History
The swashplate was originally proposed by Russian Boris Yuryev in 1911. Though he did not use it on his first helicopter of 1912
Pescara helicopters (1919–1930) are coaxial rotors helicopters, each rotor being controlled by a swashplate (oscillating bearing) driven by the first control stick for helicopter (UK 178,452 Improvement in or relating to Joy Sticks for helicopters. Convention date in Spain : April 12, 1921)
French engineer and helicopter precursor Etienne Oehmichen filed an application to patent a swashplate device on June 18, 1926 in France and later in the U.S. (August 12, 1929).
Today, on most modern aircraft the swashplate is above the transmission and the pushrods are visible outside the fuselage, but a few early designs, notably light helicopters built by Enstrom Helicopter, placed it underneath the transmission and enclosed the rotating pushrods inside the mainshaft. This reduces rotor hub drag since there are no exposed linkages.
Other swashplate and control design have been used. For instance, Kaman Aircraft helicopters do not use a traditional swashplate and instead operate servo flaps on the rotor blades to adjust the angle of attack of the blades.
Read more about this topic: Swashplate (helicopter)
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