Future Advanced Rotorcraft Technology (FART)

[Dave_Jackson]

For years the corporate motto has been ~ 'We move more than hot air',
Then, just when some of the airhead ideas were starting to solidify, the **** hit the fan.
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The intent of the UniCopter (http://www.unicopter.com/UniCopter.html) is to bring together in a new helicopter a number of 'advanced' rotorcraft features,
Features such as; · Laterally located counter-rotating main rotors
· Extremely rigid rotors
· Slow turning, wide chord, high solidity rotors
· Advancing Blade Concept
· No tail rotor
· Pusher propellers
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Well I'll be damned. Some dude by the name of Sir George Cayley came up with the very same idea 150 years ago.

http://www.unicopter.com/Cayley.jpg

from Helicopters and Autogiros ~ "Cayley made these drawings for a vertical take-off and landing aircraft in 1848.
Although the design looks fanciful by modem standards, it has features that have appeared in successful helicopters (the wide fanlike rotors resemble those used on the deBothezat machine flown by the U.S. Army in 1922; the lateral side-by-side arrangement of the rotors is similar to the recordbreaking Focke helicopters built in Germany in the late 1930's).
One especially interesting feature is the design of the blades: they flatten down to form a solid disc and act as a wing in forward flight.
The bird's-head bowsprit may have been a deliberately humorous touch."

:uhoh: :{ :{

http://www.unicopter.com/Temporary/Suicide.gif

[widgeon]

At Westlands someone had the unenviable title of Advanced Rotor Systems Engineer. Seems like a match made in heaven LOL.

[Lu Zuckerman]

At Convair Astronautics Company in San Diego the company newspaper had a weekly blurb about the latest acronyms. They told of a girl in the field service department that was a Failure Analysis Report Tabulator but they didn’t provide the acronym for obvious reasons.

Even worse than that, when I worked at Sikorsky I co-authored a report on the ASE system used on the HSS-1 helicopter. I wrote the part on the mechanical and hydraulic flight controls and how they were actuated by the ASE. My co-author wrote about the electronic portion of the system (black box). He prepared the cover sheet and put my name down as co-author. He wrote my Name as S L Zuckerman and the Z (Zed) in my last name was a Z with a line drawn through it.

He wasn’t very forceful in writing my name and the lower leg of the Z did not show up very well. The typist picked it up as an F. You get the rest. Five hundred copies were sent to the various departments including several copies to the Navy office at Sikorsky. Nobody had proof read the cover and I had not seen the finished report. I finally saw it when it was pinned up on our bulletin board with my name circled in red with a note from my boss asking if this man worked in our department.


:E :uhoh: :E

[Flying Lawyer]

It reminds me of the time Wang, the international computer corporation, issued instructions that all telephone calls were to be answered in uniform corporate style: 'Wang London', 'Wang New York' etc. The instruction was amended within a week following protests by telephonists at their Cologne office.

[Straight Up Again]

Didn't Westlands also have a 'Support Helicopter Integration and Test' section in avionics? I think they always had the 'and' in the acronym as an '&'. I suppose this was staffed by 'Support Helicopter Integration and Test Engineers'.