Barrington Bond said:From The Aeroplane 14 Nov 1958.
Jemiba said:Welcome rocketeer !
A naval variant of the Rotodyne is unknown to me so far, sounds interesting !
The latest variant I know, is the Tyne powered Rotodyne, a 3-view from
D.Wood "Project Cancelled" is shown below. Regarding this book, this variant
should give "the services" a vertical take-off transport capability for e.g. 70 troops,
trucks, missiles or the fuselage of a fighter. Implicitly a naval use maybe mentioned
here .... To enhance performance especially in hot-and-high conditions, fitting of
an additional R.B.176 in each nacelle was proposed.
LowObservable said:There is a basic problem with all public-transport VTOL ideas. You need to have traffic beyond an ultra-premium Concorde-type market and to do that you need frequency and diversity of service. You cannot physically do that from the Pan Am building or a barge in the Thames, and with likely noise levels you get forced out to a "brownfield" site just outside downtown - which could still be tenable, particularly if it's on the city rail system.
But - once you've got half a dozen gates, a terminal, parking, landing and aircraft-parking spots, it doesn't take much more space or more money to add a short runway. And a STOL airplane designed for 2,000-foot runways - no interconnecting engine gadgetry, basically conventional with quiet, slow propellers, naturally blown flaps - will be a lot cheaper and more efficient than a VTOL.
And if you're de Havilland Canada you'll actually build one, and sell 113 of them.
LowObservable said:Just to clarify that I was talking about the Dash 7, which corresponded to an early-1970s STOL airliner spec devised by a consortium of airlines.
eBay auction ID: 292282311995Windmill of the skies
White Walthan, England: Members of the World's press were invited by the Fairey aviation company to see this demonstration flight of the Fairey Rotodyne vertical take off airplane at White Waltham, England. Top photo shows the aircraft from below after it has risen vertically with the aid of the helicopter blades. Note that the propellers in the front have begun to spin, ready to take over for standard horizontal flight. Bottom photo shows the Rotodyne ground ready for closer inspection. 6 / 6 / 1958
https://youtu.be/dkJOm1V77Xg
I have a book on past and proposed developments in Manchester, one of the proposals was to build a helipad over the lines of Victoria Railway station, I suppose other stations in other cities would have been appropriate sites for similar developments - the rail approach to Euston Station springs to mind.For the Rotodyne's original purpose - fast intercity travel - there never was a right time. For this to succeed against a train (slower, but city centre to city centre) plus fixed-wing transport (faster, but needs to use out-of-city airports), the Rotodyne needed - and still would need - city-centre heliports in all cities to be served. And I mean as close to the city centre as a railway terminus.