Vril 7 at Arado Brandedburg '44/'45

"B2431" wrote

Next time you are in the Ft. Eustis VA area go look at the saucer shaped
aircraft (Avro?) they have. It could carry 2 men, hover all of 2 or 3 feet
off
the ground and manoeuver rather nicely. Other than low hover it could not
fly
and wobbled a lot. Unlike the Nazi ideas this saucer WAS built and proved
how
complicated things really were. The downward ducted fan concept has been
tried
several times and not one vehicle had the performance to justify
proceeding to
an operational prototype.


I've seen that beast. Looks evil to ride.

Pete

From: "Pete"


"B2431" wrote

Next time you are in the Ft. Eustis VA area go look at the saucer shaped
aircraft (Avro?) they have. It could carry 2 men, hover all of 2 or 3 feet
off
the ground and manoeuver rather nicely. Other than low hover it could not
fly
and wobbled a lot. Unlike the Nazi ideas this saucer WAS built and proved
how
complicated things really were. The downward ducted fan concept has been
tried
several times and not one vehicle had the performance to justify
proceeding to
an operational prototype.


I've seen that beast. Looks evil to ride.

Pete


I have seen films of it in operation. It wobbles.

Last time I was in the museum at Ft. Useless, early 1980s, they had a few
really loony devices. The strangest has to be the one man helicopter where the
guy had to stand on a platform ABOVE the rotors.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

(B2431) wrote in message ...
From: "Pete"


"B2431" wrote

Next time you are in the Ft. Eustis VA area go look at the saucer shaped
aircraft (Avro?) they have. It could carry 2 men, hover all of 2 or 3 feet
off
the ground and manoeuver rather nicely. Other than low hover it could not
fly
and wobbled a lot. Unlike the Nazi ideas this saucer WAS built and proved
how
complicated things really were. The downward ducted fan concept has been
tried
several times and not one vehicle had the performance to justify
proceeding to
an operational prototype.


I've seen that beast. Looks evil to ride.

Pete


I have seen films of it in operation. It wobbles.

Last time I was in the museum at Ft. Useless, early 1980s, they had a few
really loony devices. The strangest has to be the one man helicopter where the
guy had to stand on a platform ABOVE the rotors.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired


Dan,

you say that this AVROCAR VZ-9-AV proved that the 'flying saucer
couldn't work' despite that fact that it did fly albeit only in ground
effect and with a degree of wobble.

The results of the tests were as follows:

http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~billzuk/F...aucer%202.html
"The results of the testing revealed a stability problem and degraded
performance due to turbo-rotor tolerances. Before modifications could
be achieved, funding ran out with the final flight test program
completed in March 1961. With the problems that the contractor was
facing in the wake of the cancellation of its premier fighter program,
the Avro Arrow by the Canadian government, Avro was unable to continue
the project. "

OK so the engineering problem of turbo tollerances is corrected ( a
cinch for todays wide bodied cowling manufacturers I expect ) and the
stability problems are solved by a gyroscoep based "Fly By Wire"
stability augmentation system.
( an FBW system like this is an of the shelf cinch today )

Why wouldn't it work now?


From what I can see this system should work. An efficient VTOL device
needs large volumes of slow moving air. A helicopter achieves this
with a rotor. A "saucer" like this can do so by sucking in air at the
top and distributing it to a lip at the edge of the saucer where the
high velocity air is converted to low velocity by inducing an airflow.

When in forward fligh the vehicle will have a low drag coefficent, a
very high lift coefficient. It will be extremely unstable with
stability provided by vectoring under FBW control and perhaps the
gyroscopic effect of the central fan. This might make the device very
manoeverable due to low wing loading.

From: (

(B2431) wrote in message

From: "Pete"

"B2431" wrote

Next time you are in the Ft. Eustis VA area go look at the saucer shaped
aircraft (Avro?) they have. It could carry 2 men, hover all of 2 or 3
feet
off the ground and manoeuver rather nicely. Other than low hover it could
not
fly and wobbled a lot. Unlike the Nazi ideas this saucer WAS built and
proved
how complicated things really were. The downward ducted fan concept has
been tried several times and not one vehicle had the performance to justify
proceeding to an operational prototype.


