Development
The U.S. Navy-sponsored project worth US$26.1 million consists of a Sikorsky YSH-60F helicopter modified by Piasecki as a testbed to validate the "Vectored Thrust Ducted Propeller" (VTDP) system. One YSH-60F was converted to test the feasibility of VTDP under an advanced technology demonstration program. The YSH-60F is powered by two General Electric T700-GE-701C engines.
The demonstration contract was awarded on by the Naval Air Systems Command to Piasecki Aircraft. Piasecki installed a lifting wing with flaperons and a vectored-thrust ducted propeller (VTDP) to a U.S. Navy Sikorsky YSH-60F.
The compound helicopter technology added to the YSH-60F was first demonstrated in trials of the Piasecki 16H-1 and 16H-1A in the early 1960s, when the helicopters were flown at speeds up to 225 mph (360 km/h). The success of the Pathfinder inspired others to experiment with compounding, resulting in programs such as the AH-56 Cheyenne.
In May 2003, the YSH-60F/VTDP demonstrator was redesignated the X-49A'. During 2004, the X-49A VTDP program was transitioned from the US Navy to the US Army.
Read more about this topic: Piasecki X-49
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“If you complain of people being shot down in the streets, of the absence of communication or social responsibility, of the rise of everyday violence which people have become accustomed to, and the dehumanization of feelings, then the ultimate development on an organized social level is the concentration camp.... The concentration camp is the final expression of human separateness and its ultimate consequence. It is organized abandonment.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“They [women] can use their abilities to support each other, even as they develop more effective and appropriate ways of dealing with power.... Women do not need to diminish other women ... [they] need the power to advance their own development, but they do not “need” the power to limit the development of others.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)