Just an Earth-Bound Misfit: The Rantings of an Aging, Armed, Pinko Chick

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time." -- The Ghoul

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck,
"FOFF" = Felonious Old Fat Fuck,
"COFF" = Convicted Old Felonious Fool,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset,
A/K/A P01135809, A/K/A Dementia Donnie, A/K/A Felon^34,
A/K/A Dolt-45, A/K/A Don Snoreleone

Friday, January 14, 2011

And the V-22 Program Office Breaks Out the Vodka

Because Sikorsky has tested a demonstrator that is faster and a lot simpler in concept.

260kts is pretty impressive in a helo.

(H/T)

5 comments:

Eck! said...: Seems the guys that created the first working ones make it better.

Thats fast!

Eck!; 1/14/2011 10:32 PM
jbrock said...: Holy crap. That thing looks like a third-generation cross between a Russky Helix and an autogyro. I love it!

I sincerely hope they can sell 'em.; 1/14/2011 10:54 PM
BadTux said...: Nice. Gear-driven counter-rotating rotors eliminating the need for a tail rotor to keep it from whirlygigging into the ground, a tail pusher prop to provide extra forward propulsion...

There is, however, a hard limit on how fast a helicopter can go, and that hard limit is imposed by the speed of sound at the rotor tips. That implies small rotors, which this helicopter has (but gets around by having *two* of them), but then you can't scale up the helicopter because then you'd need to have bigger rotors but then you'd have a slower helicopter.

So I don't think the V-22 team is rushing out to drown their sorrows in the bottle right now. This *particular* concept isn't the magic bullet that will put that lame POS out of existence. It's going to make one helluva attack helicopter, one that can streak in and put some hurting on the enemy way sooner than current helicopters, but it's not going to make a fast long-ranged troop carrier. I can think of something related, however, that might work a lot better than the V22 though... without the V22's complex magic-bb-prone tilt-rotor. And if I can think of it, you can bet that the Sikorsky crew can... it just needs to be implemented, at which point you better believe there shall be alot of sorrows being drowned.

- Badtux the Technology Penguin; 1/14/2011 10:58 PM
Chuck Pergiel said...: Cool! Magic rotor blades that don't rotate!; 1/16/2011 9:18 AM
BadTux said...: Charles, these particular rotor blades on this Sikorsky helicopter do rotate -- they counter-rotate, in fact, to keep the helicopter from whirlygigging into the tarmac, the only reason they don't look like they're rotating in this video is the scan rate of the video camera taking the video being roughly the same as the speed of the rotors -- but we do have a word for magic rotor blades that don't rotate. We call them *wings*. Consider the implications of that if you will...

- Badtux the Snarky Engineer Penguin; 1/16/2011 12:36 PM