratio of 10:1 to about 15:1. Sailplanes can have about a 50:1 ratio. Believe it or not, the Boeing 747 has about a 15:1 ratio. The space shuttle has about a 1:1 ratio.

In sum, with a glide ratio of 2:1 or 3:1, you don't want to lose power in a fanwing. Let's hope they're successful in increasing it.

Re:Glide ratio comparisons

[Titusdot Groan]

Depends upon the airspeed. If it's still VTOL while gliding it won't really matter.

i.e. if it gets a 2:1 glide ratio but is still has airspeed less than 60mph when it hits the ground I'd take that any day.

Who cares if your landing spot has to be within a mile or so if you can land on a side street or in a Walmart parking lot?

Re:Glide ratio comparisons

[MyHair]

Believe it or not, the Boeing 747 has about a 15:1 ratio.

Maybe, if it had no load and no fuel. If given a choice of a deadstick landing in a Mooney or 747 I'd take the Mooney any day.

Actually HERE

[Beautyon]

Is where the pics are: Google

Is this news for stupid OT whiners?

[Tsar]

Sorry, I just felt like being a stupid OT whiner today...

Are you suggesting that you aren't usually stupid, offtopic, or a whiner? Or that you aren't usually all three at once?

A quick scan of the page about you indicates that you've posted 18 times in the last year, and that most of your posts are along the lines of "This story SUCKS!" or "Yeah, me too!" Have you noticed that you've only garnered ONE positive mod point so far? That's a good sign that you aren't making good decisions about what, when and how to post.

You seem like a bright guy. Look back at the comments that you've enjoyed or learned from. What made them worthwhile to you? What made someone else mod them as Interesting, Insightful or Funny? Take some guidance from that when you post your own comments. Even those of us who have maxed out our karma still post comments that get modded down (I expect this one will get an Offtopic or two), but if you aren't being modded up on the average, you have to wonder if your posts are adding to the discussion at all. Pour some of your intellect, experience, and wit into your comments, and we'll all be better off for it.

--
Why not read the FAQ?

V-22 Osprey

[BoneFlower]

The V-22 is a solid aircraft. It has had four crashes since its introduction. All the problems that have come up are resolveable. It is absolutely needed. The faked maintenance records are the result of a few yes-men officers who were more worried about their careers than the combat effectiveness of the aircraft. You can bet that the V-22 test squadron will be watched heavily for any funny business. THat will not happen again. In a year or two, it will be ready for full production.

Re:V-22 Osprey

[IPFreely]

In a year or two, it will be ready for full production.

I should hope so!

My father worked at Bell/Textron where they were developing/building the prototype XV-15, then later XV-22s in the 80s! I occasionally saw them making test flights over Arlington, TX; an Osprey and a few other chase helecopter.

The original design (XV-15) called for fixed props. The Navy wanted rotors (helicopter style) and wanted the rotors to be foldably for carrier storage. All that made it much more complex and expensive. So Bell killed themselves designing all the complexity, along with the expected problems, and they end up with a tainted reputation on an otherwise good design. The old fix prop design would have been much cheaper and easier (and presumably safer) for land based and civilian aviation uses.

The Fairey Rotodyne

[XNormal]

Another aircraft that combined many of the advantages of helicopters and airplanes was the Fairey Rotodyne. It was an autogyro that converted temporarily to helicopter mode for vertical takeoff and landing.

This was back in the 1950s.

An autogyro generates lift using an unpowered rotor that rotates in the airstream. It is probably the safest type of aircraft because it can land by autorotation. Some helicopters can also do that but they are much more difficult to control. An autogyro can fly faster than a helicopter, though not as fast as an airplane. Autogyros are also more fuel-efficient than helicopters.

The big drawback of autogyros is that they can't take off and land vertically. They need a short runway.

The Rotodyne overcame this limitation by using small jets at the tips of the rotor blades that converted it to a helicopter for the duration of
the takeoff and landing.

See this page if you want to know more about the history of the Rotodyne and why we don't have regular Rotodyne passenger flights between city hubs today.

