Word: vtol
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Latest entry in the VTOL (Vertical take-off and landing) competition is the Bell X-14, which achieves vertical flight in a horizontal flying attitude by means of a Venetian blind. The X-14 has two Armstrong Siddeley jet engines that give more than 3,500 lbs. of thrust, their hot gas shooting out horizontally under the fuselage. When the X-14 is rigged to take off vertically, a system of vanes like a Venetian blind deflects the gas downward. The thrust, acting upward, lifts the craft off the ground...
...latest VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) airplane to do this trick successfully is Bell Aircraft Corp.'s X-14, whose pictures were made public last week. Unlike Ryan Aeronautical Co.'s X-13 (TIME, May 20), which stands on its tail while taking off, the X-14 takes off in normal horizontal flying position. Its two jet engines blow their gas through thrust-diverters rather like Venetian blinds. The gas, deflected downward, pushes the airplane up. During the hovering period, jets of compressed air act as controls to keep it in the proper position. After the airplane...
...long-term dream of airplane designers, the jet-powered vertical take-off plane, became an official reality last week. The Air Force announced that Ryan Aeronautical Co. has test-flown successfully its jet X-13 VTOL (vertical take-off and landing), putting it through all its paces after 18 months of partial tests...
Rising Ratio. The ideal VTOL may come into being through the continuous improvement of jet engines. Research Engineer Earl R. Hinz of Ryan Aeronautical Co. points out that when the static thrust of an airplane's engines exceeds the airplane's weight, a vertical take-off is possible-at least in theory. Apparently no operational jet plane has such thrust at present, but the ratio of thrust to weight-even with the low-power figures still published by the security-morbid U.S. Department of Defense-is climbing rapidly. For the F-86 Sabre jet the ratio is four...
...Secret VTOL. Nothing has been released about Ryan's X-13 "Vertijet" which is still a highly classified project. But the technical public got a quick look at it when it was shipped to Edwards, carefully wrapped (see cut). Airplane-industry gossip has been swapping bits of information about it ever since...