Word: rotor
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...mechanical wizard named Felix Wankel invented it in 1954, but it took NSU 13 years of tinkering to bring the "Wankel engine" to its present stage. It is a non-piston gas engine consisting of a three-cornered rotor that swirls in a combustion chamber shaped like a fat-waisted figure eight. Doing away with the stop-and-start movements of the piston engine saves valuable power for a continuous circular movement. The RO 80 will feature two half-liter engines, placed side by side, yet even this will only take up half as much space as a conventional motor...
...faster and more sophisticated than any helicopter now flying in Viet Nam but is also a long technological hop ahead of anything in the industry. Designated the AH-56A Cheyenne, Lockheed's AAFSS is a "compound" aircraft. Like a conventional helicopter, the single-turbine Cheyenne has a main rotor and tail-mounted stabilizing rotor for hovering and vertical takeoffs and landings. In the air, a simple twist of the control-stick grip sets the pitch of the rear-mounted pusher propeller for 240-m.p.h. cross-country dashes on the craft's stubby wings...
Lockheed's rigid-rotor design, in effect, makes the whole shebang a stable flying gyroscope. The concept-rigid blades attached directly to the rotor shaft-was tried and dropped in the '20s; experimenters found that when they tilted the rotor to change direction, the whirling blades would tumble their machines like a gyroscope gone berserk. Ever since, helicopter makers have sacrificed simplicity and speed by using flexible rotor blades mounted on heavy, complex hinges. Lockheed picked up the all-but-forgotten rigid-rotor idea in 1957-and found a way to handle it: the pilot's stick...
...John Wagner of Kansas City's KMBC. "I've had a few knots on my head from banging against the glass while I'm trying to look out." In addition to watching out for traffic below, a reporter has to worry about ice accumulating on his rotor blades, the wash from a jet that can upend a helicopter-and traffic above...
...regions becomes great enough and there is sufficient cloud turbulence, regions begin exchanging streams of charged droplets. When two of these counter-flowing streams-which move as fast as 500 m.p.h.-are within a quarter to half a mile of each other, the droplets act as an electrostatic motor rotor. As they whirl, they whip the surrounding air into the familiar and dreaded funnel...