The results of the tests were as follows:

http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~billzuk/F...aucer%202.html
"The results of the testing revealed a stability problem and degraded
performance due to turbo-rotor tolerances. Before modifications could
be achieved, funding ran out with the final flight test program
completed in March 1961. With the problems that the contractor was
facing in the wake of the cancellation of its premier fighter program,
the Avro Arrow by the Canadian government, Avro was unable to continue
the project. "

OK so the engineering problem of turbo tollerances is corrected ( a
cinch for todays wide bodied cowling manufacturers I expect ) and the
stability problems are solved by a gyroscoep based "Fly By Wire"
stability augmentation system.
( an FBW system like this is an of the shelf cinch today )

Why wouldn't it work now?


From what I can see this system should work. An efficient VTOL device
needs large volumes of slow moving air. A helicopter achieves this
with a rotor. A "saucer" like this can do so by sucking in air at the
top and distributing it to a lip at the edge of the saucer where the
high velocity air is converted to low velocity by inducing an airflow.

However that is not how the Avro machine worked. See:

http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/avro-graph02.html

If you poke around the web you will find all kinds duct being used to hover.
You will even find a few that can transition from vertical to horizontal
flight. The closest to being practical I can recall was in the 1960s Boeing
produced on with four ducts mounted on winglets.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

"B2431" wrote in message
...
From: (


SNIP

proved
how complicated things really were. The downward ducted fan
concept has
been tried several times and not one vehicle had the performance to
justify
proceeding to an operational prototype.


The results of the tests were as follows:

http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~billzuk/F...aucer%202.html
"The results of the testing revealed a stability problem and
degraded
performance due to turbo-rotor tolerances. Before modifications
could
be achieved, funding ran out with the final flight test program
completed in March 1961. With the problems that the contractor was
facing in the wake of the cancellation of its premier fighter
program,
the Avro Arrow by the Canadian government, Avro was unable to
continue
the project. "

OK so the engineering problem of turbo tollerances is corrected ( a
cinch for todays wide bodied cowling manufacturers I expect ) and
the
stability problems are solved by a gyroscoep based "Fly By Wire"
stability augmentation system.
( an FBW system like this is an of the shelf cinch today )

Why wouldn't it work now?


From what I can see this system should work. An efficient VTOL
device
needs large volumes of slow moving air. A helicopter achieves this
with a rotor. A "saucer" like this can do so by sucking in air at
the
top and distributing it to a lip at the edge of the saucer where
the
high velocity air is converted to low velocity by inducing an
airflow.

However that is not how the Avro machine worked. See:

http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/avro-graph02.html

If you poke around the web you will find all kinds duct being used
to hover.
You will even find a few that can transition from vertical to
horizontal
flight. The closest to being practical I can recall was in the 1960s
Boeing
produced on with four ducts mounted on winglets.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

There are a number of ducted fan concepts. The Piasaki flying Jeeps
worked and had advantages but were fuel hogs that had trouble landing
on uneven ground and there were concerns that they were dangerous in
gusty conditions.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avplatfm.html#m4

It seems to me that the Israeli guy (built the prototype in his
apartment and had to knok down the wall to get it out) has adressed
most of the shortcommings of these Piasaki aerial platforms.
http://www.urbanaero.com/Urban_Main.htm

Many VTOL and ducted fan concepts are documented on
http://www.vstol.org/ The 'wheel of misfortune' is interesting and
the Boeing project you refer to is I think the Bell X22A but there
were others such as the Bell model 65 ATV

In reference to the Avro canada saucer:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avplatfm.html#m4

"A wind-tunnel test model and a flying prototype were built. The test
model was sent to the NASA Ames Center in California for wind-tunnel
tests. First tethered flight of the flying prototype was at Malton on
29 September 1959, followed by the first untethered flight on 5
December 1959. Although Frost and his staff recognized that the
Avrocar was inherently unstable and had incorporated an
electromechanical stabilization system, it wasn't up to the job, and
once the Avrocar picked itself up to above chest height and got out of
ground effect, it bobbled around drunkenly.

An improved stabilization system was considered, but Avro was in chaos
due to the cancellation of the "CF-105 Arrow" interceptor program. The
chaos filtered down to the Avrocar program, and the US backers of the
program lost interest. The program was axed in December 1961. Whether
it would have ever flown right remains an open question. "

The "Electromechanical" stabalisation sytem was surely no more than a
single gyroscope and some microswitches mounted on the gimballs to
opperate shutters in the air-stream. A 3 axis multi-input
multi-output non linear or state space controller was probably needed
to achieve rock steady stabillity and that needs to be put together by
specialist control theorotecians.