Word: vtol
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...been flying, rather tentatively, at Niagara Falls, N.Y. over the past few weeks. It looks like a light private plane with a bulky ashcan suspended under each wing, and helicopter skids instead of wheels. Last week Bell Aircraft Corp. told how it works. It is a jet-powered VTOL (vertical take-off and landing), and Bell believes that from it will develop jet fighters and transports that can rise like helicopters from a small patch of ground, then turn themselves into normal-flying airplanes...
Bell's VTOL has a glider's fuselage and the wing of a light commercial airplane. Hung under the wings on swivels are two small jet. engines made by Fairchild for use in drone targets and guided missiles. Each weighs 300 Ibs. and has 1,000 Ibs. of static thrust. Since the whole airplane, engines and all, weighs only about 2,000 Ibs., the twin jets, directed downward, can lift it vertically off the ground. Controlling a craft that rises in this manner is a tricky business. Even more tricky is converting it to horizontal flight...
...Blasts. Bell's VTOL has conventional controls (ailerons and tail surfaces) for use when flying horizontally. These do not work when the craft has no forward speed, so tubes of compressed air from the engines' compressors are carried out to the tail and the wingtips. The pilot controls the plane's attitude on the rise or descent by varying the strength of the air blast from the ends of the tubes...