Lester's thread of the odd, one-off, and bizarre in aviation.

[LesterBoffo]

I happen to like really weird aircraft, if you haven't noticed, Strange planes are my passion, so I thought I'd post up some errata of oddments from the past to present.

The first one is the Sud Oest Djinn. And odd little helicopter, and the first successful turbine engined production helicopter. It actually set some altitude records for helicopters, and had the US Army intrigued enough to order a few to test in the mid 1950's.



The Djinn was unusual in that it was entirely powered by the force of compressed air, high pressure air tapped from a little AS Palouste centrifugal jet turbine engine. Drawn in the compressor section so to keep the air used fairly cool. The air was ducted through to both blades to nozzles at the main rotor blade tips were it exited and drove the blades around through jet reaction. This also meant there was no tail rotor, instead a regular 'rudder' was down stream of the jet exhaust, and deflected the exhaust flow side to side for control while hovering. It was a very simple and clever design.

[SkyBoat]

Lester,

Keep the odd, on-off, bizarre aviation stuff a'comin'. It's great and my thanks to you for posting it. You are our very own walking museum for the aviationally obscure! (Is that a word?)

[LesterBoffo]

And in keeping with our night's theme of blade tip reaction helicopters, here's a modern home-built that runs off high test Hydrogen Peroxide. A rocket tipped jet rotor helicopter.



And a neat old Dutch Ramjet tipped rotor experimental..

[MIG29pilot]

Parasite Fighter Concept.

Then of course, there's Maxim Gorky:

The Ekranoplan, known as the Caspian sea monster

The Moonbat

Northrop flying ram

And of Course the North American Siamese Twins:

[legoboyvdlp]

That last one is like a broomstick on the back of a bomber... to make it look like two P-51's and discourage attackers! Am I right?

[MIG29pilot]

Not quite; it was designed to increase range and reduce pilot fatigue on bomber escort missions. Didn't quote make it into WWII, but was an excellent ground attack aircraft in the Korean War.

[LesterBoffo]

Not to forget how much more advanced the Germans were with the helicopters prior to WWII..

[LesterBoffo]

Since tail-less aircraft, or flying wing types, play largely in experimental and strange designs, the Dunne series of tailless biplanes were an early breakthrough in self stability experiments.

The stability came largely from the extreme washout of the wing's Angle of Attack and the backsweeping which made the outer part of the wing a transitional stabilizer with elevator and with control mixing, doubled for roll control, pretty much the first use of this concept in a flyable tailless aircraft.

[legoboyvdlp]

If you don't mind, I won't trust my like to that thing o_O

[LesterBoffo]

Life or Like?

I'd say it's a sound design for it's time, pretty advanced for 1911~13, and it was far more stable than say the Sopwith Camel. Lots of wing area and Dunne demonstrated it's stability by flying it hands off while marking notes in his maps.