Wankel

[turgid]

Imagine a Wankel engine in one of these! That would provide an awesome power to wieght ratio.

Not an ornithopter

[overunderunderdone]

No the wings don't flap, which is the defining characteristic of an ornithopter.

As far as I can tell from the google cache of the images this thing has a fan that looks like an old-fashioned lawn-mower that is blowing air over the entire length of it's wing - which apparently provides a lot of lift very efficiently.

Build one of your own RIGHT NOW!

[Etrigan_696]

****Warning****
I am not responsible for any severed arteries, eyes gouged out, or for you getting fired for doing this at work. It's all you baby!

1) Get the materials.
Go get one of those plastic Bic ball point pens. The kind with the white tube. Then get a pair of scissors, a pocket knife, or a pair of needle nose pliers.

2) Remove cap from pen. Remove the black plastic cone from the "writing" end of the pen. This also pulls out the ink tube.

3) You now have a white plastic tube with a little black cap in the end. Get that cap out. Use the pocket knife, scissors, or the pliers to get the thing out. If you destroy the end of the white plastic tube, just cut it off clean again.

4)Now you have just a white plastic tube. Wee! This is your fanwing plane. You're about to make it fly using the same principle.

5) Clean off a table so there's nothing on top. Face one side of it. Put the pen tube near and parallel to the edge. Lock your thumbs under the edge of the table and place all 8 fingertips on the white tube.

6) Pressing down as hard as you can, roll your fingers back towards you.

7) If all goes well, the tube will spin very fast and fly through the air, doing loops and such.

I've actually got the things to fly twenty yards. And the do all kinds of twists and loops.

The principle that keeps the fanwing plane in the article in the air works here too - only with no control or stability.

Enjoy, and don't get in trouble.

Future insurance accident report

[paiute]

I was downtown, tooling along the sidewalk on my Segway, when this moron in a Fanwing who was trying to read email on his simputer crashed into me.

Radar signature

[YrWrstNtmr]

With those bigass fans hanging out in the breeze, this thing has to give a radar xsection of a battleship.

No, transport aircraft don't have to be stealthy, but they also should not increase it unnecessarily.

From their ISP - New Global Net

[FilthPig]

- Unlimited Data Transfers*

Well, at least now we know what that asterisk is for.

thanks

[Ender Ryan]

Thanks for the info guys, that was very informative.

Interestingly, my co-workers and I were discussing helicopters here in the office, after watching a police chase in L.A. on TV, and someone asked whether helicopters could do anything in case of an engine failure. So now I can explain how autorotation works :)

I knew about autorotation in the first place because my late father was a pilot and explained it to me once. Ironically, he was killed in a plane crash, apparently due to an engine failure.

another form of circulation control

[mks180]

It seems that this is another form of circulation control for airfoils. This has been done for high lift wings, stopped rotors, helicopter tail booms, etc, with varying levels of success. It's an interesting way of doing it. In stead of bleading off the engine to blow out small slots, use the exhaust of the propulsive device to energize the boundry layer. This way you can keep the flow attached to the upper surface far longer than on your basic airfoil. You'd need to do that since I don't see the front half of that wing producing much lift.

Gyroplane

[MacAndrew]

...as I think they were called in the states ... my airman's exam included a few ancient questions about them, though to my knowledge they are essentially extinct. A helicopter pilot I quered described them as you do -- combining features of a fixed-wing and helicopter -- but as he put it, the gyroplane adopted all the worst aspects of each.

Most regular helicopters can land quite well by autorotation, in fact emergency autorotation is 75% of helicopter flight training if one already knows how to fly. Autorotating is basically diving to build up momentum in the rotor after a power failure, then increasing the pitch of the blades to slow descent into, one hopes, a half-decent landing. I tried this once with an instructor in a doorless Robinson, and as a fixed-wing pilot I admit it scared the heck out of me. :)

I glimpsed a gyroplane in flight for the first time the other night watching the classic It Happened One Night (1934; Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert). Highly recommended -- the movie, not the flying contraption. :)

Re:Gyroplane

[MacAndrew]

Popular Mechanics gave them a chipper write-up last year. As I suggested, all my knowledge of the creatures is second-hand. I'll have to take a look. As for comparisons to an Apache, I've heard complaints about those ... but they do pack a wallop.

