Oddball, Experimental, or One-off

[IBob]

Hats off to the pilots who flew the tests with the Northrop HL_10.
I'll stick with something that actually has wings...........

[facthunter]

IF you are going fast enough, you can fly on the fuselage side.  Nev

[red750]

The Mil Mi-20 was a small, multipurpose helicopter developed in the mid-1960s to replace the Mil Mi-1. It was designed for transport, cargo, agricultural, training, and light combat roles. Equipped with Falanga or Malyutka missiles or UB-16-57 rocket pods in its gunship configuration, the Mi-20 failed to gain traction and was cancelled after the second prototype.

 

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The Portsmouth Aerocar was a British light utility aircraft design of the late 1940s. It was intended to be an aircraft that could be used for a variety of tasks including transport "mobile office" but only one prototype was built being scrapped in 1950.

 

The Aerocar was a high-wing monoplane with gondola fuselage and twin-boom tailplane and tricycle undercarriage. The cabin could hold five passengers in addition to the pilot. Four doors were fitted to the cabin. The manufacturer claimed that as well as taking off in 160 yards on (dry) grass, it could climb on one engine at full load at 230 ft/min (70 m/min).

 

It was of composite construction; fabric-covered wooden wings, tail booms and tail fitted to a metal fuselage but the production model would have been all-metal. Clamshell doors at the rear of the fuselage were advertised.

 

Construction of both a Major and Minor variants was started but the company decided that the Minor would not have enough power and construction was abandoned. The Major prototype was completed and started taxying trials at Portsmouth on 18 June 1947, Frank Luxmoore was pleased with the trials so he undertook the maiden flight the same day.

 

It was exhibited at the Society of British Aircraft Constructors airshow but funding for the development of the Aerocar was dependent on an agreement for licence manufacture in India. With the uncertainty arising from the partition of India in 1947, this became unlikely and Portsmouth Aviation was unable to continue with development. With Lionel Balfour, the driving force behind the Aerocar, no longer part of the company the Aerocar was stored until scrapped.

 

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The Dale Weejet 800, or Weejet VT-1 was an early light jet intended for high-speed personal transport or primary military training.

 

Harold Dale, an engineer at North American Aviation who had designed several homebuilt aircraft, teamed up with Edward Gagnier, a former North American engineer, to develop the Weejet. The name was registered in February 1952 and the prototype was built in 2 1/2 years.

 

The Weejet was a two-seat side-by-side, mid-winged all-aluminum, retractable tricycle gear aircraft with a V-tail arrangement. The aircraft was powered by a 920lb thrust Continental-Turbomeca Marbore II J-69-T-15 engine. Air was fed to the engine through two triangular inlets mounted on the inboard wing roots. Fuel was carried in the leading edge of the wings, and tip tanks. The aircraft had oxygen tanks and was pressurized to 3 psi differential pressure. The seats were designed to accommodate parachutes. The rudder pedals were adjustable for different pilot heights.

 

The first test flight was conducted by Harold Dale on 30 March 1956. The aircraft completed several spin tests, but during one test the canopy opened and the aircraft went into an inverted spin. The pilot bailed out safely and the prototype crashed after performing an unmanned inverted loop. It was later found that the trim tab was set to full nose-down attitude during the test. A scheduled demonstration of the aircraft for the U.S. Navy was canceled. No other Weejets were produced.

 

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The SIPA S.1100 was a French twin engine observation and ground support aircraft flown in 1958. The first prototype was destroyed in a fatal crash only a few weeks after its first flight and no more were constructed.

 

In 1958 France was in the middle of the Algerian War and felt a need for a counter-insurgency aircraft capable of observation, photography and ground support. This official programme led to three aircraft: the SIPA S.1100, the Sud Aviation SE.116 Voltigeur and, slightly later the Dassault Spirale. All three were propeller driven designs with twin engines, though the SIPA was the only one never fitted with turboprops.

 

The SIPA SE.1100 was a mid wing cantilever monoplane. All its flying surfaces were straight tapered and square tipped; the wing carried flaps. Its 455 kW (610 hp) Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp nine cylinder radial engines were mounted ahead of the wing leading edges, with cowlings which extended rearwards, both above and below the wing, nearly to the trailing edge. Its main wheels retracted backwards into the lower cowling and the tail wheel also retracted. 

 

Its crew compartment was in the extreme nose of a deepened forward fuselage, with multiple transparencies to provide good sideways and downward vision. For ground support work it was fitted with two 20 mm (0.79 in) guns. There were underwing attachment points for other armament packages.

 

Ten SE.1100 prototypes were ordered but then cancelled before the SE.1100's first flight, flown on 24 April 1958 by Pierre Ponthus. Less than three months later, Ponthus and his colleague André Bouthonnet were killed and the aircraft destroyed when it crashed at Villacoublay during a low level demonstration. The unfinished second prototype was then abandoned.

 

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The Williams V-Jet II was designed and built by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites for Williams International as a test bed and demonstrator aircraft for Williams' new FJX-1 turbofan engine.

 

Williams International had been building small turbofan engines for cruise missile applications since the 1950s, and had successfully entered the general aviation market in the late 1980s with the FJ44 engine. In 1992, NASA initiated a program, Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (AGATE) to partner with manufacturers and help develop technologies that would revitalize the sagging general aviation industry. In 1996, Williams joined AGATE's General Aviation Propulsion (GAP) program to develop a fuel-efficient turbofan engine that would be even smaller than the FJ44. The result was the FJX-2 engine, which produced 550 lbf (2,400 N) thrust.

