pinetreescanada

I've seen on TV that this helicopter was developed by the former Soviet Union and was unknown to the world until the USSR's collapse. It is described as follow:
"2 sets of rotating blades on a single column spinning opposite directions which creates more stability of the helicopter due to the absence of a tail rotor"
Why hasn't any other countries or organization developed this technology?

ajaybhutani

i simple guess .. it will involve a lot of investment in terms of money and time to develop this technology (as u need to start from scratch) and nobody has so much money and time.Furthermore if u ahve so much money i guess its better to try investing in robotic/unmanned attack helicopters/drones/fighters as they will be the stuff for the future.

The Chap

The US did in slightly different concept. Where as the Soviet jobs have centrifugally stiffened blades, the US took the research route of ABC - Advancing Blade Concept in which the blades are inherrently stiff and can thus the two counert rotating rotors be placed very close together which has all sorts of advantages. Instead of pursuing this (as part of the LHX program leading to the abortive Comanche) they went with NOTAR which one sees in service today in civilian models by Bell. Hope this is of use.

__________________
Where's the bloody gin? An army marches on its liver, not its ruddy stomach.

Injecteer

irrelevant!

the robotic stuff has nothin' 2 do with the blades scheme. U can build a robot with a "standard" main-tail rotors as well as with co-axed blades.

I'd say here, that in US and Europe the development of helos followed Sikorski's path with the only deviation in the Chinook heli.

Actually, the co-axed scheme is Kamov's Design Buerau "trademark" , as all helos of this CB are following this scheme. That means, they're the most experienced in this area, so why not build an attack helo?

pinetreescanada

Doesn't anyone want such a steady and manuverable helicopter though? Even if it means money?

Injecteer

does everibody has a ****-load of money to develop such a helo within a short time (apart from russians of course)? I'm pretty sure, that the development program will cost alot more money, then the Comanche project, as the development risks are much higher.

pinetreescanada

lol

Garry

The whole idea of two blades is in contra-rotation which gives you
1) higher efficiency in terms of trust with same diameter, number of blades and rotations per second
2) help you to get rid of tail rotor and all transmission related to that - great economy of weight and fuel!

- the idea of having two rotors close to each other gives no efficiency gain..... and it is VERY dangerous as Chinooks have proved.....

Garry

Turks are interested in getting Ka-50.... this would mean that Turks would get the license to produce those for themselves and with certain royalty payments even for other NATO states...... The tender has re-started in September 2005 and results would be in mid-2006

canoe

I think these things are as likely to be as dangerous as the chinooks. Both aircraft require both rotors to be fully functional to safely operate. Although granted the engines on a chinook are much more complex.

From what I understand from having talked to a pilot a chopper can be safely landed in the event of an engine failure, the rotor blades will keep spinning and slow its rate of decent. I'm not sure how this would work for a duel rotor configuration given you'll not only lose lift but also all directional control. Also damage to just one of the rotors while in powered flightly would probably result in the aircraft going into an uncontolled spin. This would be similar to what happens to regular choppers when their tail rotor is disabled in flight.

All that said I like innovation and I think its a good design overall, the major factor I think that would really give it better chance of selling to a larger pool of countries would be if the Russians designed it to be compatible with NATO/U.S weapons, specificly the hellfires.

Ray

Helicopters, in case of rotor failure, auto rotates.

During training auto rotation is practiced.

I was being flown and there was a sort of "flame out" and they brought the helicopter down by auto rotation. Nothing happened, though I thought we were done for.

I have done extensive helicopter flying (that is as a passenger) and I, for one, don't find it dangerous.

Of course if the rotors fly off, then you fly up ..........................and shake hands with God. So is my belief.

Garry

Kamov helicopters do land with autorotation, though it is less controlable than single blade helicopter on low speed autorotation, however it has singificant advantage in slower decending with engine off than a single blade helo. In general if your engine is off and you had low speed it does not matter - one blade or co-axial your are in big trouble.........

The problem with autorotation for co-axial was solved around 50 years ago and Kamov had its own solution since Ka-25 was out. Ka-52 does not have this problem

you may read some interesting things about comparisons of single blade vs co-axial systems here
http://www.kamov.ru/market/news/petr11.htm
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/at...55_coleman.pdf

I did not understood most of the things there except for one - co-axial has around 30% efficiency gain to a single blade.....

ps. Can Chinooks autorotate?

Sanctified

This bird is the next installment of the flight and air-traffic control simulator LOMAC, check out these screenshots:
http://www.lockon.ru/index.php?end_p...efault&lang=en

Garry

just had a coffee with a guy who was pilotting Ka-50. He was admiring the bird and in his view it is a revolutionary.


However he had to admit one strong problem with it...... if you dive then geting out of diving at maximum speed make you running solid risk of your rotors overlapping => your are dead as not enough time to eject. He said that this requires a specific skills to get out of diving at high speed in secure mode.... hence pilot training must be very high or he better not to dive on the bird.

In all other aspects he told that Ka-50 is capable to take down ANY helicopter at WVR and even BVR if enemy positioning data is supplied from ground or air.... like for example he said if one Ka-50 has run out of R-73M missiles but knows that there is another Ka-50 around 20-30 km away with R-73 it may supply data to another one and they both would hit enemy's CAS or helicopter using one missile. For the second one it would be purelly BVR kill.....

He told that Ka-50 is really made to kill currently used subsonic CAS including A-10. Besides missiles Ka-50 may turn 180 degrees in 3 seconds on full speed and much faster on lower speed..... nobody can come to it from tail. So in dog fight Ka-50 can shoot down anything subsonic.

canoe

Not doubting its a good bird, but against an A-10 I'd still bet on the A-10, it has proven itself one tough SOB and the R-73M only has a 7.4kg HE warhead. Theres a report from Iraq of A-10's getting hit by multiple rpgs, anti-aircraft cannon fire and large amount of small arms fire and still returning to base dispite having an engine shot out and disabled and 1/3rd of one of its wings blown off and countless bullet holes throughout the entire body of the aircraft.

If both aircraft were carrying A2A weapons I'd bet on the A-10 simply because the Ka-50 probably wouldn't be carrying enough armament to actually down it. Against another chopper I'd give the nod to the Ka-50 mind you.

Battle damage pics are at the bottom of the page.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita.../a-10-pics.htm