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Daniel-Wales-Images β Avro Rota Mk.I
Published: 2018-02-04 17:03:59 +0000 UTC; Views: 345; Favourites: 36; Downloads: 0
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Imperial War Museum Duxford 2018.Related content
Comments: 13
I've heard these things were used to calibrate Britain's radar system since they were closest thing available to something that could hover in one spot.
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Didn't this end its RAF career in the Meterogical flight? Such a strange looking machine, I thought when I first went to Duxford oh so many years ago
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Interesting to see the Gauntlet endurance notice painted on the hangar wall - 19 and 66 Squadron both served with Gauntlets at the field...
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Soo... is this, like,Β the first "helicopter" ever built?
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This is not a helicopter, it's an autogyro, which is actually a completely different form of flight to a helicopter.
Unlike a helicopter where the power is directly applied to the rotors, an autogyro uses the principle of autorotation, meaning that as air passes over the blades, they turn producing lift. However there is no direct power applied to the blades. Instead it operates like a conventional aeroplane with forward thrust produced by a standard aero engine. Just think of it as working exactly the same as a conventional propeller aeroplane, with the only difference being that instead of a conventional wing, you have rotor blades producing the lift.
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Oh ok...! So... it can't even be labelled as a precursor of helicopters, I guess?
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Not really, because early forms of Helicopter were first flown as far back as 1907, which predates the first Autogyros by around sixteen years, the first of which flew in 1923.
Admittedly early helicopters were not particularly successful in terms of performance, only lifting a man off the ground a foot or two and only for around a minute of flight time. However the basic principle of the helicopter was there and clearly it is this work that led to what we know today as a helicopter.Β
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(This lesson was brought to you by Professor Daniel-Wales-Images)
Thank you for the detailed info, really! π
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Indeed, it was otherwise known outside of the Royal Air Force as theΒ Cierva C.30.
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