OT- VTOL aircraft identification help

it:

It was supposed to be silver and have a red marking shaped like this on

You're describing the NOTAR (NO TAil Rotor) developed by Hughes Aviation. It is/was a relatively new helicopter anti-torque system. There were about 16,000,000 hits for the name NOTAR on Google. HTH.

it:

> It was supposed to be silver and have a red marking shaped like this on

Yup...NOTAR is pretty new - 80's/90's...I have a vague idea of something like his description, that would have been out there in the '60s but I can't recall exactly what it was either. I seem to recall a model of something fitting Pat's description...

Might be one of these?:

Neither of these is what I'm not quite picturing in my mind, though...

No, this isn't the NOTAR or either of those. No main rotor, no tail rotor, no tail boom. Just a egg with a box-like housing on either side where compressed air is ejected downwards to lift it into the air. The compressor fan is housed internally and fed by a duct that surrounds the rear fuselage. What's odd about this thing is that I can't find zip about it via Google searches no matter what I try, even though it's in a museum somewhere here in the U.S. It's also not in my book on VTOL aircraft.

Pat

Pat

Knew from your date that it couldn't be NOTAR - too new.

I can picture in my mind what you're describing...just can't think of what it was, or where to find it...I seem to recall it from my days at GE. The main engine ducted high pressure air to outer rim of the fans - the turbine was integral to the circumference. Something like that?

...or like this...but not this, either:

and not this thing, either...

...or these...

You're jogging a memory, but I can't get it either...

Rufus wrote:

That's what's so infuriating about it...I've seen a photo of it in the museum, but can't find it anywhere on the web; it even gets ignored in all my books on VTOL aircraft and one-off testbeds. Police officer Zamora's description of the thing's size is right also; he says it's around the size of a mid-sized car, and if you've ever seen a Cayuse close up, you know its very small. He describes it as shooting flames out during takeoff, which could mean that they were using the output of the fan mixed with fuel ejected into the air exhaust ducts to generate more thrust, the way plenum chamber burning was going to work on the Harrier's front nozzles. I don't think that what he saw was the thing in the museum... that one was olive drab in color, but there might be some connection between it and the thing Zamora saw. Such a small VTOL "flying jeep" was a concept the military looked at a lot in the late 50's early 60's, maybe most memorably in the unsuccessful Avrocar project. The big advantage of something like this is that it could operate in wooded areas without having to worry about your rotor blades hitting trees, like could happen to a helicopter. The downside is that fuel consumption is going to be high, and if the Socorro one did use some sort of plenum chamber burning, you had a real potential of landing in a brushfire of your own making. :-) Howard Hughes had a real fondness for making oddball things, and you can certainly see him coming up with something like this. If that's the case we may never know the whole story, as he was very secretive about a lot of his projects. There still is very little known about his DX-2 aircraft of WW II vintage.

Pat

Pat

Garrett AiResearch STAMP Feasibility Demonstrator, circa 1974. STAMP = Small Tactical Aerial Mobility Platform.

That's ten years before the STAMP demo was built.

Maybe it was Col. Corso in action????

Okay...now _if_...the STAMP used technology derived from the Philadelphia Experiment that let it travel though time as well as space...yes...hidden Tesla technology... Then it could be the thing in question...that's certainly the case. For all we know, these things may have been buzzing all over Atlantis, battling the Mu Empire. ;-) If it weren't for the timeline being off kilter, it sure does look like what Zamora saw, except for the flames coming out the bottom of course. I sure can see some company building a small VTOL aerodyne to some odd government specification using something like plenum chamber burning, only to discover that it starts fires on takeoff and landing, and what Zamora saw being the crew getting a set of hot feet on hopping out of it. :-D And, boy, you weren't kidding about not being able to find info about it on the web...I can't even find the source of the GIF you sent me of it. Garrett AiResearch is now apparently owned by Dubai:

would be a ball to see that thing trying to lift off from sand, and the fun ingestion problems that would lead to.

Pat

Yeah - that's what's popping into my mind...one of the "flying jeep" projects. When I was at GE they showed me a picture of one such...there were a few of them - I Googled "flying jeep" and "air jeep" and still couldn't find what I was thinking of. I think one of the links I posted was an Avrocar drawing...

Been a long time since I've heard any mention of "plenum burning"...that really takes me back to my Harrier days...all sorts of reasons that's not such a "hot" idea...

Even a Harrier has the potential of melting or burning the surface underneath it on landing - you'll notice how they immediately taxi off the spot after a VL. Not to mention the FOD hazard created - note that even though there was a lot of sales talk about "forward or off-field basing" of Harriers, there's never actually been such operationally. They just blow up too much dirt...which they then they like to ingest.

He's asking even farther into the past than that - during the '50s-'60s

- for the event he's interested in...

Your Google-Fu ineeds practice, Grasshopper. There's quite a bit on STAMP, and the vatious compting designs on the Contrails serter that Bill Higgens so graciously pointed to us: V/STOL Concepts and Developed Aircraft. Volume 1. A Historical Report (1940-1986)

Oh, and Bill, I didn't see any Anthracite Powered Earth Orbiters - where do you have it parked? (I didn't realize that you were _that_ Bill Higgens)

Happens more often than humor would suggest. I've had some major corporations buy reports from me. Their own reports. Because they realized, forty years later, that they just might want to know what they did way back when.

My most recent trip was to the Bell archive. Found some stuff the staff was unaware of, some of which I've incorporated into the latest issue of APR (just released, subscribe now).