 

Williams then contracted with Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites to design and build the V-Jet II, considered a Very Light Jet (VLJ), to use as a testbed and technology demonstrator to showcase the new engine.[2] At Scaled, the aircraft was known as the Model 271. The aircraft and engine were debuted at the 1997 Oshkosh Airshow. Scaled's test pilot Doug Shane received the Iven C. Kincheloe Award from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots for his flight test work on the plane.

 

The V-Jet II was an all-composite structure with a forward-swept wing, a V-tail, each fin of which was mounted on the nacelle of one of the two engines. The overall design was quite reminiscent of the LearAvia Lear Fan, although much smaller.

 

Williams had not intended to produce the aircraft, but it attracted a lot of attention, and Eclipse Aviation was founded in 1998 to further develop and produce the aircraft. The airframe was significantly redesigned as an all-metal structure sporting a T-tail, and the name Eclipse 500. The prototype flew with a pair of EJ-22 engines, a variant of the FJX-2. However, performance was not satisfactory, and the design was changed to use two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW610F engines, which had been specifically designed by Pratt for the Eclipse.

 

The prototype and only V-Jet II aircraft was obtained by Eclipse Aviation along with the program, and was donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 2001.

 

 

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The Fairey FB-1 Gyrodyne is an experimental British rotorcraft that used single lifting rotor and a tractor propeller mounted on the tip of the starboard stub wing to provide both propulsion and anti-torque reaction.

 

In April 1946, Fairey announced a private-venture project for a rotary-wing aircraft, to be built to a design developed by Dr. J.A.J. Bennett while he was chief technical officer at the Cierva Autogiro Company in 1936–1939. The Gyrodyne, constituting a third distinct type of rotorcraft and designated C.41 by the Cierva Autogiro Company, was in 1938 successfully tendered to the Royal Navy in response to Specification S.22/38 for a naval helicopter. Though preliminary work started on the project, it was abandoned with the outbreak of the Second World War, and G & J Weir, Ltd., the financiers of the Cierva Autogiro Company, declined to undertake further development in addition to their successful experiments with the W.5 and W.6 lateral twin-rotor helicopters. After the Second World War, the Cierva Autogiro Company was engaged with the development of the Cierva W.9 "Drainpipe" and the W.11 Air Horse helicopters under the direction of Cyril Pullin, and Bennett joined Fairey in late 1945 as head of the newly established rotary wing aircraft division.

 

The Gyrodyne was a compact, streamlined rotorcraft weighing just over 4,410 lb (2,000 kg) and powered by a 520–540 hp (390–400 kW) Alvis Leonides 522/2 radial engine, the power from which could be transmitted in variable ratios to the fixed-shaft/swashplate-actuated tilting hub-controlled rotor and the wing tip mounted propeller. The Gyrodyne possessed the hovering capability of a helicopter, while its propeller provided the necessary thrust for forward flight to enable its rotor, driven at low torque in cruise flight, to operate at low collective pitch with the tip-path plane parallel to the flight path to minimise vibration at high airspeed. Collective pitch was an automatic function of throttle setting and power loading of the propeller, which to maintain rpm diverted torque away from the rotor as airspeed increased.

 

A government contract to Specification E.4/46 was awarded for two prototypes with the first Fairey Gyrodyne exhibited as an almost complete airframe at White Waltham on 7 December 1946.

 

On 4 December 1947, the first of the two prototypes took off from White Waltham airfield, and continued to build up flying time until March 1948 when it was dismantled for a thorough examination. The second prototype, basically similar to the first but with more comfortable interior furnishings befitting its role as a passenger demonstrator, was flying by the time of the next SBAC Farnborough Airshow, in September 1948. The first prototype was reassembled and, following further test flying, took part in an attempt to set a new world helicopter speed record in a straight line.

 

On 28 June 1948, flown by test pilot Basil Arkell, the Gyrodyne made two flights in each direction over a low-altitude 2-mile-long (3.2 km) course at White Waltham, achieving 124 mph (200 km/h), enough to secure the record. A maximum airspeed of 133 mph (214 km/h) was achieved during the flight, keeping seven inches of boost in reserve in the event a rapid climb became necessary as the flight was conducted at an altitude of less than 100 ft (30 m) above the ground. An attempt was to be made in April 1949 to set a 62 mi (100 km) closed-circuit record, but two days before the date selected a poorly machined flapping link in the rotor hub failed during flight and resulted in the crash of the aircraft at Ufton, near Reading, killing the pilot, Foster H. Dixon and observer, Derek Garraway.

 

The second Gyrodyne was grounded during the accident investigation which determined flapping hinge retaining nut failure due to poor machining as the cause. The extensively modified second prototype, renamed Jet Gyrodyne, flew in January 1954. Though retaining the name "Gyrodyne", the Jet Gyrodyne was a compound gyroplane, and did not operate on the same principle as the original aircraft. It had a two-blade rotor manually controlled with cyclic and collective pitch mechanisms that acted directly on each rotor blade and was driven by tip jets fed with air from two compressors driven by the Alvis Leonides radial engine. Pusher propellers, one mounted at the tip of each stub wing, provided yaw control through differential collective pitch and thrust for forward flight. The Jet Gyrodyne was constructed to provide rotor drive and operational data for the Fairey Rotodyne compound gyroplane.

 

Gyrodyne

 

Jet Gyrodyne