Sep 052010
An idea out of Lockheed-California, circa March 1963 for a VTOL C-130. Featuring fore and aft rotors like the Chinook, but with only two blades per rotor, and the ability to align them for minimum drag during forward flight. However, the illustration seems to show a dearth of actual powerplants. The normal C-130’s four turboprops are here reduced to two… with no means of powering the props shown. No further data on this.
6 Responses to “C-130 Heliplane”
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Would have had to be at least 4 blades per rotor, and one HELLUVA power plant!
Maybe not,maybe so,but could it have worked on an autogyro principle?
The thing looks terribly underpowered, even if all the two tail-mounted turboprops do is drive it forward. As far as locking the rotor blades forward and backwards like that, although the backwards-facing one will be fine, the one locked forwards is going to have the same problem as a forward-swept wing aircraft will – it’s going to want so start bending further and further upwards or downwards into the incoming airstream till it snaps off.
Bruce wrote:
“Maybe not,maybe so,but could it have worked on an autogyro principle?”
I kind of like the idea of making the rotor blades symmetrical front-to-back, locking them out at ninety degrees to the fuselage in forward flight, and turning them into two pairs of auxiliary wings.
There’s no good idea that cannot be taken to an absurd extreme.
Looks like something you’d leak to a Soviet double agent to try to convince them to build something stupid.