Popular Mechanics Award on CarterAviationTechnologies.com

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Popular Mechanic's Design and Engineering 2000 Award

Presentation by PM's Editor-in-chief, 14 December 2000

A press conference and award presentation was held on Thursday, 14 December 2000 in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The Popular Mechanics' Design and Engineering 2000 award was presented to CarterCopters, L.L.C. of Wichita Falls for the design of the CarterCopter Heliplane Transport (CCH-T). PM's Editor-in-chief, Joe Oldham, presented the award. PM is published in four languages and sold in 11 countries. Jay Carter, Jr., president and principal engineer / inventor, accepted the award for CarterCopters (CC).

The PM award was highlighted in the December 2000 issue of PM. The CCH-T is considered by PM and many others to be the first significant new aircraft design of the 21st century. According to PM the CC gyroplane / Heliplane concept could reshape the face of aviation.

Prior to the award presentation, Jay gave a 20-minute slide and video presentation outlining the CC research and development (R&D) program that has been ongoing in Wichita Falls since 1994 -- and introduced several key members of his team.

Jay's presentation was made earlier this year by invitation at the following places:

NASA HQ in Washington, D.C.
NASA-Ames in California
American Helicopter Society (AHS) Vertical Lift Aircraft Conference in San Francisco.
Precision Strike Technology Symposium (PSTS) held at John Hopkins University.
AirVenture 2000 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

These invitations to speak were in recognition of the fact that CC has the first practical design theoretically capable of breaking the rotorcraft Mu-1 barrier. The CC prototype will break the Mu-1 barrier when its rotor tip speed is slower than the forward speed of the aircraft. At this point, the air will be flowing over the trailing edge of the entire retreating rotor blade -- traveling from the back to the front of the airfoil. The difficulty (and until now an insurmountable barrier) is that the rotor must remain stable while this is happening. Lift equilibrium must be maintained between the advancing and retreating rotor blade or the rotorcraft will automatically roll to the side with the least lift. The math model used by many rotorcraft companies to design new helicopters goes only to Mu-0.7 because of this problem. Most rotorcraft flights never exceed Mu-0.5.

CC rotorcraft should be able to fly up to Mu-8, which will enable them to be as flight efficient as most fixed-wing aircraft in speed, range and altitude. This is in addition to doing zero-roll takeoffs and landings. The government and aerospace companies have spent $50 billion trying to achieve this goal and essentially failed. The tiltrotor V-22 Osprey by itself has cost $38 billion and taken almost 20 years -- and will never be able to fly as fast, as high, as far, as safely or carry as much useful load as the CC Heliplane (helicopter + gyroplane) equivalent. Jet powered CC rotorcraft should have airspeeds up to 500 MPH and make coast-to-coast flights on one tank of fuel while cruising above the weather at up to 50,000 feet. The normal every-day flight envelope for future CC rotorcraft could exceed all current aviation world records for rotorcraft and many fixed-wing aircraft.

When CC applied for their first patents, the patent office found no prior patents that addressed this possibility. It was obvious that no one before CC had considered flights above Mu-1 possible. When the company later applied for a NASA sponsored Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant in 1995, NASA carefully studied the patent applications before awarding CC a Phase I grant. NASA has since followed-up with both a Phase II and Phase III grant (very few Phase III grants are given). The three grants total $1,070,000.

Breaking the Mu-barrier could be the historical equivalent to the Bell X-1 breaking the sound barrier. The resulting impact on aviation could be just as dramatic. With high flight efficiencies and the ability to land almost anywhere, CC rotorcraft could eliminate the need for runways except for existing fixed-wing aircraft, very large long-range transports and supersonic jets.

This potentially historical event is being accomplished in (essentially) a back yard garage in Wichita Falls under circumstances similar to those faced by the Wright Brothers in their bicycle shop in Dayton. The CC R&D program is a classic poor boy operation, with most of the work being done by a small group that rarely numbers more than 10. Many "experts" have said the Mu-1 barrier cannot be broken because, if possible, big aerospace companies would have already done so. Yet the empirical data collected from numerous flight-tests continues to closely track predictions made by the CC computer model. Tight finances have slowed progress at times but the work continues. As with any R&D program, there have been major setbacks -- the worse being a crash on 16 December 1999 at Olney. The crash was caused by pilot error and no one was hurt, but rebuilding the CC prototype and incorporating numerous planned improvements took 10 months. More recently, on the day before the PM award presentation, the CC ran slowly off the end of the runway at 20 MPH due to pilot error. Repair of the resulting damage is expected to take 3 months.

Flight-testing prior to the latest accident showed that all major problems appear to have been resolved. Three weeks ago the CC performed its first zero-roll takeoff -- one of the five goals set for it by NASA under the $400,000 SBIR Phase III grant. The pilots were expecting to perform a zero-roll landing, the second NASA goal, on the day of the accident. Flight to 10,000 feet altitude is the third goal. The fourth goal is flying 600 miles without refueling (twice the range of most helicopters). The fifth and final goal will be the assault on the Mu-1 barrier. Each goal is worth $50,000 from NASA.

When the barrier is broken, the CC will have proven once and for all that rotorcraft CAN fly faster than Mu-1 and still maintain a stable rotor system. After the Bell X-1 broke the sound barrier in 1947 -- it would have been impossible to stop development of supersonic aircraft after the fact. The same thing happened once the Wright Brothers demonstrated manned, powered flight in 1903.

Unlike the sound barrier or even powered flight -- CC and their patent attorneys are convinced that CC now holds all the patents on the ONLY practical way to break the Mu-1 barrier.

A $24 million program jointly funded by DARPA and Boeing would also like to be the first to break the Mu-1 barrier. Boeing's Canard Rotor/Wing (C-R/W) uses a very complicated high-technology approach. Their flight-test program should begin soon.

It is interesting to compare this heavily funded military effort to CarterCopters' poor boy R&D program. Unlike the high-tech C-R/W, the CC prototype is similar in complexity and cost to a high performance general aviation aircraft with retractable gear. It is much safer, much less complex and less expensive than a helicopter, a tiltrotor or the C-R/W. Yet the idea is fully scalable to a size even larger than the C-130 Hercules transport. The preliminary design for a CC this large is the CCH-T, the subject of PM's award. The CCH-T would be the largest rotorcraft ever flown, and would have airspeed and useful load capabilities that exceed the C-130 Hercules.

The CC program is gaining widespread attention. A list of publications that have written about the CC program is provided at the bottom the CC web page index. A number of the publications are from other countries.