The next big advance in flight?

[unixronin]

radarrider pointed out this article about a guy who may just have come up with a quieter, safer, more efficient replacement for the majority of helicopter applications.  This could be The Next Big Thing in aviation.

Comments

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

They slow it down drastically. Something like 25rpm... at cruise the rotor is excess baggage, virtually all the lift is provided by the body of the aircraft. This solves the problem of dissymetry of lift between the advancing and retreating blades, as well as the problems with rotor tips nearing supersonic speeds. Their FAQ (http://www.cartercopters.com/faq-general.htm) has a decent overview of the engineering behind the concept...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

OK, so they get out of advancing-blade compressibility, and the rotation's fast enough to minimize aerodynamic divergence on the rotor, but if you read carefully, they're trying to minimize the admission but they still have unsolved rotor stability problems due to retreating-blade aerodynamics at high µ.

[ehintz.livejournal.com]

I guess it's subject to interpretation... perhaps they are waffling, perhaps not-I'll certainly grant that they could be. Too bad they had the gear accident, they were going to do the attempt sometime around late Dec of '03 IIRC. I guess once they make the attempt we'll know...