As a former fixed-wing owner, I've taken care of my aircraft-owning bug. :)

Glide ability

[phorm]

It's only downfall (he he) is that it lacks any ability to glide in the event of an engine outage

Last time I checked, helicopters didn't tend to glide all that well either (sometimes akin to rocks). I'm guessing that something more planelike would also do easier in the "ejection" or other escape issues in case of a breakdown.

If it's cheap or fast, probably a good method for low-capicity aircraft. From the working models, the plane seems to be mostly (a huge) tail anyhow, so probably not a lot of passenger capacity - although the theoretical pictures show it as a normal plane with fan-wings.

Re:Glide ability

[Doppleganger]

Last time I checked, helicopters didn't tend to glide all that well either (sometimes akin to rocks).

A lot of helicopters have the ability to decouple the blades from the engine in the case of an engine failure, alowing a much more controlled landing than would be possible if the blades simply stopped. The momentum of the blades allows the helicopter to stay in the air a lot longer, in a sort of glide. You're more committed to an immediate landing than in some planes, but it's still a lot better than simply plummeting to the ground...

Everytime I read that headline...

[CommieLib]

It comes out "Fawning Planes". As if somehow planes are now desperate to please us.

Lift from a rotating ballpoint pen?

[RobertB-DC]

"...lift and float gently across a room." WTF? Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you could make a cheap ballpoint pen levitate that easily, wouldn't we see impromptu demonstrations of the effect at every computer convention?

I suspect that the intent was not "5, Interesting", but rather "5, Funny". I guess the moderators are reading with IRONY_HUMOR_DETECTION = OFF.

(Full disclosure: I would have tried it, but I couldn't pry the end cap off my pen...)

Re:Lift from a rotating ballpoint pen?

[micromoog]

Not a joke. I'm talking about this kind of pen, and it doesn't "levitate" . . . but it does clearly show some lift. Try it.

My Granddad had one of these

[FFFish]

... he used to mow his lawn with it. Rotary push-mower, I believe it was called.

There's an amusing but morbid story of how he connected a B&O engine to the mower, and ended up flying over two counties and setting a new altitude record before running out of gas and thereby learning that the thing simply does not and, rather terminally, will not autorotate.

Ol' Ms. Winslow's petunias were crushed when he hit the ground, and she went rather catatonic for several months, what with having been working on the begonias a few feet away when the old man splattered, but the story goes that they were prize-winners the following year.

Within my own family, it led to an everlasting fear of lawnmowers. My grannie had her yard turned into a gravel Zen garden, and my father took it even a step further when he married and moved out of the home, choosing to encase the yard in a foot-thick pad of reinforced concrete painted a nasty, hinky green.

I'm the renegade of the family, though, what with being several generations removed from this early air disaster, and have planted my own yard with low-growing, never-needs-mowing golf green fescue. It doesn't need trimming, and I've every opportunity to practice my putting.

True story, all of it, I swear.

Re:My Granddad had one of these

[machine of god]

Two summers ago I washed windows for this really old guy. The guy had an astroturf backyard. I asked him about it because it was not solid at all in the middle and I didn't feel like being sucked into whatever people trap he had devised. Turns out when he bought the house, it had a pool. He did not want a house with a pool, so he had it filled with gravel. Not only that, but he went into this long explanation about how he didn't want the gravel trucks messing up his landscaping, so he paid to have it projected (?!) somehow over the fence from his driveway. Then the astroturf was the obvious next step I guess. Yeah, so there's your daily OT.

Re:Poorly named design.

[mikerich]

Interesting. But they picked the wrong name for the design. It should be "Squirrel Cage Fan Wing".

Hmmm perhaps you've stumbled on the ideal low-weight, high-energy power source! Fill the inside of the fan with ten-thousand hamsters and get them running.

