Aviation Archive

Thursday, March 15, 2007

CarterGyro Jump Takeoff Videos

CarterGyroJust a small entry for today, and I'm a few months late in getting to it, but I thought people might still find it interesting. I work for Carter Aviation Technologies, an aviation research and development company. One of our recent projects was heavily modifying an ultralight autogyro to retrofit it with some of our technologies, that we call the CarterGyro Demonstrator Trainer. To explain what we've done and how this benefits the aircraft, I'll just go ahead and quote our website.

To enable jump takeoffs, the aircraft has been modified with the Carter propeller & the two-setting Carter prop pitch control mechanism, the Carter designed mechanical pre-rotator, and the Carter rotor with automatic mechanical pitch control. For improved safety on landing, the aircraft now has the Carter smart strut on a Carter designed main gear, and a slightly modified commercially available nose gear with more stroke and a larger tire than the original nose gear.

In the current configuration, the CGD/T will fly straight and level as slow as around 20 mph airspeed, can perform zero-roll landings, and can jump over 150 feet straight into the air.

Anyway, what's so cool that I wanted to link to were the videos on the website. Follow the link above to watch them. They're pretty damn cool, and show just what an autogyro is capable of performance-wise. Keep in mind that this is an autogyro, not a helicopter. The rotor is only directly driven by the engine while on the ground when the tires can take care of the torque, and is disengaged before the aircraft lifts off the ground - you don't need any anti-torque devices like tail rotors that way. The aircraft can jump about 150' straight up just from that energy stored in the rotor.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Slowed Rotor/Compound Technology- Why Isn't There More Research?

Carter Aviation Technologies has successfully demonstrated stable, slowed rotor flight. The CarterCopter "achieved a Mu of 1 at a flight speed of 170 mph and a rotor rpm of 107. The flight was stable and extremely smooth, and the pilots reported there were no vibrational indicators that they were even in a rotary-wing aircraft." (CarterCopter Technology Demonstrator Flight Test Data and Analysis). Data from the flight indicates that the slowed-rotor/compound concept does offer the potential for efficient, high-speed flight, in an aircraft capable of performing vertical flight like a helicopter. Yet there has been little funding into research on this concept, despite the huge promise that it shows.

Continue reading "Slowed Rotor/Compound Technology- Why Isn't There More Research?" »

Monday, December 12, 2005

New Carter Prop

At my job, we've done some thrust testing of a propeller that I had a large hand in designing (pretty much all of the aerodynamics, and probably about 90% of the composite structure). It's a prop designed for the Rotax 582 engine. Our prop produced 16% more static thrust than the best conventional prop that Larry Neal (designer of the Monarch ultralight gyro) could find. So, I thought that was pretty good. If you want to read more about it, you can do so at the weekly update on Carter Aviation Technologies.

Update 2005-12-13 I've decided to include a picture of the prop, so that you can see how it's different from conventional propellers without having to dig through the archives of the Carter site to find a photo.
Carter Prop Designed for Rotax 582 Engine

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