"Nick drives Stick (not Stig)" (NickR)
08/28/2015 at 15:42 • Filed to: Planelopnik
1
3|
"Nick drives Stick (not Stig)" (NickR)
08/28/2015 at 15:42 • Filed to: Planelopnik | 1
| 3 |
The XTI TriFan 600 is a 3-rotor vertical takeoff and landing aircraft currently in development and headed by a team that includes Jeff Pino, former president of Sikorsky Aircraft, Charlie Johnson, former president of Cessna Aircraft, Dennis Olcott, former chief engineer at Piper and Adam Aircraft, and David Brody, the founder of XTI. It’s a really interesting concept as it combines the range and speed of an aircraft with the convenience of a helicopter.
Read more about it !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter
> Nick drives Stick (not Stig)
08/28/2015 at 16:43 |
|
So this is at the “please give us money to do ten years of development work” stage of planning.
Jayhawk Jake
> dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter
08/28/2015 at 16:55 |
|
Designing and building a certified airplane from scratch with a new company is both very expensive and very difficult. Throw in the extra complexity of VTOL and its that much harder
If they do get the money, 10 years is pretty sporty.
TheOnelectronic
> Nick drives Stick (not Stig)
08/28/2015 at 17:22 |
|
I predict MANY dead rich people if this thing actually takes off (literally and figuratively)
VTOL aircraft are not the easiest things to fly, and if this thing loses power during takeoff, landing, or hover, it’s done for. It can’t auto-rotate like a helicopter, and isn’t going fast enough to glide. I would ASSUME it has multiple engines feeding all fans. A single-engine design would be incredibly risky, and if it has separate engines for each lift fan, losing one would still be unrecoverable. Take all the hazards of the Osprey, remove some complication from the wing-folding mechanism, but also remove some safety net by having even less rotational inertia in the blades (The Osprey can ALMOST auto-rotate if done perfectly, IIRC), and you end up with a marginally safer design being piloted by less-strenuously trained pilots.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a really cool idea, and I’d buy one in a heartbeat if that was even remotely a possibility. I’m just saying that I forsee quite a few high-profile crashes.
Also, 350kts seems a bit low for a private jet’s cruise speed. What’s the point of spending millions of dollars on something that can’t hit at least 500? Is this realistic, or are they sort of padding their own deck with that figure?