Channeling.... channeling .... Igor Sikorsky.... get back Charles Darwin; heard from your timorous chums before. Who is that.. Wright?... Orville was it?.. No,, Wilbur??? Harry Houdini?
This a thread for those adventurous aviators who believe that personal R&D in the helicopter world is still an option.
In the next few weeks I will test fly; yes in Darwin (NT Australia); a Mosquito XE helicopter. I built from a kit from Innovator Technologies of Calgary, Canada. It will be the first of kind in Australia, registered Experimental.
There are a few others of us out there even in Aus. Builders of Rotorway Execs, CH7 Angels. Those of us who say; "This would be a fine aircraft, if only it could carry a bigger payload"
OR "This would be a fine aircraft, if only we could carry a big enough cannon to punch through the German tank armour."
We Australians are a litle more mundane these days. We round up the cows, spray the crops and grapple with our never-ending wildfires.
We Australians: We love to project the larrikin image; Waltzing Matilda. (Which is about a criminal who commits suicide, our national song
Ned Kelly (another criminal who rightly hung for his crimes
Breaker Mourant (New Australian/Irishman executed for war crimes).
But in day to day life, we are the most orthodox of nationalities, cautious and
tentative of any step into the unknown.
In the end however, we are OK with accepting the acceptances of of our Brother British Nations. And of America.
So here is the Mosquito XE helicopter. Designed and built by John Uptigrove in Calgary Alberta Canada. Fibreglass airframe now built in Florida.
Single seat, about 140kg weight 15 ltrs per hour. Buy it for about A$40 000. What did your last Robbo cost?
If I was still a mustering pilot I would be rapt at the idea of having no space for the Fat Sweaty Bas**rd (oh sorry, Station Manager) and therefore no shotgun to discharge and blow my foot off.
This is all in the future, if then.
First, like many other experimenters out there, I have to make it work, and prove that it works.
thekite