Vertipedia is a product of the Vertical Flight Society. With data on 867 aircraft, 620 historical milestones, 594 people, and 395 organizations, Vertipedia is your "one-stop shop" for all things vertical lift.
1948 - Fairey Gyrodyne/FB-1 establishes a world speed record for rotorcraft
Our latest featured aircraft for June is the Cierva W.11 Air Horse .
The aircraft was designed to provide viable heavy load lifting capability for commercial operations. It employed 3 main rotors all rotating in the same direction. Torque offset was provided by thrust components from the 3 rotors through built-in shaft tilt. The aircraft had a semi-monoquoque structure, a single engine, and a long-stroke undercarriage (5ft) to cope with high rates of descent. A description of the aircraft and its characteristics can be found in the following references,
Source: "The Cierva W-11 Air Horse", J. Gordon Leishman, VERTIFLITE Spring 2003, Page 52
Source: "Discussing the Helicopter", FLIGHT Staff, FLIGHT, December 2nd 1948, Pages 665-668
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Vertipedia versus Wikipedia
Vertipedia and Wikipedia are different tools - both have useful roles. Vertipedia is built upon relational database principles, which allows data relationships to be developed automatically and reduces the need for a large number of contributors. Vertipedia provides access to all VFS resources (documents, etc.) that are not readily available elsewhere. Vertipedia integrates all the major elements of VTOL aircraft reference data (e.g. milestones, biographies, aircraft) together, which cannot easily be done using other tools like Wikipedia.
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