Monocopter
Encyclopedia
A monocopter or gyropter is a rotorcraft
that uses a single rotating blade. The concept is similar to the whirling helicopter seeds
that fall from some trees. The name gyropter is sometimes applied to monocopters in which the entire aircraft rotates about its center of mass as it flies. The name "monocopter" has also been applied to the personal jet pack
constructed by Andreas Petzoldt.
. Papin and Rouilly obtained French patents 440,593 and 440,594 for their invention, and later obtained US patent 1,133,660 in 1915. The Gyroptère was characterized in the contemporary French journal La Nature
in 1914 as "un boomerang géant" (a giant boomerang).
Papin and Rouilly's "Gyroptère" weighed 500 kg (1,102.3 lb) including the float on which it was mounted. It had a single hollow blade with an area of 12 square metres (129.2 sq ft), counterweighted by a fan driven by an 80 hp Le Rhone
rotary engine
spinning at 1,200 rpm which produced an output of just over 7 cubic metres (247.2 cu ft) of air per second. The fan also propelled air through the hollow blade, from which it escaped through an L-shaped tube at a speed of 100 m/s. Directional control was to be achieved by means of a small auxiliary tube through which some of the air was driven, and which could be directed in whatever direction the pilot wished. The pilot's position was located at the centre of gravity between the blade and the fan.
Testing was delayed due to the outbreak of World War I and did not take place until 31 March 1915 on Lake Cercey on the Côte-d'Or
. Due to the difficulty of balancing the craft a rotor speed of only 47 rpm was achieved instead of the 60 rpm which had been calculated as necessary for takeoff. In addition, the rotary engine used was not powerful enough; it had originally been planned to use a 100 hp car engine which proved unobtainable. Unfortunately, the aircraft became unstable and the pilot had to abandon it, after which it sank.
was an ultralight helicopter
designed for reconnaissance and command-control purposes and constructed by Bölkow Entwicklungen KG
in 1961 as part of a research order by the German Federal Ministry of Defense. It had a 6.66 m (21.9 ft) diameter monoblade rotor constructed of GRP
in a single piece that incorporated its counterweight. A single prototype was built and work was stopped in 1962 due to lack of interest on the part of the West German armed forces.
s (UAVs) to the designer. As highly centripetal machines, they cannot be manned.
The first of these monocopters were constructed by Dr. Charles W. McCutchen and powered by reciprocating model airplane engines in 1952. He flew them at Lake Placid
, and named them "Charybdis
machines". Other early experimenters were William Foshag and Joe Carter.
These types of monocopters caught on in the model airplane world, particularly in Eastern Europe
, where free flight record-setting models were constructed by George Horvath of Hungary, Sergei Vorabyev and V. Naidovsky of Russia, and Steffan Purice of Romania
. An exception to the lack of US enthusiasm was Francis Boreham's "Buzzcopter" of 1964, and Ken Willard's "Rotoriser" of 1984. In 2002, Ron Jesme made the first successful electric propeller monocopter. Daedalus Research of Logan Utah also manufactured a monocopter kit, "Maple Seed," using a 0.049 model-airplane engine.
Gordon Mandell of the M.I.T. Model Rocket Society designed a model-rocket engine powered monocopter, which he named "turbocopter," and published the design concept in his column "Wayward Wind" in Model Rocketry Magazine
in 1969. A later version of this was researched at MIT in 1980. This design prompted Korey Kline, an early member of the Tripoli Rocketry Association, to design his own rocket-powered monocopters which fly on long-burn model rocket engines. They were demonstrated at various rocket launch events in the 1980s to crowds that raved at their performance . A few were manufactured as kits by Ace Rocketry at that time.
Korey Kline published very little about monocopters, rocket or otherwise, and so by the 1990s the monocopter had faded from view. Edward Miller of Pennsylvania began experimenting with them again in the late 1990s, as well as Francis Graham, a Kent State University
, Ohio, physics professor. By 1999 both were flying rocket monocopters. Francis Graham wrote a book, Monocopters , with some theory of their flight characteristics, in 1999, sold by Apogee Components of Colorado Springs. Ed Miller went on to build the largest high power rocket monocopters ever flown , with 8 foot large fiberglass-covered wooden wings, and also sells them. Chuck Rudy flew a large monocopter with a hybrid rocket engine, using solid and liquid fuel .
Francis Graham continued to promote monocopters, and organized a small conference held in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 2001. He also presented a paper on the subject at the 2003 Century-of-Flight conference sponsored by the AIAA in Dayton .
