As a followup to yestedays post, here’re the helicopter models on display at the Hiller aerospace museum, back in ’04. These two were STORC(Self-ferrying Trans Ocean Rotary-wing Crane) concepts, which were choppers with turbojets at the rotortips. On the ground, one of the rotors could be flipped so that both rotors faced the same way… turning them into wings. This would allow efficient long-distance ferry flight. At the other end, the rotor could be turned back around, restoring the vehicle into a helicopter. This procedure could not be accomplished in flight, only on the ground with the rotors stopped. On the whole this was a pretty spiffy idea, but rotor-tip turbojets tended to have problems (being squished by centrifugal force really doesn’t help a mechanism with lots of moving parts).
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