It... might... just... work!

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Imagine...

[Doppleganger]

I loved that show! Only worked with the older technology, though.. the sequel show where they tried to update the image was absolutely horrid.

Patents

[AlecC]

Unfortunately the patent will probably limit design improvements by anyone other than the original inventor for the next twenty years or so, but there will be some innovative uses and improvements despite that, and in twenty years, once the patent expires, there will doubtless by quite a hayday of new designs.

Since the patentee is an individual not a megacorp, I would have thought he would be willing to license it to any manufacturer, who could then improve it. If the idea is good, he would be foolish to sign an exclusive licence - both for the reason you give, and because if the idea is good, the field of applications will be greater than any one manufacturer would be likely to cover.

Re:Patents

[dublin]

OK, Here I go again, tilting at /. windmills, but it needs to be said again: PATENTS ARE GOOD, and they **PROTECT** the ability of individual inventors to pursue real innovation. Good patents in no way inhibit the pace of innovation, but rather they are the strongest protection possible to allow the inventor to be able to bring his invention succesfully to market so you and I can buy it.

Here's what I had to say about it in a letter to LWN a while back:

http://lwn.net/2000/0420/backpage.phtml#backpage

And perhaps more importantly, here's what James Dyson has to say, which is essentially the same thing: (Dyson is the famous inventor of the phenominally successful and innovative Dyson vacuum cleaners that have vacuumed up the competition virtually everywhere but the US, where they are just now becoming available.) http://www.dyson.co.uk/invent/default.asp

I know too many of you have fallen for the FSF's party line of patent demonization, but eliminating Patents would only ensure that the likes of Microsoft would roll completely unopposed over any potential competition.

Auto-rotation in gaming

[Mulletproof]

I think the first came to simulate an auto-rotation maneuver was MicroProse's Gunship. Get shot up by a ZSU23 or a few SAMs and you quickly found how useful autorotation became on the way down.

But then, i don't think too many cars will be encountering anti-aircraft batteries on the way home from work any time soon. And how big a deal is auto rotation, really? When you could have something like this?

Re:Auto-rotation in gaming

[Mulletproof]

If I were talking about a helicopter, you'd probably need to blow the rotors off with explosives, which they can do, but I wasn't. I guess I should have clarified that the device would be mounted on the topic in question, not a helo.

Cirrus SR 22

[Preposterous Coward]

The plane you're referring to is the Cirrus SR 22 (company site). Unfortunately IIRC the very first time a pilot tried to deploy the chute it didn't work properly, but he was still able to do a standard engine-out landing in safety.

I've never done a real engine-out landing -- just simulated ones -- but the fact that a normal plane simply glides when its engine is cut is definitely a plus. The glide ratio of the Cessna 172s I fly is 9:1, so if you're at 2,000 feet AGL and the engine fails you've got around 2 miles to find yourself a nice field, golf course, highway, beach, dry riverbed, etc. to put yourself down on. (That 2 miles is conservative and assumes you won't have the plane perfectly trimmed for best glide, that you've got some glide-distance loss due to unfavorable winds, etc. Incidentally, best glide is at just over 60 knots, so you've actually got a minute or two to troubleshoot and try to restart the engine, too.) Still, the parachute *is* an intriguing idea...

Autorotation

[EnglishTim]

Most helicopters can disconnect a stopped engine from the blades, allowing them to keep spinning. The pilot then allows the vehicle to fall/glide down until he is quite close to the ground. Then by suddenly increasing the collective pitch he is able to convert the stored rotational energy of the rotors into lift, slowing the vehicle dramatically and achieving (hopefully) a soft landing.

Re:Autorotation

[phorm]

Cool, this I hadn't heard of before. So in most cases it's "dowwwwnn we go", but at a semi-reasonable speed? I suppose if the problem is in the rotors themselves you're pretty much screwed. But then, the same would apply to a plane losing a wing, probably more so :-)
Is there a matter of directional control to the landing, so that you could perhaps steer the aircraft towards a reasonable landing zone.

