WhirlwindIII
I work across the runway from the Bell X-WORKS which is where most of their experimental stuff is done. The 609 flies frequently there and south of the Arlington airport, along with the ARH and some others. It is interesting to me that they would latch on to Nick Lappos as the X-WORKS VP when he is/was such a vocal critic of tiltrotors. I guess I'll never understand the politics at Bell, nor do I choose to try.
I will be flying a UH-1H in Oklahoma again starting Thursday of next week looking for marijuana growth. I was there last week and will have another mission in August.
The 609 looks kind of small to me. I would have thought that they would have designed something along the lines of 10-12 passengers plus pilot. I believe that they did design it with a collective instead of power levers like the V-22. The collective seems to be more intuitive.