Dec 132009
With side-by-side rotors. I think that this is all I have on this, I’m afraid. Dates from about 1956.
3 Responses to “Bell D-218 troop transport chopper”
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With side-by-side rotors. I think that this is all I have on this, I’m afraid. Dates from about 1956.
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If I had been expected to ride in that I would have been afraid, too!
This concept turned one of the tandem rotor helicopter’s problems, directional instability, into a feature. The tandem rotor helicopter wants to fly sideways and at low speeds, has better lift performance in sideward flight. (One trick to maximizing H-21 lift performance in a confined area departure was to take off sideways. The Navy HUP pilots when flying plane guard would keep pace with the carrier with a heading difference of at least 45 degrees to their course.) The shortcoming of this lateral rotor arrangement, of course, is drag in cruise flight, which Kaman somewhat overcame by putting the two rotor hubs very close together.
Yeah, they certainly didn’t seem too concerned about drag in forward flight, did they?
It’s going to be awfully hard for the pilot to judge how big of a landing area he needs to safely land without clipping trees with the rotors in a design like this. Mounting the rotors in tandem at least lets you know that if the front one will fit as you approach landing with some forward speed the back one will fit also.