THE HELICOGYRE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 102, 4 May 1929, Page 21

THE HELICOGYRE

KEW TYPE AEROPLANE

TO HOVER IN MID-AIR

Flying feats which have never before been possible will, it is hoped, bo achieved by a remarkable machine which is nearly ready for its air tests, writes Harry Harper, in the "Daily Hail." Tho machine, which ia known ns a helieogyre, is being built to the order of the Air Ministry. It may solve flying's great problem, for it is constructed to ascend and descend vertically like a life; hover motionless in mid-air; and rise from and land on a space no bigger than the roof of a building. it may -well be that it will pave the way for the production of a small machino which anybody will be able to wheel from a shed in his garden, and in -which he Trill float straight up into the air, descending without difficulty on the lawn after a flight. Fortunes have been spent upon the quest for a practical' hovering air machine. Human lives have been sacrificed in unsuccessful experiments. It has been hitherto a ivill o' the wisp of

aerial science. Tlio evolution of the craft now to bo subjected to British official trials is a romance of modem aviation. Its inventor, Signor Vittoro Isacco, 5s an Italian engineer who in 1917 collaborated with M. Pescara, a worldfamed authority on vertical 'flight, in the construction of as many as five helicopters. Three of those were built to the order of tho French Government. Several of.the craft raised their pilots' into tho air and flew, but two difficulties were encountered. One was in tho equilibrium, of the machines. The other was in the transmission of power from an cngino to rotating wings. Signor Isacco.later carried out a long series of individual researches. In 1926 he designed the first.of his "helieogyres."- Further experiments followed, and last year the British Air Ministry acquired from him the plans of his latest machine. Another phase of technical research took plate, after which the construction of a, man-carrying machine was bogun, to the order of the Air Ministry, in the work of Messrs. S. E. Saunders, Ltd., East Cowes, Isle of Wight. It is this man-carrying apparatus, heralding perhaps a new era in flying, •which is now having finishing touches put to it. Tho helicogyrc has a body resembling that of an ordinary aeroplane, with control surfaces at the back. In tho bow is a motor driving a normal-type air-screw, which provides horizontal motion. Mounted above the body on a hollow metal column arc four narrow rotating ■wings. In tho front edge of two of these vanes is a small twin-cylinder aoro-bngine driving a miniature airscrew projecting immediately in front of it.' When these two motors are started they cause tho entiro wing system, of four, vanes to revolve rapidly, the engines rotating with tho wings. A powerful upward lifting force is thus obtained without the weight and complications entailed by driving vanes through gearing from a motor fixed in the body below. The helicogyro is intended to go straight up off the ground from where it stands without any forward run. As soon as its power-driven wings have lifted it well clear of tho earth tho pilot, bringing into play the air-screw in the bow, which is driven by a separate engine, can move forward horizontally. "Whenever ho wishes he can check his forward speed and, still being sup-

ported by tho engine-driven vanes above his head—which function irrespective of horizontal movement—can achievo that long-desired ambition of coming to a. halt high iiloft, and of hovering motionless in mid-air. In alighting, if he wishes to descend vertically, the pilot will bo able to come straight down as though ho were in a lift, moderating ' his downward movement and remaining motionless upon tho exact spot where ho touches 1 ground.