Found this Bird!

[Jeff_Churill]

Just stumbled across this Bird! Wish I had time to mess with some VTOL aircraft, but to many other hobbies :o Anyway thought some of you might like this shot!!

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/PA/Vanguard_Convertaplane_59.jpg

[avianaut]

Jeff,

Very cool, thanks for posting. I've never seen this one before, but there are many similar concepts from years ago. Looks to me like a large scale, free flight test model. What is it? Where did you find the picture? Do you know if it flew?

Cheers.

[FASTBEN]

that is one cool vtol,i think it may be a good test bed........

[AName]

This was a real full scale 2 place experimental research design VTOL from around 1960. I don't know the name. I believe that it was abandoned because the flight controls (no computers) were too complex for a human with only two hands and two feet. Their shop was around Valley Forge, Pa near Philadelphia. The fan tops were designed to be covered with a plate so that vertical lift air would come in along the edges on the top and be ejected down through a venetian blind arrangement on the bottom. It then would close the top plate and close the venetian blind slats on the bottom and fly as an airplane with a rather fat wing propelled forward by tail propellor run by shaft off the main reciprocating engine.

I saw it when I was ten years old.

-aname

[AName]

Fuzzy memory...maybe it was just one place. I think they might have needed two people to fly it.

-aname.

[Pinga_Dog]

Looks like the Vanguard Omniplane. Designed and built by two former Piasecki engineers, it was tested from 1959 until damaged in 1962. It did hover tests, but I don't know if it ever flew in conventional mode.

Hope that helps.
Stan

[FROSAS]

this bird IS the Vanguard Omniplane 1959

http://www.aiaa.org/tc/vstol/unbuilt/vanguard/index.html

felipe