Word: rotor
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Last week McDonnell Aircraft Corp. showed its XV1 convertiplane, a joint Army-Air Force project designed to sidestep many of the difficulties. On takeoff, the engine blows air through the hollow blades of the rotor. When it reaches the tips, the air makes fuel burn in small "pressure jets." Their thrust spins the rotor and lifts the ship off the ground. Then air and fuel are cut off, and the rotor idles freely while a pusher propeller flies the convertiplane like an ordinary airplane...
McDonnell has not yet tested the XV-1, but it hopes for high performance. The self-powered rotor acts like an auxiliary engine, so the main engine need not be large. No tail spinner is necessary; there is no torque for it to overcome. The wings, not needed for takeoff, are half the size of conventional wings...
...Whale-Mouthed Whirlybird. A two-rotor military helicopter big enough to carry three jeeps or 26 fully equipped infantrymen was demonstrated for Marine Corps brass by Sikorsky Aircraft Co. A pair of clamshell doors swing wide to admit passengers or cargo through a whale-sized mouth. New features: retractable landing gear to cut air resistance, a five-bladed front rotor (the rear rotor has four blades). Speed: better than 150 m.p.h. Name: XHR2s...
...Helicopter. The Army's first operational ramjet helicopters were delivered by Hiller Helicopters. Called the H-32, the craft is powered by small (12-lb.) ramjet engines mounted at the rotor blade tips. Mostly cabin, the new 'copter seats two to three persons, can carry more than 100% of its empty weight (500 lbs.), uses a pair of ski-shaped pipes for landing gear...
...make his helicopter go up or down he incorporated the idea of the variable-pitch propeller; by increasing the rotor blades' bite on the air (and simultaneously opening the throttle), he increased their lifting power. But to steer the machine forward, backward or sideways he made the blades subject, also, to something much more complicated, called cyclical pitch. This forced the bite of each individual blade to lessen as it swung toward the direction in which the control stick was moved?and then to gradually increase back to maximum pitch as it traveled through the next 180 degrees...