Heads up! Fairey Rotodyne...

Post by **Garry Russell** » 26 Oct 2006, 22:11

FlyTexas wrote:
John R wrote:Hi all

Found this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9633v6U0wo

Brilliant :dance:

John
Well done, John! I enjoyed that video very, very, much.

Brian

I missed this entry earlier

Thanks John

I have never seen a film of the aircraft like this before

A great shame it faded being an airliner, or cargo, or crane with the capability of going anywhere.

Amazing machine

DispatchDragon · Post by **DispatchDragon** » 26 Oct 2006, 22:22

Garry

Even on the overdubbed film you can hear how much noise the tip jets made - it would have never made it in the noise envoirment today

BTW - the other airframe that used the Elandwas the Westland Westminister
and the Lincoln(s) at luton were used for test beds for both the Eland and the Niand?

Cheers

Leif

Post by **Garry Russell** » 26 Oct 2006, 22:31

Hi Leif

When this was discussed in forum a while ago I was saying how the noise was a big issue.

But it was said at the time and repeated here that the noise issue had been partly dressed and would have been eased to acceptable level.

I have always doubted that as squirting high pressure air out of the tips of already noisy rotor blades was surely never going to be quiet.

Westland absorbed Fairey and were working on their own heavy lift helicopter, the Westminster, and said at the time they wanted to concentrate on that and there was no call to develop both

Of course in the end neither was.

It well may never have been suitable for inter city travel as such due to the noise which if unacceptable then would long have been stopped by now.

I still feel there would have been a Military and emergency use for the craft..perhaps an air ambulance.

But it's history.

Impressive looking and what glorious old fashioned dramatic dialogue

Garry

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 26 Oct 2006, 23:05

Leif

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_&_Son

says Naiad - I've never heard of it.

And apparently some Wessex used Napier engines (not the Eland though)

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » 27 Oct 2006, 04:31

To hijack this further into esoteric Napier engines, I recall that we had a Napier Nomad compound (piston/jet) engine in the Queen Mary College Mechanical Engineering Dept. in the early '70's.

Apparently this engine had gone as far as being type-tested in a Shackleton, and was considered at one time as the Griffon replacement for long range/ endurance applications (essentially any later Shackletons).

It (the compound engine) was basically a good idea, using a compressor at one end and a turbine at the other, with the piston engine acting as the high-pressure 'hot section'. It offered performance and fuel economy, but it was fearsomely complicated.

To the best of my knowledge, the Wright Turbo-Compound engine was the only engine of this type to enter reasonably wide-scale service, and that had about ten years of glory before the high-bypass-ratio jets approached their specific fuel consumption of about 0.5 lb/hp/hr, and with many times the service life.

Cheers,

Kevin

AndyG · Post by **AndyG** » 27 Oct 2006, 10:33

Noise levels on the Rotodyne were apparently no worse than the contemporary DC-8, Trident etc; imo this was just a Westland excuse to kill the project in favour of the Westminster, despite their commitments to continue Rotodyne development at the time of 'merger'.

I was wondering if anybody had repaints in hand for this baby? If not, I know what I'm doing this weekend!

AndyG

Post by **Garry Russell** » 27 Oct 2006, 10:46

The is truth in the overall noise reading being no worse than other contemporary aircraft in decibels, but that is misleading

Two factors

One it the noise was of a tone that was less tolerable to the ear and the main factor of course, the "noise" was being plonked into city centres where as the other aircraft were in the relative wide open spaces of major airports away from town

There was a lot of complaints about the noise.

Also worth remembering that readings were published to show that Concorde was no noisier than other type........but it was

Garry

AndyG · Post by **AndyG** » 27 Oct 2006, 10:54

Garry Russell wrote:....whereas the other aircraft were in the relative wide open spaces of major airports away from town

Garry, you had to be living under the Heathrow and Gatwick flightpaths at that time to realise that wasn't really the case; your average Trident managed to rattle window frames very nicely! And Battersea (of heliport fame) was full of poor people at that time, so they wouldn't have mattered!!!

I have absolutely no sympathy for these anti-Heathrow protestors who complain about noise levels etc, as they noise levels have actually plummeted despite the three-fold increase in air traffic; didn't they notice the fact there was an airport there when they bought their house?

AndyG

Jetstreamsky · Post by **Jetstreamsky** » 27 Oct 2006, 16:53

There are some very interesting articles on the Groen Brothers website about the Rotordyne and otherstuff, but in particular the noise aspect is discussed in this one http://www.groenbros.com/FaireyRotodyne.php

See also http://www.groenbros.com/gyrodyne_tech.php

Allan

FlyTexas · Post by **FlyTexas** » 27 Oct 2006, 18:03

Chris Trott wrote:Ahh, know of any Eland sound sets?

I wonder if someone could take an existing soundset but apply a "whooshing" sound to the 'flaps' sound so that when the flaps are in position 2 or greater you hear the "whoshing" sound along with the turbo sound. Of course the "whooshing" sound would have to be looped. Just a thought.

Brian