Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Weird

 






5 comments:

  1. It seems to have worked, though.

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  2. It was billed as air taxi. Also able to use short fields to evacuate civilians during emergency. A photo from the mid-1960s showed it taking off from a dock in NYC.

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    Replies
    1. I suspect this was to get the Port Authority to dedicate landing fields. I don't know how successful that effort.

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  3. what dickery be this...

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  4. As it says on the tin, it's the Fairey Rotodyne, only one was ever built in the '50s. It took off and landed vertically like a helicopter but once it reached sufficient airspeed the rotor was unpowered and it flew as an autogyro with both the wing and rotor providing lift. It had tip jets, bleed air from the engine compressors was sent through the blades and mixed with fuel in a small jet engine mounted in the tip of each blade. The noise of the tip jets and British politics eventually killed the project.
    Al_in_Ottawa

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