PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The Lockheed rotor head
View Single Post
Old 21st June 2017 | 16:20
  #9 (permalink)  
SansAnhedral
15 Anniversary
 
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 727
Likes: 47
From: Earth
The program was not merely halted due to politics, the system itself had some very real issues even at the end.

The Cheyenne originally suffered from a dangerous rotor instability at high speeds that destroyed a wind tunnel asset and subsequently a flight test article and its crew.

A control system modification was derived to remedy this situation late in its history and yielded a very smooth flying machine without the stability issues above ~220 kt, however the system was extremely complex and prone to multiple independent failure modes that were catastrophic.
SansAnhedral is offline  
Reply