Originally Posted by
Two's in
That MR head is mighty complicated. It all undoubtedly works, but what is the real % gain over a conventional helicopter in terms of cost/maintenance/operational benefit? It seems a lot like an idea looking for a requirement at the moment, I was at West Palm Beach when the Comanche was canned...
I fly out of Fort Pierce and managed a glimpse of the Comanche many years ago, a cool machine.
As for the coaxial design, the obvious gain is no tail rotor and assorted systems and penalties. Whether that outweighs the complexity of 2 rotor heads I have no idea, but the Russians have been using them for years.