The Cyclocrane

If you like weird and obscure tales of even weirder aircraft, then you'll go nuts for the cyclocrane. Ever since I first saw it on Nova as a kid in the late 80s, I've always had a soft spot for this, possibly one of the most whacked-out concepts to ever take to the sky. The mescaline must have been good in Tilamook.

If you haven't heard of it, I'll describe it in basic terms: Cycloidal-lift-augmented semirigid hybrid airship.

www.robcrimmins.com...

For those who are interested, I just stumbled upon this site, with all sorts of construction photos and video footage that I had never seen before. It's definitely worth a browse.

a reply to: Barnalby

I always liked dirigibles and the lift surface solution for negating the need for ballast is novel.

I wasn't surprised though that they had the "Black Friday" event with the prototype, the word ungainly comes to mind.

Still, problems were meant to be solved.

a reply to: greencmp

I remember watching this thing on Nova, and they were following the last desperate attempts to get it flying in the late-80s, just as US forest service and private investor interest in heavy-lift concepts for the lumber industry was waning.

The last and final iteration of the craft had a couple changes that included more powerful engines, a hybrid tail that combined the ring of the second craft with the Y-tail of the first.

But the most interesting change was the replacement of that boxy cab with a newer, heavier one converted from a Huey fuselage. It looked and sounded like something out of an aerial take on Mad Max.

The biggest issue that they seemed to have was with the flight control system, as this thing was almost certainly fly-by-wire. Given the state of that technology in civilian hands in the early 80s, especially on a limited budget,, I'm sure they had a "fun" time trying to program flight control software for this thing's rather, uh, UNUSUAL flight dynamics...

Reminds me of the Heinkel He-L-IIIB-2 Lerche.Only bigger.