The Fairey Rotodyne was a 1950s British compound gyroplane designed and built by Fairey Aviation and intended for commercial and military applications. The Rotodyne featured a tip-jet-powered rotor that burned a mixture of fuel and compressed air bled from two wing-mounted Napier Eland turboprops.
The rotor was driven for vertical takeoffs, landings and hovering, and low-speed translational flight, and autorotated during cruise flight with all engine power applied to two propellers. Although promising in concept and entirely successful in trials, the Rotodyne program was eventually cancelled when a combination of politics and the lack of commercial orders doomed the project.
3 comment(s):
I remember building an Airfix model kit of a Fairey Rotodyne, back in the early sixties.
It was an inventive time, I built the Airfix model of the SRN1, the first fully working hovercraft too.
Fairey did other things too, my old landrover has a Fairey overdrive unit, and I used to have a Fairey capstan-winch for it too.
The only video I could find of the SR-N1:-
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4421498309673798554&ei=rhXmSqy7K9qv-AbR67n_Dg&q=hovercraft+srn-1&hl=en-GB#
Thanks soubriquet for the additional info.
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