Video: 'Flexible' VTOL Powered By World's Smallest ICE - Wow!
Monday, January 13, 2014 at 08:05AM
I figured I had three choices for what I was gonna post this morning: There was the successful Virgin Galactic flight on Friday, the third conducted using the rocket engine to power the suborbital spacecraft (story and video here)... then there's the Southwest Airlines 737 that mistakenly landed yesterday evening on the 3,738 foot runway at M. Graham Clark Airport, 7 miles away from the 7,140 runway at their intended destination of the Branson Missouri Airport (the only privately owned, privately operated commercial service airport in the US) - see the story here in case somehow haven't seen it 10 times already... and then there's the video posted a couple years ago on youtube of the 'flexible' VTOL aircraft that's powered by the world's smallest production internal combustion engine.
I decided that you've probably seen one of the awesome previous rocket-powered test flights of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, and it was just back in November, just 240 miles from last night's mistaken landing that one of the DreamLifters landed at Col. James Jabara Airport in Wichita Kansas instead of the correct destination 8 miles away at McConnell Air Force Base. It seems that mistaken landings are fast becoming the norm in the heartland... But when have you ever seen a Cox .010 gas engine power a shop rag into vertical flight?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure for most of us, this flexible VTOL with the screamin' 27,000 rpm Cox .010 engine is avgeek story of the day : )
Screenshot of the Cox .010 and the shop rag 'airframe' ready for engine start and flight!
Reader Comments (5)
Been following Dave for a long time, he's a retired Marine. His stuff is always interesting.
This wide range of aviation stuff makes your blog so interesting and fun to check out a couple of times each week, Martt! One never know what you have picked up :-) And it has give me a lot of tips of books, movies etc. Great!
Pogo Tex- I should probably be following Dave too, and I would if I wasn't already going 22 different directions all at once!
Hylander- I'm very encouraged to hear your words, thank you! I try hard to be interesting and UNUSUAL while always sitting on a genuine love for getting off the earth and into the air... LoveToFly : )
very interesting video. I would never have thought a shop towel could fly...I have owned a fair number of .049 engines, but not the little .010. It has always amazed me that these little engines can turn those kinds of rpms without flying apart!!
Thanks for a very interesting video..
So it's basically a nitro powered lawn dart? AWESOME!