SansAnhedral:
Now wheres FH1100....?
Oh, I'm still here...although...since I'm nearly retired now I pay less and less attention to silliness like these irrelevant forums.
But look, it's not about whether a tilt-rotor can or cannot get into VRS (we know it can), and neither is it about how difficult or not it is to get into. That's all just a smokescreen produced by the manufacturer and the starry-eyed, fanboys who think the tilt-rotor is something "new" or ground-breaking when it is neither.
The PROBLEM with the tilt-rotor configuration...the thing they cannot predict, eliminate or even reduce is A-VRS - in other words
ASYMMETRICAL-VRS: One proprotor goes into VRS and the other does not.
It's fine when you're ready for it. Why, just tilt those nacelles forward and fly away. Simple!
But what if you're not expecting it? What if you're already really busy at the bottom of a screwed-up approach (oh, that never happens)...or maybe you're not the super-duperest pilot you think you are...and *one* proprotor goes into incipient VRS? The wing on that side drops and the pilot
instinctively makes an opposite control input. Adding opposite control to a dropping wing in a tilt-rotor increases the collective pitch on that side, the side that is starting to go into VRS.
Even the lowest time, self-appointed-expert Robbie Ranger knows what happens when you increase the collective on a rotor going into VRS.
But that'll
never happen in a tilt-rotor, right? Right.
Glad we're all on the same page.
Yes, yes, fixed-wings stall, and sometimes well-trained, supposedly experienced airline pilots do just that (e.g. Asiana in San Francisco and the infamous numbnuts in that Air France 447 Airbus). But you know what? A stall in a fixed-wing is announced by the stall-warning horn (not presently invented for tilt-rotors because VRS is UNPREDICTABLE) and a fixed-wing stall is recoverable! Just lower the nose. When a tilt-rotor on short-final gets into A-VRS and rolls over on its back you can cancel Christmas: Everyone onboard is going to die. With basically no warning.
THAT is the problem with the tilt-rotor: A-VRS. Do away with that little peculiarity and I'm on board!
I hope all of you prospective BA-609 pilots are as good as you think yous are! I am confident that I will be long gone before the first civil tilt-rotor ever hits the market.
Thank you, I shall now go back into hibernation.