Joseph Peklicz of Martin's Ferry scaled down the monocopter into a kit form using small model rocket engines , and sold many to individuals and schools. His kits are still available and are widely sold and are a good introduction to monocopters. In 2008, Art Applewhite of Kerrville, Texas began selling a popular line of rocket-powered monocopter kits as well.
Monocopters that rotate entirely had no practical purpose prior to 2003, but, in part due to Graham's book, that would change. Patent 7,104,862 was awarded in 2006 to Michael A. Dammar of Vera-Tech Aero RPV Corp. of Edina, Minnesota for a monocopter military reconnaissance device that was remotely controlled and took short exposures. Another remote-controlled monocopter, which could fly indoors on an electric motor, and which uses the Earth's magnetic field as a reference, was developed by Woody Hoburg and James Houghton at MIT in 2007–2008.
Rotorcraft
A rotorcraft or rotary wing aircraft is a heavier-than-air flying machine that uses lift generated by wings, called rotor blades, that revolve around a mast. Several rotor blades mounted to a single mast are referred to as a rotor. The International Civil Aviation Organization defines a rotorcraft...
that uses a single rotating blade. The concept is similar to the whirling helicopter seeds
Samara (fruit)
A samara is a type of fruit in which a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue develops from the ovary wall. A samara is a simple dry fruit and indehiscent . It is a winged achene...
that fall from some trees. The name gyropter is sometimes applied to monocopters in which the entire aircraft rotates about its center of mass as it flies. The name "monocopter" has also been applied to the personal jet pack
Jet pack
Jet pack, rocket belt, rocket pack, and similar names are various types of devices, usually worn on the back, that are propelled by jets of escaping gases so as to allow a single user to fly....
constructed by Andreas Petzoldt.
Papin-Rouilly Gyroptère
The Gyroptère was designed in 1913–1914 by Alphonse Papin and Didier Rouilly in France, inspired by a maple seedSamara (fruit)
A samara is a type of fruit in which a flattened wing of fibrous, papery tissue develops from the ovary wall. A samara is a simple dry fruit and indehiscent . It is a winged achene...
. Papin and Rouilly obtained French patents 440,593 and 440,594 for their invention, and later obtained US patent 1,133,660 in 1915. The Gyroptère was characterized in the contemporary French journal La Nature
La Nature
La Nature was a French language magazine aimed at the popularization of science founded in 1873 by French scientist and adventurer Gaston Tissandier...
in 1914 as "un boomerang géant" (a giant boomerang).
Papin and Rouilly's "Gyroptère" weighed 500 kg (1,102.3 lb) including the float on which it was mounted. It had a single hollow blade with an area of 12 square metres (129.2 sq ft), counterweighted by a fan driven by an 80 hp Le Rhone
Le Rhône
Le Rhône was the name given to a series of popular rotary aircraft engines produced in France by Société des Moteurs Le Rhône and the successor company of Gnome et Rhône. They powered a number of military aircraft types of the First World War...
rotary engine
Rotary engine
The rotary engine was an early type of internal-combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration, in which the crankshaft remained stationary and the entire cylinder block rotated around it...
spinning at 1,200 rpm which produced an output of just over 7 cubic metres (247.2 cu ft) of air per second. The fan also propelled air through the hollow blade, from which it escaped through an L-shaped tube at a speed of 100 m/s. Directional control was to be achieved by means of a small auxiliary tube through which some of the air was driven, and which could be directed in whatever direction the pilot wished. The pilot's position was located at the centre of gravity between the blade and the fan.
Testing was delayed due to the outbreak of World War I and did not take place until 31 March 1915 on Lake Cercey on the Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or
Côte-d'Or is a department in the eastern part of France.- History :Côte-d'Or is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was formed from part of the former province of Burgundy.- Geography :...
. Due to the difficulty of balancing the craft a rotor speed of only 47 rpm was achieved instead of the 60 rpm which had been calculated as necessary for takeoff. In addition, the rotary engine used was not powerful enough; it had originally been planned to use a 100 hp car engine which proved unobtainable. Unfortunately, the aircraft became unstable and the pilot had to abandon it, after which it sank.
Bölkow Bo 103
The Bölkow Bo 103Bölkow Bo 103
|-See also:-References:* -External Links:* at Aviastar* at Bückeburg helicopter museum....
was an ultralight helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
designed for reconnaissance and command-control purposes and constructed by Bölkow Entwicklungen KG
Bölkow
Bölkow was a German aircraft manufacturer based in Stuttgart, Germany, and later Ottobrunn.-History:The company was founded in 1948 by Ludwig Bölkow, who since 1955 with Emil Weiland had developed helicopters for Bölkow Entwicklungen KG....
in 1961 as part of a research order by the German Federal Ministry of Defense. It had a 6.66 m (21.9 ft) diameter monoblade rotor constructed of GRP
Glass-reinforced plastic
Fiberglass , is a fiber reinforced polymer made of a plastic matrix reinforced by fine fibers of glass. It is also known as GFK ....
in a single piece that incorporated its counterweight. A single prototype was built and work was stopped in 1962 due to lack of interest on the part of the West German armed forces.
