WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND - THE GYRODYNE ENTERS THE 21ST CENTURY

摘要

It is comparatively rare in modern aerospace technology to find inspiration for a future aircraft project by re-visiting a design abandoned decades earlier, but gyroplane specialists Groen Brothers Aviation (GBA) of Salt Lake City, Utah, have done just that with their proposed Heavy Lift Gyrodyne. This is not to suggest that GBA is a backwards-looking enterprise, but rather to draw attention to the company's commitment to revive and exploit the proven, but prematurely rejected, technology of the British Fairey Rotodyne which was abandoned in 1962, largely on political grounds. Applying the Rotodyne concept to the Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules, GBA plans to equip this medium-range transport with a fivc-bladed rotor system mounted above the fuselage, retaining the basic airframe and wing dimensions but providing it with a new empennage incorporating four vertical stabilisers. A key element of the Fairey design on which the Heavy Lift Gyrodyne is based is the 'gyrodyne' concept itself. A 'gyrodyne' is a fixed-wing aircraft which employs a supplementary tip-jet powered rotor for vertical, or very short take-offs and landings, but is able to fly in autorotation during cruising flight with the tip jets switched off, sustained by conventional aerodynamic lift from the wings. It is important to note that the Heavy lift Gyrodyne is not simply a viable concept looking for an application - it has been designed in response to a US military requirement for a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) heavylift transport. Specifically, it is GBA's response to a Department of Defense (DoD) study contract awarded in 2002 to examine different concepts for meeting the army's need for an Advanced Manoeuvre Transport (AMT).