/. readers fear innovation?

[RatBastard]

It's interesting seeing the number of "it won't scale up" and "what use is it?" posts here. Are so many of you that dulled to the concept of new ideas?

It's a sky paddlewheel.

[Nindalf]

The aerodynamics are more complicated than this, but this thing is basically a paddlewheel boat turned upside down to paddle against the sky (so to speak).

Benjamin Franklin was Right, You and Dyson Wrong

[FreeUser]

And perhaps more importantly, here's what James Dyson has to say, which is essentially the same thing: (Dyson is the famous inventor of the phenominally successful and innovative Dyson vacuum cleaners that have vacuumed up the competition virtually everywhere but the US, where they are just now becoming available.)

Ahem. Nice appeal to authority (an authority with a vested interest in the patent system, I might add). Although appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, since you've lent yourself the air of expertise by making such an appeal, I will rebutte with Benjamin Franklin himself, who invented among other things bifocals, the catheter, the franklin stove, lightning rods, and other things too numerous to mention. He opposed patents ... so vehemently he refused to patent his own inventions, to the great benefit of America and the world.

A great many other scientists and economists felt similarly, including John von Neuman.

I know many of you who like to benefit from government entitlements such as monopolies, either directly or through parasitical means (e.g. by practicing intellectual property law) are loathe to give up your priveleges, regardless of the cost to society, but the fact remains that when a new idea is tied up for twenty years, most progress on refining, developing, and building upon that idea is stunted, even eliminated.

Indeed, history is a far better reference than the opinons of scientists and inventors past and present, and history does not favor the pro-patent argument at all. Indeed, I cannot think of a single instance where the patent system led to a creation or invention that wouldn't have otherwise been developed, but it is repleate with the stories of inventors denied access to their own inventions because someone else who developed a similiar idea independently won the footrace to the patent office, and is it repleate with examples of stifled technologies resulting directly from patents.

The airplane is one such example: the Wright Brothers did the first wind tunnel experiments, figured out the basics of aerodynamics, and got a well deserved patent on the process (well deserved being defined by patent law, for their idea was new, innovative, and very non-obvious at the time). Yet because of their patent others who were making vast improvements on the design, like Curtis, were stifled in their efforts (Germany and other countries had no such problem, not recognizing the American patent, and their technology pulled ahead of ours dramatically). It was so bad that with the advent of World War II the United States Government, in an unprecendented act, took the patent, opened it up to all competitors, and granted the Wright Brothers a flat 1% royalty, in order to spur competition and the technological improvements it brings. It was a tacit admission that the US patent on airplanes granted to the Wright Brothers, who were certainly deserving, had in fact stifled any further development dramatically.

Indeed, capitalism is predicated upon the premise that competition, not government entitlement, spurs progress. You can believe in capitalism or you can believe in patents, but you cannot believe in both and remain self-consistent ... indeed, you will be required to go through logical contortions that will make the Vatican's debate on science and astronomy look positively enlightened in comparison.

The stifling effects of patents are most obvious in the case of software patents, because that is a field we are all inventors in, we all understand intimately, and we all work with. But the effect is just pronounced in other areas of endeavor ... it has merely been such an oft-repeated party line that patents are good which has blinded many people's ability to even question the assumption.

Nice try on the ad homonem against the FSF by the way ... however, if the FSF does have an official stance on patents, and if that stance opposes patents, they are, with John von Neuman, Benjamin Franklin, and a great many others, in very, very good, and very enlightened, company.

Pen physics

[Mulletproof]

It's called the Bernoulli Effect. The pressure on the upper half of the cylinder is greatly reduced due to it's rotation away from the direction of travel, compared to the bottom half which is now rotating into the direction of travel. It has the effect of creating a "virtual" wing. Actually, I've often wondered if somebody could create an aircraft using this phenomenom... Just hope your "wings" don't ever stop spinning :p

And whenever I see numbered bullets like yours these days, I always expect to see

5. Profit!

Website should be back up Thur Nov 21 2002

[CFrankBernard]

From an email reply to me: "We have now changed server - the original one really struggled to keep up for us but slashdot was just too heavy especially with everyone downloading our video clips - we lost our connection after 18,000 hits in just a few hours. Amazing. We hope to be back tomorrow. Dikla"

Re:BIGOT!

