Two photos of the Avro Canada “Avrocar” in the NASA-Ames wind tunnel, dated 1960. The obvious difference here is that a tail has been nailed to the Avrocar. Presumably this is not an “Avrocar-specific” modification, but a general study of lenticular configurations, which were popular at the time. Also note that the Avrocar is *backwards.* Careful examination will show that the cockpit canopies have been removed and covered over with sheet metal… and that the “tail” is on what’s supposed to be the front of the vehicle. My guess is that this was done due to more favorable internal structures to tie the tail into; since the vehicle is more or less radially symmetrical, it hardly matters where the tail is… could’ve been on the side.
Also noteworthy is that the underside of the vehicle is shown to good effect. it’s rare to see the underside of the Avrocar… not surprising, since as a flying machine it was an utter disaster, rarely getting more than a few inches off the ground.
Note: while not actually a Martian War Machine, it’d make a good one.
18 Responses to “Flying Saucer With A Tail”
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That was one very odd little vehicle, and the tail really doesn’t help its looks any.
I think I remember seeing the Avrocar on Discovery channel or something several years ago. Seemed like such a neat idea, but the video showed that even when they got it off the ground the vehicle was very difficult to control.
I have a copy of the test report for this configuration. It did solve the pitch problem, but got away from their ideal disc shape. The late Avrocar designs added horizontal surfaces. I also think, but am not 100% sure, that they used results of this test for comparison with scale tests of some of the lenticular reentry vehicle configs, which were very close to this size. I think AW&ST ran an article about that at the time.
What report is this from? I’ve always wondered whether that thing was developed to any extent after its initial failure to live up to everyone’s fantasies.
I found this PDF by wandering through the wikipedia article (their link is bad): http://www.robertcmason.com/textdocs/avro-car-VZ9.pdf
That goes in the PDF files – thanks!
You may have already seen this one, but here’s its big brother, the Silverbug:
http://www.boomslanger.com/images/silverbug.pdf
How in the hell are you supposed to bank something like that with the giant gyroscope that is its centrifugal compressor spinning around inside of it?
That does indeed look like a Martian War Machine*; particularly the one Harryhausen was going to use, based on the saucers from “Earth vs. The Flying Saucers”:
http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/other/harryhausen2.jpg
You can say what you want, about that Spielberg/Cruse version, but by God did those war machines look great.
The scene of the first one coming out of the ground after the city block starts rotating is one of the coolest things ever put on film. Hard to make technology or creatures look really alien, but those war machines and their operators succeeding in doing that as well or better than when you ran into the Shadows and their ships in Babylon 5.
* Apparently, they’ve tried to chain the thing’s legs down, ala “King Kong” or “Gorgo” 😉
One thing the Spielberg WotW certainly got right was the audible call of the war machine. It always gave me the creeps reading it in the book… and it gave me the creeps listening to it in the theater.
Thanks, Pat. I think it was not expected to bank: just spin on the axis of the compressor.
The jet system described in the Silver Bug report might be a lot like your idea, Pat, for the odd scallops and the “ledge” of the wing the Orion.
You want a creepy sound? Listen to the 3-meter ants in “Them!”
Michael Holt wrote:
“You want a creepy sound? Listen to the 3-meter ants in “Them!” ”
The sound was the song of a small type of frog: I’ll see if I can dig up a WAV file of its specific call, as I found that out several months back.
I asked everyone I knew who saw the WOTW movie if that sound the war machines made them uncomfortable also when they saw it in a theater.
It made all of them _very _ uncomfortable.
It doesn’t happen when you see it on TV or off of the DVD, and I’m pretty sure they did something pretty clever here.
They had the sound system in the theater send out two frequencies of sound simultainiusly from speakers on its oppisite sides as well as what you could hear.
The two frequencies would interact, causing a subsonic effect that would make the audience feel fearful and anxious: this same concept has been discussed in sonic riot control weapons
BTW, as near as I can figure, the weapons that the war machines used in the movie were some sort of masers tuned to the water molecule excitation frequency, like a microwave oven.
This would account for the people that were hit with them blowing up, while their clothes stayed largely unburnt, if shredded.
The maser beam impact on them would cause all the water in their body to superheat, causing their body to explode in a big steam explosion, but not heating their clothes that much.
Effects on metal things like the tanks or aircraft would be similar to what happens when you put something metal into a microwave oven; it heats up, and undergoes severe electrical arcing from any pointed edges.
This is really annoying; several months back, I stumbled on a website that had tons of info on that movie, and also included specifics on the sound effects that were used for the ants in it (two different types of frogs- the one with the high frequency stridulation that everyone remembers, as well another one that did the “roaring” sound that punctuated it), and sent a link of the stridulation sound to a friend on mine from a website that had hundreds of WAV files of frog songs on it, but now can’t find it again on either Google or Bing no matter how hard I look.
Anyone got a link to this?
> Anyone got a link to this?
This has all the frog/toad-related info you’ll ever need:
http://r33b.net/
No, it was specific in regards to the ant sounds, and I can still do a pretty fair imitation of the stridulation of that by a modified version of whistling.
Other interesting “Them!” facts were that it was intended to be done in full color and 3D.
People who saw the full-sized ant replicas always commented on their compound eyes, whose facets went through the full shades of the spectrum as they moved, and of course their hair…that was made of turkey feathers.
One of the advantages “Them!” had was that the ants were _big_, but not so big as to be completely unbelievable, like “Tarantula” or “The Giant Mantis”.
The ants ranged from 9 to 13 feet in length.
While I have no immediate need for the sound of the ants, I’d like to have the sound on file. I gotta get that movie.
Yeah, those ants were almost plausible. I read somewhere long ago that the maximum size for ants was a lot less than 3 meters, but I have no memory of what the size might be. Nine inches echoes, but I have no idea why; that could be the theoretical optimal size for free-range ants without competition.
Apparently, disc-shaped aircraft don’t work, though. I’ve always wondered whether the NACA tested the idea because of all the flying-saucer UFO reports. I’d really like to read some of the NACA reports.
By God, I found it!
The main ant sound is the call of the bird-voiced treefrog (Hyla avivoca);
the roaring sound is from the grey treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis)
You will recognize these sounds, which still gives me the creeps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA8Nuk5GPZA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqT3k3GiWeQ
That’s gonna give me nightmares. Mostly because I cannot inflict it on my idiot ex-brother, who spent years living in terror of giant ants after I remarked that a sound he heard every day was just like that sound.
I never went near a sandpit without good reason for years after seeing the original “Invaders From Mars” as a young kid. 🙂