Tiltrotor Development is Hard: AW609 Prototype Crashes in Italy Killing Both Test Pilots

An AgustaWestland AW609 prototype has crashed near Santhià, in northwestern Italy, killing two test pilots on Oct. 30.

The tilt-rotor aircraft had taken off from Agusta’s airfield at Vergiate and the cause of the crash is still unknown.

According to the first reports the aircraft was in fire before it crashed into the ground.

link at The Aviationist.

Counting down for War is Boring to start beating its chest in 5...4...3...

a reply to: anzha

Damn. This one had been going really well up until now too. They hadn't flown a lot of hours, but they hadn't had any problems show up and the pilots really enjoyed flying it.

Is this the same program that was started by Bell and then partnered with AW? Same prototype or a newer version?

a reply to: Flipper35

Same one, updated somewhat.

This is going to leave a mark. As Zaph said things were moving well with the program until this. Queue the folks calling for the program to be cancelled.

I have seen it fly a few times then. I remember the first time it was white and not as noisy as I thought it would be. That was Oshkosh many years ago. Late 90s or so.

It stinks for the families of the flight crew and the company.

www.verticalmag.com...

this looks dated to me ,nothing more than a plane with tilting rotors ,bit like the mollar sky car

i would of expected engineers to be working on octocopter drone type aircraft of a far larger size to the home hobby ones,more cargo plane hercules size ,i would also expect these to have jet turbines on top as well for fast horizontal travel,

we clearly have the tech to do this and to make jet propelled octocopter hercules size u.f.o looking machines,we can cleary mount the jets at the top away from the rotor,so my question what the hell is this rubbish .
i am however sad these men had to die ,to fly something so unimpressive and already out of date and lose your life,
i think whoever designed this ,needs to wake the hell up this is so 1990 ask moller!

editted bit , all engineers know kis keep.it.simple so tilting rotors are another aspect that can malfunction in flight ,so rule 1 do we need tilting rotors to achieve lift :no we could use octocopter formation
what about foward motion :jet turbine for foward motion using hovercraft type ducting we could turn the rotors from the same turbine

a reply to: stuthealien

The AW609 is a civilian platform.

Jet powered tiltrotor designs won't work well. A jet engine is far easier to destroy through FOD and even dirt intake than a prop engine is.

a reply to: stuthealien

If you don't tilt the rotors you will be limited in forward airspeed and your efficiency will suck. What you are describing sounds like a complicated autogyro.

As a side note: I built a VTO C-130 with large rotors in Austin Meyers X-Plane program. It takes a huge amount of horsepower to get it to lift off vertically.

a reply to: Flipper35

How much?

a reply to: anzha

Vertical takeoff is only good for wowing crowds at airshows. You need more power than the aircraft can generate to take off with any kind of payload.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: anzha

Vertical takeoff is only good for wowing crowds at airshows. You need more power than the aircraft can generate to take off with any kind of payload.

Perhaps I missed something in this thread. Can you elaborate on your statement?

a reply to: Flipper35

i dont need to tilt the rotors i have a jet for foward motion the octo blades are just for lift

a reply to: Aliensun

When a VTOL/VSTOL is fully loaded they have to generate forward motion as they get airborne to generate lift. You can load one so heavy that they can barely get off the ground.

If you're talking about something like the F-35 they can't go airborne with any kind of useful fuel or weapons load taking off vertically. The AV-8 required 60 gallons of distilled water to inject into the engine for vertical operations.

The interim crash report has been released.

This was the first flight with a new aft fuselage configuration, and they were putting the aircraft into dives up to 293 knots. Two dives were completed, and during the third, the pilots noticed oscillations on the roll axis. The crew attempted to correct the oscillations, and the control laws caused an unexpected control on the yaw axis, initiating what investigators call an augmented Dutch roll condition. Both aircraft had previously encountered a similar condition, but not to this extent. The condition was impossible to recreate in the simulator.

www.flightglobal.com...

Control harmonics out or blade flutter problems. Sad but hope they can continue forward with the good data they have..

a reply to: Zaphod58

Time for more vertical stabilizer area? Ventral strakes?

I'm honestly a little curious about why they decided to reinvent the wheel with the AW609 by going with the T-tail, when the twin tail was already well proven on the XV-15 and the V-22.

I hope it wasn't just for marketing purposes in order to make the civil-oriented AW609 look more like a T-tailed business jet/king air/PC-17 and less like a twin-tailed Eurocopter in order to win over wary prospective buyers my making it look as much like a fixed-wing business aircraft as possible.

a reply to: Barnalby

I THINK the T-tail is more efficient in aircraft mode. But I'm not totally positive on that.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'd believe it, that tail looks like it came off of a swearingen design.