Re V-22
Greetings from New Mexico,
There’s one thing I’ve never understood about the anti tilt-rotor attitude from the rotary-wing community. Aren’t we all tired of flying around at 100-150kts? How many times during a flight do you look at the GPS ground speed readout, wishing you were going faster?
Any cursory examination of vertical flight R&D in the past 50 years will show a near complete focus on high-speed flight. Why? And then, when something comes along that is actually faster than a regular helicopter and goes into production, we piss and moan about it.
Looking ahead, do we somehow think Sikorsky is building X2 for cost efficient vertical heavy lift applications? Get real. They, like everyone else want to go FASTER. Why else would they revive the ABC technology? That’s why there’s that little pusher prop on the back end of that thing. Rest assured, if they ever sell an aircraft based on X2 technology it will have that prop on the back. Why? More speed. Otherwise, it’s just another helicopter. I can already hear the salesman now, “I know it cost twice as much, but it goes twice as fast as your old S-76.” If they’re able to build it cheaper than a tilt-rotor, fine. But the point of the exercise always was more speed.
One obvious problem here is there is no appreciation for being on the other end of a V-22, AB609 or for that matter, an X2 flight. Everyone likes to talk in terms of economics. Explain the economics of flying a couple of people in a Gulfstream G5 or S-76? Anyway, if you’re the SpecOps team in a firefight needing extraction or a fisherman hundreds of miles offshore needing rescue, what do you want to come get you? Don’t know about you, but if it was me I could care less about what it cost to buy or how much fuel it uses. At that point I’m saying to myself, “Man, I wish I was someplace else.” and just wanting my situation to change for the better as fast as possible.
There are a couple of things I accept. Tilt rotors or anything, for that matter, that goes faster than a helicopter will be expensive. Geez, fast helicopters are more expensive than slow ones are they not? They will crash, just like every other helicopter. So what? People paid the hefty price for a Concorde ticket because they wanted to be someplace NOW. Moreover, Concordes have been known to crash from known and fatal flaws as well.
I’m not ignoring the economics here. I just accept the fact there will always be someone willing to pay a higher price for speed and being “first adopter” of something new.
Therefore I welcome the V-22 as I will welcome any aircraft based on any technology which takes vertical flight to the next speed level.
Ron Powell