Fairey Rotodyne anyone?

Chris Trott · Post by **Chris Trott** » 17 May 2007, 02:20

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9633v6U ... ed&search=

Found this from a link to a Fairey Firefly video.

BAe146 · Post by **BAe146** » 17 May 2007, 03:26

Nice find!

kit · Post by **kit** » 17 May 2007, 08:32

Good thing it's not 'real world' sound though.

The 'dyne must be the NOISIEST a/c I ever heard in my whole life. In the late '50s Fairey were plagued with complaints from locals about the noise level the tip jets put out during testing so they moved the flights to RAF Benson! Apparently RAF families didn't count on the potential deafness scale.

Needless to say I was living there at the time and their test pad was about 400 yards from our house.....

Tweek · Post by **Tweek** » 17 May 2007, 10:02

Very interesting! Hadn't seen any proper footage of this, myself.

Post by **Garry Russell** » 17 May 2007, 10:42

This film was in fact posted before...I think when the Ito model came out.

But it shows the value of a re post as many miss things.

Thanks Chris...

Garry

VEGAS · Post by **VEGAS** » 17 May 2007, 14:36

Wow, how noisy is that?! :shock:

Post by **Garry Russell** » 17 May 2007, 14:41

To think the idea was to fly into the centre of cities :huf:

Good idea but the running costs and noise issues were always going to count against it.

At this time aircraft noise was more generally accepted than now.

The One-Eleven for one was considered one of the quieter ones when launched.

Garry

snave · Post by **snave** » 17 May 2007, 16:17

Yeah, but, take the noise out of the equation and like, what an oil rig delivery tool! And nobody would hear the noise if the heliport was on a roof 57 stories up...

In the virtual world we would just replace the single rotor with tip jets with a Kamov contra-rotating prop, those weighty old Darts with a pair of PW125's and the four-props with a Hartzell six- or eight-blader - and the `Rotodyne 2000` is born!

Anyone want to have a go...?

Post by **Garry Russell** » 17 May 2007, 16:38

Dart...they were Elland.. :huf:

The production version was to have Tynes.

Maybe they should have muted it like FS.

Maybe a set of bike pedals to get the rotor up to speed :roll:

Given time they may well have sorted it by the world was changing fast.

Fairey went into Westland who were developing their own large helicopter....the Westminster.

So interest just waned and faded away. Pity really as that would have had military uses.

Even now the world seems content with aeroplanes or helicopters and efforts to combine the two just never seem to make it into any large scale use.

Making something that works is one thing...getting anyone to buy it is something else.

Garry

Motormouse · Post by **Motormouse** » 17 May 2007, 17:27

IIRC the plan was for the tip jets to be switched off once level flight was achieved, the whole plot flying like a (very) large autogyro

ttfn

Pete