Tip Driven Rotors
 

Quick question, was talking to a retired engineer last week who told me about a helicopter with tip driven rotors the Rotordyne, he remebered it was noisey as **** and not that successful.
My question is though why did manufacturers drop this type of research, do you think with modern technology the noise could be reduced and the idea proved successful, did a search but found little on the Rotordyne only bits of it left at Weston, any ideas???? :confused:

Tip driven rotors
 

Try here. There is an ongoing thread on this subject.

http://www.verticalreference.com/VRF...t=ST;f=27;t=22

:cool:

Slotty, don't know if you're looking for the right thing - I thought it was called the "Fairey Rotodyne" (no second R).

Apparently it was noisy, but the real reason it was cancelled is that it was invented by the British in the 60s and would thus have been doomed even if it flew in perfect silence on 50gph with one crew-member carrying 200 people at 400kt between city centres 1000 miles apart.

The Rotodyne had great potential and perhaps was just simply way ahead of its time. It was only noisy for a couple of minutes as it transitioned from the autorotative state to rotor tip jet powered flight to hover. Unfortunately the noisy part occurred when it was closest to the ground...

Hopefully one day the idea can be resurrected; IMHO it might be actually more viable than the present tilt-rotor design.

Thanks, it does seem a shame it was binned, could have been something different, cannot be any more problamatic than the tiltrotor, guess I'll just have to take a trip to Weston and see whats left!!:ok:

Slotty'sIt's not widely known, but, the project was dropped because a thrice-removed illegitimate Dutch relative of Igor Sikorsky came up with a quieter helicopter.

de Seversky's Ionocraft

:D