Hello Riff Raff, Graviman:
There are two concepts floating around here.
1. Extendible/Rectractible Rotor Blades.
2. Extendible/Retractible aerofoil Chord
After reading the threads of comments it seemed that an extendible/retractible chord would be "theoretically" more useful than an extendible/retractable rotor. Boiling down the idea "why do this" is simple "in theory land":
To offer further control of ascent/decent characteristics. How much it offloads or loads up torque, Nr, ... we don't know. Yes, you're right Riff Raff, in theory it all looks pretty, and yes in reality the complex mechanisms to get to the "pretty" end up making it "ugly". As Joe Sutter said in his book-when he was finished with the entire 747 design he stood back, looked at the damn thing like a piece of art and said yes that looks right. I know you're probably shaking your heads on that but I do believe in simple statements and simple solutions like that. Example: does the A-380 look right to you?
Graviman I'll send you over the first ideation sketch of the extendible rotor in good old .dxf From there you should be able to see what I mean by simple solutions. Same goes for extendible chords. I beleive there's always an answer. Every time I board a 747 I do so still not believing that this thing can fly. Yet she flies gracefully and safely. Our brains are more than capable of figuring this stuff out.
