On Saturday, July 8, 2017 at 3:41:12 PM UTC-5, wrote:
(Reposting with change to Subject Line.)

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On Wednesday, July 5, 2017 at 5:29:32 PM UTC-5, Vaughn Simon wrote:
On 7/5/2017 2:21 AM, wrote:
And there is an even more important term that needs to be re-looked at:

VTOL.

Helicopters are VTOL aircraft. Â*Quadcopters are VTOLs. Â*But there is a special
subcategory of VTOLs that have a much greater efficiency in speed and range.
This is VTOL aircraft that can cruise horizontally with wing lift used to
efficiently overcome gravity rather than rotor lift or jet lift. Â*This
category includes aircraft such as the AV-8 Harrier, the V-22 Osprey and
the F-35. Â*Because this group of aircraft has such strong advantages over
VTOL aircraft that are not capable of horizontal cruise (using wing lift),
it would be very helpful to have a special term for this group. Â*One
idea here would be:


Just FYI, a few years ago the FAA wrote a bunch of regulations for a new
category of aircraft called "Powered Lift" A close reading of the below
definition shows that it applies to the aircraft you mention above.

FAA definition of "Powered Lift": Powered-lift means a heavier-than-air
aircraft capable of vertical takeoff, vertical landing, and low speed
flight that depends principally on engine-driven lift devices or engine
thrust for lift during these flight regimes and on nonrotating
airfoil(s) for lift during horizontal flight.

Thanks for clueing me in about that. Â*I see that my thoughts are in line with what the FAA has been doing.

I wonder how they came up with that term "Powered Lift" and what other terms they had considered instead of this. Â*For me, those two words are not sufficient for conveying the efficiency that comes with the "nonrotating airfoils for lift during horizontal flight" part of the definition.

So maybe someone at the FAA would like to consider the much more comprehensive term being presented he

Vertical
TakeOff &
Landing /
Horizontal
Cruise

When compressed down into its acronym form, it has the same number of syllables as what they've been using. Â*And this term even uses a few less letters/spaces, while conveying a much more complete meaning. Â*To simply say "Powered Lift"...
It seems like every time you write that you'd need to mark it with an asterisk:

Powered Lift*

* - not to include rotating airfoils for lift during horizontal flight.

To be fair, one could say the same about Vertolhoc, considering how all rotorcraft perform "horizontal flight":

Vertolhoc*

* - horizontal cruise accomplished with non-rotating airfoils.

And my argument would be that it is far easier to imply the latter than the former. Â*Kind of like how the most general term "aircraft" implies non-rotating airfoils (let alone heavier than air). Â*So it is common to see it specified:

rotary wing aircraft

...even though helos were aircraft to begin with.


HMMM. Now that I think about it, this entire issue could be fixed with this little tweak:

Vertical
TakeOff &
Landing /
Horizontal
Plane

The new acronym being Vertolhop. Â*No asterisk necessary! Â*And the connotations are even better, because these are aircraft that let you hop from one place to the other flying as an airplane, 'plane-ing' the air with your fixed airfoils.

VERTOLHOP.

I hope the FAA is listening.

~ COPE
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To be fair, one could say the same about Vertolhoc, considering how all rotorcraft perform "horizontal flight":

Here I had intended to write "horizontal cruise", per the acronym as first proposed.

And also in the new subject line I used, it probably would have been good if I had given some indication of the subject line that this thread had originated with:
"Lilium Aviation flies prototype of its 160-knot all-electric VTOL".


As for acronyms that are widely in use, I have long wondered why people say VEEtol and not VERtol. To me, the acronym would flow much better if spelled out as the word Vertol. And then it dawned on me that it could very well be that the reason this did not catch on is because of some trademark issue by a company like Boeing Vertol.

So this new acronym that's been proposed today could turn out to be a reclaiming of the "vertol" part, because I have never seen the word Vertolhop used ever before. And if this word has been invented here, then I don't see how Boeing or some other established company would have grounds to claim this word for their own.

I just now googled it, and a grand total of three pages were found. All three were from the website "Vertoshop.ru". Poking into those pages, it appears that the character string "www.vertolhop.ru" was machine generated, because this was in a pulldown list of "possible errors in typing" for those trying to get to the url vertoshop.ru.

So Google is giving strong evidence that the word Vertolhop has not been used before.

~ COPE