Found a bit more on the WS 118P design that was, seemingly, a Bell competitor against Lockheed A-11 and Convair Kingfish. Still a bit of a mystery, though.

Naw. There'd be major legal repurcussions to doing such a thing. But on the other hand, there's much to be learned from Democrats on how to steal documents and not only get away with it, but be put in important (and probably very highly paid) positions on certain Presidential campaigns. Rather than using weapons, wait till they turn their backs, then stuff said documents down your socks and shorts.

Scott Lowther* found a large side-view GIF of it he sent me. I can forward it to anyone who wants it. But even knowing its designation, it's almost impossible to find info on it on the web...it vanished like the XFV-12 experimental Navy VTOL aircraft did. That's generally a sign that it either got classified...or more likely... it was a very embarrassing screw-up that had zero chance of working from the word go, and everyone involved in the project is hoping it vanishes ASAP.

They worked on that so hard, and they never could get it to work right due to hot gas re-ingestion though the intakes. The basic idea is sound, the burners fairly easy to design, and you're going to have to figure out a way to put the turbofan intake somewhere other than the sides of the fuselage in close proximity to the exhaust nozzles...maybe up on top, like a F-107.

I still like the story of the Short SC.1 growing the haystack on its dorsal intakes after trying to operate off of freshly mowed grass at the airshow.

Pat

• We never did see eye-to-eye politically, but the guy's like a peregrine falcon when it comes to spotting oddball aircraft designs. Mouse hiding in the grass twenty miles away.... a single blade of grass moves in a odd way....the falcon's eyes spot it....ZIP! The claws strike the unsuspecting prey from above, and off to the scanner it goes! I keep picturing him on one of his archaeological expeditions through the old filing cabinets of the aircraft companies and museums. "What the _hell_ is that?" "You should know, your company designed it in 1957." "I've never seen that one before." "No... and you'll never see it again, either." (Pepper spray in the eyes, stun gun to the abdomen, the duct tape around the wrists, ankles, and mouth. Then the fake beard and accent, and Herr Ludwig von Todt of MBB leaves the building.) :-D

Pat

It was later than I thought; April 24th, 1964. Skeptical Inquirer has a good discussion of it:

more recent explanation was that was something involved with the Surveyor lunar lander program, but the time of the test flights doesn't line up right: you can see by the background photo, that Surveyor lander is a lot bigger than most people realize. Another thing is that the "what's-it left four landing marks, and Surveyor only has three landing legs. As to why you would go flying around with a Surveyor hanging off the bottom of a helicopter to test it, given that its landing engines are only designed to work under 1/6g, and that you are going to have a real potential for hydrazine contamination of the test landing site if you fire the landing engines is a good question. You would think this could be done under a crane with a counterweight taking up 5/6's of its weight, so you could flush the test area with water after the test to decontaminate it, while at the same time trying it out on several different types of simulated lunar soil and terrain placed under the crane.

Pat

I'm glad someone found it, as I had zero luck trying to track it down after a hour's searching earlier today under every term and image search combo I could think of. I'm fairly new over at rec.models.scale, and didn't notice that posting. I only have four people killfiled in that newsgroup, and Bill Higgens isn't one of them. (the killfiled of sci.space.history looks like a list of the known asteroids ;-) ) I'm still trying to figure out where the prototype ended up; The Smithsonian Institution has a entry on it, but I don't know if that means they have it stuck away at Silver Hill or not.

Pat

Mr. Higgens sent me the link via e-mail, now I've got to download the monster pdf. They actually got the device flying with a 30 minute mission duration and a forward speed of 120 kph. It's surprising this project didn't go further; that's a worthwhile speed and mission duration. With today's better turbofans, you should really be able to do a workable extrapolation of this technology in a larger size, to carry some troops, like a VTOL Blackhawk for the Delta Force that you could land in a very confined urban area, since you don't need to worry about the rotor hitting things. By use of plenum chamber burning to augment the lift created by the internal fan until it can get enough forward speed for a forward facing air intake to become efficient, you could at least offset some of the range deficiency of the aerodyne concept versus a helicopter by using a smaller drive turbine for given lift potential in fast forward flight.

Pat

When the Soviets were landing their Yak-38 on the Kiev, they found out that they needed to cover the Forger landing deck area with ceramic tiles to keep it from burning holes clean through the deck plating.

Pat

Erm... yes there has. There were several airstrips used in the Falklands. I know... I served at them. During the 70s and 80s, the RAF would have three field deployed Harrier Force exercises every year. Great fun! Each one was given a code name relating in some way to "HF". The first deployment of the year varied. One year it would be in May and would be called "Handy Forge". The next year it would be in late February or early March and was ironically named "Hard Frost". The second deployment of the year was in July and was called "Hill Foil". The third deployment was in September and was called "Hazel Flute". This one was always our yearly TACEVAL.

now).

Not just Democrats, Republicans have has their share of pilferage as well. During the 1980s, a good friend by the name of Frank Perrinni developed an engineering statement for magnetic levatation (he was planning on developing it for rail traffic) and other applications and went through the process of patent application. The government was interested in his experiments and offered him cart blanche. One caviate was that he relocate to either Texas or Southern Claifornia (remember where the leaders of the administration were from). When he stated that due to family concerns he didn't want to move and also that he could get factory and lab space in Western New York (huge unemployed labor force as well), they dropped him like a hot rock. Then hisd lawyer found out that the Feds were allowing the Germans, French and Japanese to come in and photograph his patent applications (against Federal laws, IMA). He eventually got his patents (forced into 23 seperate applications and awards), but the strain took its toll on him and he died of a major heart attack in

1995.