[susano_otter]

You, sir, are worse that Hitler!

And that, of course, is the end of the discussion.

Re:Remember the Klein-Fogleman!

[srmalloy]

After trying to find Klein-Fogleman wing references in Google, I realize that you will need an alternate reference if you can't remember.

It would probably work better if you searched just for 'Fogleman' and 'airfoil'; the inventors were Richard Kline and Floyd Fogleman (note spelling). Here is a link to the results for a Google search on "kline-fogleman". There's not a lot of hard and fast data on it, but there are a number of references.

Re:Linux Alternatives?

[susano_otter]

As the ugliest plane or the prettiest plane?

My vote is "both".

Re:Why is there still a probelm with the Osprey.

[DuBois]

The Osprey may not be unsafe, but it sure is expensive.

And noisy.

Prior art, 1947.

[Kartoffel]

"Samolet Boldirev s Kolebjuschimsja Predikrylom"
http://eroplan.boom.ru/bibl/shavrov2/chr3/p2/bol d. htm

This related to old technology. Interesting to see someone's developing it again. Maybe they developed independently, or maybe they knew aout Boldirev's work. Either way, it's cool :)

Rough translation of link:
"Boldirev" aircraft with oscillating slats.
Experimental aircraft based on brand new concept of obtaining better thrust and increase in lift coefficient. The slat is installed in front of the wing and is higher than wing leading edge. The slat begins rapid oscillating motion, being rotated about its leading edge by angle of 15 degrees.

Aleksandr Ivanonvich Boldirev was senior engineer in department of aerodynamics at MAI. He experimented on oscillating wing models from 1944 through 1951. In 1946 he presented his original aircraft design to TsAGI. At end of 1947, aircraft was built at MAI.

The craft had very small dimensions: wingspan 6.07m, length 5.0m, chord of wing 1.2m, wing area 7.2m^2. Airfoil profile was NACA-23020 (without the slat), a symmetrical airfoil with leading edge of circular shape and flat surfaces above and below. Chord was 286mm. Mass of aircraft was 180 kg. Takeoff weight was 290 kg.

etc...

Three Sheets to the Wings

[Skip666Kent]

Yeah. Interesting stuff. I think they need to study feathers a lot more, instead of just creating flapping 'sheets' for wings. Not to belittle their hard work, of course...

Yeah, but...

[Wraithlyn]

...imagine a BEOWULF cluster of these things-

oh just shoot me.

Re:Benjamin Franklin was Right, You and Dyson Wron

[Louis Savain]

I agree with your views on patents. In fact, I am against all forms of intellectual property laws. The only thing we should guard against is plagiarism and we don't need a new law for that. IP laws are a sign of stupidity and were created because of greed and selfishness. They are also a direct result of an economic system that is based on slavery, not freedom.

Re:MTCP Flying Cars - duhhh :)

[Repton]

Microsft Transport Control Protocol is the obvious solution to the nitpicking issues you assert ;)

And if there is a collision, you can always resolve it with random backoff...

Lifting Body

[Easy2RememberNick]

What about the Lifting Body (LB)? It should be included with the wing and rotor(which are really just rotating wings).
The Space Shuttle is an LB, the wings are not really wings but they look like wings.
The Six Million Dollar Man plane that crashes during the first part of the show was a proto-type LB plane.
The new International Space Station/Alpha will use an LB emergency escape vehicle.
A lot of new high performance aircraft will use it too.

NASA info on LB
Very nice collection of pictures page is in Japanese .
an interesting study
links
more links
Google

Correction of Bad Typo (WW I, NOT WW II)

[FreeUser]

It was so bad that with the advent of World War II...

Ugh! That was an ugly typo. That should read

"It was so bad that with the advent of World War I..."

World War ONE, not World War TWO. Sorry about any confusion.