Fairey Rotodyne-"Farnborough Air Display"-1959

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This lovely beast actually came quite close to going into service (BEA had ordered I think around 10 of them), and a few U.S. carriers were also interested in her as well.

As any fan of the aircraft knows. the bird was extremely noisy, particularly the tip jets at the end of the rotor blades.

I LOVE airplane noise myself personally, but so it goes. :-)

The tip jets only functioned during take-off & landing, the the four bladed rotor simply "Autorotating" during cruise flight.

Only the one prototype was ever built, and I THINK at least part of her are extant somewhere in Great Britain.

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Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Fairey
• Rotodyne
• V-22
• Osprey
• XV-1
• XV-3
• Bell
• McDonnell
• VTOL
• V/STOL
• STOL
• Classic
• Airliners
• Helicopters

[Nunubyou1]

Why is it that the U.S. over engineers everything ? V-22 (extreamly over engineered) compaired to the Rotodyne or X3.It simple,more money for the contractor and less bang for the buck.Who suffers? The poor people who have to fly in the American product and the taxpayer who gets robbed for it.Capitalism does have a downside.

[lamboespanda]

@bgm1958 No, It was broken up after the project was dropped, and only one made. Pan-Am wanted a bigger version to fly from the airport to their building in New York. It was designed, but never made. however a dummy body was made to test the copit instrument placement in the bigger version.

[Myrtone]

Next time, if you are unsure if a video violates copyright, don't post it.

[SlideRulePirate]

Looks like the Eurocopter X3 is not as radical a concept as they would have us believe. Oh well.

[kaysandesses]

@tonedeaf49 I was thinking the same exact thing even before I saw your post. I wonder if this design would have proven to be a safer design as well?

[tonedeaf49]

Interesting. Can't help wondering if this had been developed further if it wouldn't have been a better solution than the tilt rotor V22 Osprey. Could the top speed have been boosted high enough to compete?

[bgm1958]

Does anyone know if there are any airworthy Rotodynes in existence? If not are there any in a museum somewhere?

[Taildragger2411]

Seeing this vid takes me back to the 50s when i used to go to the Farnborough air shows ,back then the rotadyne was going to be next passenger innovation to take passengers from a point in london , also to carry troops ,medics etc,at the time i lived in reading not er from white waltham were fairey had a large large inter est in the state they also had gannets there,.

[Alembic25]

Lovely! A very interesting design. Gas was tapped from the turboprops and piped to the tipjets on each rotorblade which caused them to rotate but without the torque effect of a normal chopper. In forward cruising flight the rotor simply windmilled giving an autogiro operation. On approach the tipjets were brought into operation and flight was gradually transited to helicopter mode. Apparently it was a shatteringly loud aircraft at around 110db according to some reports. Ouch!

[Traqr]

Check out Cartercopters here and elsewhere - slow in the air can be competitive if you can have a downtown heliport. Of course, who wants a tipjet powered noise machine landing next to their office? Jay Carter may have hit the sweet spot, but time will tell.