"Dave Jackson" wrote in message
news:ZxJXc.229824$J06.58978@pd7tw2no...
Me writes ~ When they brake away from the 60 year Western rotorcraft
mindset
and improve the L/D ratio, by;
- Abolishing the wasteful tail rotor,
- Providing Active Twist Blades, which can optimize the L/D ratio at
all
locations within the disk,
- Providing larger, slower rotors, plus a horizontal thruster.

Dave J


Abolishing the tail rotor? On a single rotor helicopter, that'll be an
interesting exercise. MD does have the Notar but it's still putting a fair
amoung of power into pressurizing that tail boom. There is no free lunch.

There are the multi rotor machines with counterrotating rotor systems
(tandom and coaxial) but if that were such a "big" advantage over the
conventional single main rotor / tail rotor configuration, I'd have thought
there'd be a LOT more of them out there by now.

Active Twist rotor bades? That's an interesting concept. It's not one I've
heard of before. I've love to see the engineering specs on them! :-)

Larger, slower rotors? It's been done. It works Ok but you run into the
problem of needing room to swing the blades.

Horizontal pusher system? It's also been done. Now we're talking a
compound aircraft, or at least the beginnings of one, and an aircraft that's
a LOT more complicated and expensive.

I think that the modern helicopter designs that are flying today, are flying
because they've proven themselves to be amoung the best compromises that can
be made between utility, cost, and function. They offer relatively good
speed, point to point, for short to medium distances (I'm thinking 500
miles), and can take of and land virtually any place there's enough room to
swing the rotors in.

If you need faster, or greater distances, it's time to go fixed wing.

JMO!
Fly Safe,
Steve R.