The earlier XH-59A ABC had a two-speed transmission.
I'm having visions of that Airplane! movie where they were rolling down the runway for takeoff, and the pilot was shifting gears. Wonder if that was how they did it on the XH-59A, or if it was more like a 2-speed powerglide automatic?
Some might suggest that most of the development should take place after the craft meets the notepad, not after it meets the helipad.
Ahhh, the beauty of a paper airplane. It has no faults, nothing to fix, as long as you never build it.
I thought it was a neat picture in that article that Lupin III linked to:
"...on average, the maximum L/D of the helicopter has only increased by less than 10% in the last 30 or more years."
In the .pdf file that bat1 had posted the link to (post 256), they show a chart with the L/D way higher than an S92. Looks more than 10%, unless they are doing some funny chart thing to make a small gain look big. They also show a rotor RPM schedule, where it drops 20% from 210 to 280 kts.
-- IFMU