Intelligent Design: Unidentified Aircraft Detected

Although I am happy to see hybrid technology taking to the skies, as an aviator, there are some things I must point out: *This design is not a Tilt-Rotor it is actually a Tilt-Wing (I'm serious look it up). I am curious about some fundamentals that are not addressed. Does it have cyclic capable swash plates on the rotors? Because I do not see any hovering yaw ability, I.E. no split on the wing or nacelles that would suggest an ability to differentiate the force vectors of the rotors. The craft would certainly need cyclic control for pitch control, the only roll control I can foresee is with differentiation of thrust, but that creates yaw control demand. Also if this craft is to "glide" in anyway, it must have wheels (thank god it has a parachute. The landing gear I saw theorized is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. It certainly can't auto-rotate with those rotors, and it would glide very poorly without large straight wings or flaps. It will never become a practical aircraft for these additional reasons:
*With it's rotor diameter, it will be even more vulnerable to vortex ring state/settling with power than other Tilt-Wings and Tilt-Rotors (which is bad enough anyway).
*Any hovering aircraft needs more that 5 min of hovering time to be anywhere near practical, I will note that the Harrier has an extremely limited hover time (about 10 min), but then again the Harrier is little more than novel itself, even with it's considerably higher top speed.
*The science of rotary wing flight is extremely complicated and involves constant problem solving during the development of a new design (hence the long time and large price tag that came with the V-22's development)
Even Bell, Agusta Westland, and Boeing (people who are masters of the science of aerospace) have considerable difficulty with it E.G. the BA609 and V-22 Osprey.

Dear All,

This is a set of concept images and based on the final design, which as yet has not been released due to patent fillings. The final version does not have the canard skids but retractable wheels, the wings are being aerodynamically optimized and look different from the ones shown here and the tilt system is also being optamized. Our limiting factor on hover time is that of energy storage and that will increase as technology developes better, lighter and more advanced storage systems than currently avaiable. Lets face facts, over the past three years we have seen a dramatic increase in energy storage so by the time our platform is ready for the market the storage will allow greater hover endurance.

We are working hard on this and have been for many years so please be patient while we finalise our work and test program. Believe me, Popular Science will be the first to see the final platform in its complete format.

Falx Air Team

There are three significant issues with the vehicle shown:

First, even though it is a small vehicle, it will still require a significant amount of installed power to achieve vertical flight with those small diameter rotors.

Second, the rotor blade control system (swashplate?) will likely be quite complex with 5 blades per hub.

Third, the drive system for any size tandem tilt rotor is quite complicated, due to the additional systems required for safety. Since auto-rotation is not possible with those small diameter, highly loaded rotors, two engines are required. And each engine will likely require its own speed reduction gearbox. Plus a series of drive shafts is typically necessary to synchronize the rotors from one side to the other.

Once you add up the cost of putting all of these additional systems in a tilt rotor aircraft, you'll likely find that the cost is not justified by the speed/range benefits versus a conventional helicopter of equivalent payload. That's the problem Bell/Agusta ran into with their BA609.

Maybe ducted fan units might be more useful

No, that's the problem Dr. Moller is running into with his M400 Skycar (at 1000 horse power). Ducted fans actually require so much power to create vertical lift that it becomes quite impractical. Bell actually got a Tilt-Duct design to work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_X-22

As did Doak:
http://www.militaryimages.net/photopost/data/520/Doak_VZ-4.JPG

However they just aren't worth it.
Once again this design is a Tilt-Wing, (maybe the final design is going to be a tilt-rotor or maybe they just like the "buzzword" effect) please refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiltwing
and
http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/tiltrotor.html

Falx Air would be much better off working on regular aircraft design with hybrid power (especially for Helicopters which have ridiculously heavy transmissions/drive trains) rather than trying to make a Tilt-Wing hybrid.

Limited to conventional technology and materials, I could not be very optimistic of the success of such a very complex craft with a relatively low power-to-weight ratio and other problems.

Silk parachute fabric covering one acre would weigh approximately half a ton; to cover the same area with woven carbon nanotube would only weigh four ounces, could be hundreds of times stronger and could withstand temperatures up to 800 degrees F.

Any components made of carbon nanotubes would be so much stronger and lighter that the serious problems mentioned in the previous posts could be easily handled. The Falx aircraft could be light, agile, maneuverable, and trustworthy-- the cost, at least for a while, might be the real problem.

If we do start seeing swarms of small personal aircraft as the Falx design, I'm sure it will be due to carbon nanotubes and other emerging nanotechnology.

Well i like the design, small compact & very foward thinking, mayhap a bit too small (2 seater? )

I think i saw something simular to this in the GITS 2 movie , but we all know that hyper tech goes to the Militay first, Bet is you sold it (the design specs) to the Airforce it would be up and running in a matter of months damn the price of exotic materials..

...HM...
Nothing NEW under the SUN...
Look "Verticopter" is a different thing, the same like our projects AST ("Air-Space Tekhnologies" Bulgaria) who was steal 1991 year from US military!!!