DARPA/NASA Ames, small entities & Morphing airframes
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Swashplateless rotor systems & In flight reconfiguring (morphing)airframes.
I was wondering what all of you might think of this concept. I've caused a little discussion already, but some assumed that my design is fixed pitch, but it still has collective pitch. I've got a patent in the works and it left the classification contractor. I presented this concept to DARPA. They said the work in my outline had merit, but felt the pay was not high enough for DOD to "Advance the state of the art" as they called it. It surprised me a little because DARPA had just closed a BAA proposal for a Mission Adaptive Rotor system (MAR).
http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/mar/index.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/darpa_morph_copter
But according to some, the "industry" usually pays no attention to the private sector and "small entities" such as myself. I did get a call from Bell Helicopters and they were up front with me. They would've considered looking at my design, but the guy that I spoke with in the XworkX department told me that Bell's legal department told him "hands off" because I'm still active duty army. I'm not in the army aviation. I've always been Infantry, but I have a cognitive interset in rotorcraft and someone once told me that I could not do this, so I had to prove them wrong and do it anyway. I'm working on a small scale proof of concept prototype. www.envisionhelicopters.com is my newly created site, but it's still not finished and it may not pop on google because it's too new. You can leave comments at my site around 1 July when I upgrade.
What leads me to believe that my design will work is that there are already two types of helicopters that have "mast tilting" that are flying now in kit form. One uses a gimbal joint like mine, the GEN H4( http://www.gen-corp.jp/)but it's coaxile and fixed pitch....no human interface & no morphing airframe and most importantly no auto-rotation. The other is the airscooter ( http://www.airscooter.com/) which uses a CV joint and tilts a coaxile rotor system, but it also is fixed pitch and cannot auto. The gimbaled airframe came about in my efforts to design a tilt-mast helicopter that was not fixed pitch. The human interface control came about in my efforts to provide better control and stability when stick input is applied to control the airframe & rotor disc in a tilt mast design, but not just a "T" handle control stick to manipulate the tilting as seen in the GEN H4.
Charles Seibel, also made a prototype helicopter that the cockpit would slide forward, aft and in lateral fashion thereby changing the CG and causing the helicopter to fly in that direction ( www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/seibel_s-4.php). Any of you rotor heads got any suggestions about anything I've mentioned? Thanks.
David
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