VJ-1X
The VJ-1X was an ultralight single blade helicopter powered by a rotor-mounted pulsejet . Windspire, Inc. include the plans for sale in their book "How to Build a Jet Helicopter".UAVs
Monocopters in which the entire aircraft rotates about its center of mass as it flies present advantages and challenges as unmanned aerial vehicleUnmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle , also known as a unmanned aircraft system , remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned aircraft, is a machine which functions either by the remote control of a navigator or pilot or autonomously, that is, as a self-directing entity...
s (UAVs) to the designer. As highly centripetal machines, they cannot be manned.
The first of these monocopters were constructed by Dr. Charles W. McCutchen and powered by reciprocating model airplane engines in 1952. He flew them at Lake Placid
Lake Placid, New York
Lake Placid is a village in the Adirondack Mountains in Essex County, New York, United States. As of the 2000 census, the village had a population of 2,638....
, and named them "Charybdis
Charybdis
Charybdis or Kharybdis was a sea monster, later rationalised as a whirlpool and considered a shipping hazard in the Strait of Messina.-The mythological background:...
machines". Other early experimenters were William Foshag and Joe Carter.
These types of monocopters caught on in the model airplane world, particularly in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
, where free flight record-setting models were constructed by George Horvath of Hungary, Sergei Vorabyev and V. Naidovsky of Russia, and Steffan Purice of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. An exception to the lack of US enthusiasm was Francis Boreham's "Buzzcopter" of 1964, and Ken Willard's "Rotoriser" of 1984. In 2002, Ron Jesme made the first successful electric propeller monocopter. Daedalus Research of Logan Utah also manufactured a monocopter kit, "Maple Seed," using a 0.049 model-airplane engine.
Gordon Mandell of the M.I.T. Model Rocket Society designed a model-rocket engine powered monocopter, which he named "turbocopter," and published the design concept in his column "Wayward Wind" in Model Rocketry Magazine
Model Rocketry (magazine)
Model Rocketry was an American hobbyist magazine published from October 1968 to February 1972. The Editor and Publisher was George Flynn and the Managing Editor was Gordon Mandell. The magazine was owned by the editorial staff and the paid circulation reached 15,000 by 1970.The launch of Sputnik in...
in 1969. A later version of this was researched at MIT in 1980. This design prompted Korey Kline, an early member of the Tripoli Rocketry Association, to design his own rocket-powered monocopters which fly on long-burn model rocket engines. They were demonstrated at various rocket launch events in the 1980s to crowds that raved at their performance . A few were manufactured as kits by Ace Rocketry at that time.
Korey Kline published very little about monocopters, rocket or otherwise, and so by the 1990s the monocopter had faded from view. Edward Miller of Pennsylvania began experimenting with them again in the late 1990s, as well as Francis Graham, a Kent State University
Kent State University
Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...
, Ohio, physics professor. By 1999 both were flying rocket monocopters. Francis Graham wrote a book, Monocopters , with some theory of their flight characteristics, in 1999, sold by Apogee Components of Colorado Springs. Ed Miller went on to build the largest high power rocket monocopters ever flown , with 8 foot large fiberglass-covered wooden wings, and also sells them. Chuck Rudy flew a large monocopter with a hybrid rocket engine, using solid and liquid fuel .
Francis Graham continued to promote monocopters, and organized a small conference held in Washington, Pennsylvania, in 2001. He also presented a paper on the subject at the 2003 Century-of-Flight conference sponsored by the AIAA in Dayton .
Joseph Peklicz of Martin's Ferry scaled down the monocopter into a kit form using small model rocket engines , and sold many to individuals and schools. His kits are still available and are widely sold and are a good introduction to monocopters. In 2008, Art Applewhite of Kerrville, Texas began selling a popular line of rocket-powered monocopter kits as well.
Monocopters that rotate entirely had no practical purpose prior to 2003, but, in part due to Graham's book, that would change. Patent 7,104,862 was awarded in 2006 to Michael A. Dammar of Vera-Tech Aero RPV Corp. of Edina, Minnesota for a monocopter military reconnaissance device that was remotely controlled and took short exposures. Another remote-controlled monocopter, which could fly indoors on an electric motor, and which uses the Earth's magnetic field as a reference, was developed by Woody Hoburg and James Houghton at MIT in 2007–2008.