FRANK PIASECKI OCTOBER 1919 - FEBRUARY 2008

摘要

Helicopter pioneer Frank Piasecki died on February 11 at the age of 88. Born in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, in 1919, he had by the age of 20 gained an engineering degree at the Guggenheim School of Aeronautics in New York. In 1943 he set up the PV Engineering Forum and soon designed the single-seat PV-2 helicopter.rnPiasecki had only 14hr of flying experience (on a Piper Cub) when he first flew the PV-2 from a field near Philadelphia on April 11,1943. For its maiden flight it was tethered by a clothesline and was supposed to rise only a few feet, but the line broke and Piasecki found himself free-flying in an untried aircraft with no training. He thus became the second successful American helicopter designer, after Igor Sikorsky.