Fairey Rotodyne

fairey rotodyne promotional video. fantastic piece of engineering and amazing machine. saw this video whilst at uni and just love it!:-)

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• fairey
• rotodyne
• aircraft
• VTOL
• vertical
• take
• off
• landing
• helicopter

[electric926]

Thumbs up if you came here from Cracked.com

[skyller2s]

@fairclought7  don't you hate it when politics get in the way of amazing feats of aerospace engineering?

[abortivus]

@SSCFPA The aviation version of a hovercraft is called "a dirigible". We all know how wonderful those were (see: Hindenburg). The idea of commuting by air from city center to city center is relatively "green" and makes a lot of sense. It's also something the ultra-wealthy want to keep to themselves (and their private helicopters). The fact that Fairey got folded in to Bristol just reinforces my point (the executives cancelled it to maintain the status quo and their market share).

[K1w1scot]

It would've been interesting to see how it handled the N. Sea oil platforms 1 1/2 decades later.

[Bar1noYee]

Same fate as the Avro Arrow

[greedyfoot]

"Well, I don't think we should make it."

--"So lets put it in a museum or something"

"Forget that, lets destroy it instead."

--"Yea, who wants to see this crap."

[SuperNevile]

Don't know why they cut up the prototype ~ typical. Surely we must have had some museum space? Wasn't 'being shot up' at Shoeburyness the fate of some other British classic aerodesigns. Noise didn't stop 707s etc heralding in the jet passenger age either.

[KristianCramer]

this looks.. amazing 0.o

[JACEH123]

That thing looks ridiculously awesome! Damn I wish we still had those.

[kineticdeath]

@Nexgcs wikipededia says it was 113 db but had noise reduction down to 96db but was cancelled regardless. They were going further to create silencers as well so it would have been quiet for 1950's aircraft. A shame i reckon if the project went on and these were built, we'd still be seeing them in active service today, or modernised variants

[Zadster]

@web2student That was actually one of it's benefits, it was cheaper to run than conventional helicopters. The lack of a rotor gearbox and lack of tail rotor made it inherently more reliable. In terms of noise, they were already working on noise reduction, and equivalent fixed wing jets at the time were horrendously noisy.

[web2student]

I'm guessing it's just too expensive to run and maintain.

Looks like one hell of a gas guzzler.