PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - V-22 can't autorotate. Say what?
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Old 6th Oct 2007, 19:28
  #45 (permalink)  
LowObservable
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Far West Wessex
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The reason that VTOLs like the V-22 have not appealed to the civil market is one of those interesting interplays of engineering and economics...

The idea of a one-pad heliport (like the top of the PanAm building in NY) is an economic non-starter. The traffic is so limited that the service will never be more than Concorde-plus in the narrowness of the market.

So let's make a vertiport with (say) five to ten gates. First off, it's too big for the roof of the PanAm building - it will need some parking as well - and it will have a big noise impact, so it will be off to the edge of town on a brownfield site.

So far, so good...

BUT

This site is now fairly large, several hundred yards from end to end. Adding a short runway does not make it that bigger or more expensive. And even an ultra-short-runway aircraft - with a balanced field length of 2500 feet or so - is a hell of a lot less complicated, more effiicient and quieter than a VTOL. You can get 2500 feet out of a pretty conventional airplane (no cross-shafts or other monkey business).

And it's all so logical that it was thought through this way 35 years ago, in a big US DoT/FAA/industry study, and they actually came up with a spec for a 50-seat quiet STOL airliner, and the Canadians...



... actually built one.

And it was not a great success, but it was the McGuffin that started the idea of London City Airport, and it probably cost less to develop than was spent on the incredibly mendacious campaign for the commercial tilt-rotor.
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