Anyone remember Airwolf?

the_leander

the_leander

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Well, it seems the French did and they took the concept of having a helicopter that disengages it's main rotors and allows a secondary set of propulsion to move it along (and small wings rather than Airwolf's lifting body concept) and turned it into reality.

Behold, the X3:

 
Airwolf (Bell 222B) was a favorite of mine back in the day. I was disappointed that the X-Wing was cancelled. Now the X3 looks good, but take a look at Sikorski (yes, it's flying in my backyard since I'm about ten miles away) X2.
 
Hmm, seems I can't use the reply box underneath the thread any more and am stuck with this separate window...

Never been a fan of contra rotating blades on helicopters tbh, can't even give a rational explanation for why either, just... Don't like them.

Looking on wikipedia the concept for these sorts of compound helicopters was a British one, but like so many British engineering marvels, never got much beyond the prototyping stage before they were consigned to the waste bin.

Pity.
 
Why does it look like the blades are turning in slow motion?

Also, I'd prefer contra rotors. More lift and you don't have to worry about your tail rotor killing you.
 
Glaucus said:
Why does it look like the blades are turning in slow motion?
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It's an optical illusion iirc, something to do with the speed of the film and rotors coming together.

Glaucus said:
Also, I'd prefer contra rotors. More lift and you don't have to worry about your tail rotor killing you.
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And a greater chance of something going wrong with your main rotor system. Not to mention higher maintenance costs.

Besides, why are you trying to walk into a moving tail rotor? ;)
 
Ya, I thought it might be just film speed, but there were instances of the film where it just didn't make sense. I would expect some motion blur even with very fast film. I'm sure that's what it is, it just seems so bizarre. And a bad tail rotor is almost impossible to recover from, where as problems with your mains is more recoverable. At least, that's my understanding. And no, I don't plan to research this. :D

And this just had to be done:
 
Glaucus said:
And no, I don't plan to research this. :D
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Pfft, that's the trouble with kids today, no sense of adventure! :lol:

Glaucus said:
And this just had to be done:
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Heh, not quite quick enough with your ninjar edits! :D

And now I have to reload the page to see the vid :)

<edits>

Man that takes me back... Saturday afternoons as a kid were not complete without that soundtrack, Knightrider be damned!
 
Glaucus said:
Gee I hope that's the version Canada buys. It looks very expensive and useless.
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Nope, CF-35 is a F-35A series with drag shoot and mid-air refueling probe (see USN/USMC) so it's conventional take off with vertical landing capabilities. Canada went with the cheapest option.
 
Glaucus said:
Ya, I thought it might be just film speed, but there were instances of the film where it just didn't make sense. I would expect some motion blur even with very fast film. I'm sure that's what it is, it just seems so bizarre.
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It's just the strobe effect. Two factors influence the apparent motion, firstly the frame rate of the camera and secondly the exposure time per frame. When the rotation speed of the blades is any rational multiple of the frame rate of the camera, the blades will appear to be in the same location in each frame and thus appear stationary. If the blades are very slightly faster, then they'll appear to rotate slowly, and if they are slightly slower they'll appear to rotate slowly but in the opposite direction.

As far as motion blur is concerned, if the aperture is open for most of the frame, then the movement of the blade through that frame's time window will produce a blurrier image of the blade. In good lighting conditions, however, the aperture will only be open for a fraction of the total duration of the frame and what you get is a pretty crisp image. Combined with the effect above you can get the appearance of slowly moving blades.

It's also one of the reasons why fluorescent lighting is not recommended around machines with fast moving parts since the same illusion can happen.
 
Ya, I understand that process, I just thought it was weird that the blades were in sync while the helicopter was landing, taking off and flying around at various speeds. I would understand that at some specific speed the blades and fps would be in sync, but it seemed like it was always in sync, which seems odd to me. Statistically, you'd think they would be out of sync more often then they would be in sync.

I suppose one explanation would be that who ever edited the footage together really liked the effect of the slow turning blades and biased the montage to include mostly the shots featuring that effect.
 
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