Current Efforts
The three craft presented above represent NASA's efforts to employ the deflected slipstream approach to vertical and short take off take offs and landings (V/STOL). Since only the Ryan VZ-3RY left the ground and its did not perform well in purely vertical operations, no true VTOL craft based on the deflected slipstream was developed during the period of NACA and NASA research in the 1950s and 1960s.
One researcher, operating on his own resources has continued to look at this approach to a VTOL airplane, and has spent over five decades of his time in a quest for a deflected slipstream airplane with vertical capabilities. In those years, he has proposed a radically different wing shape – which he calls the arc wing – and has performed his own tests, augmented by university wind tunnel tests, to determine the viability of his approach.
This researcher, Dr. William Bertelsen, and his son William D. Bertelsen, continue to experiment with the deflected slipstream method of vertical flight, and have built small models, kites, parasails and ultra lights as part of their research. To date, they have not built a full scale model of the design, which is shown here.
Read more about this topic: Deflected Slipstream
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