If you ask those of us who grew up somewhere in the 1950s to 1970s what our car would be like in the year 2020, we might have described an Avrocar. This top secret vehicle from Canadian Avro was part hovercraft and part jet-powered vertical takeoff vehicle. There were two prototypes actually made and [Real Engineering] has a short video on how the prototypes worked, how the real design might have worked, and even has a lot of footage of the actual devices. You can see the video below.
The designer, [Jack Frost], experimented with ground effect and the Coanda effect. The Canadian branch of Avro, a British company, worked with the U.S. military and if you look at it, you wonder how many UFO sightings it caused. Nothing like a flying disk 18 feet in diameter going over your backyard to make you call the newspapers. On second thought, it probably never got enough altitude for that to happen.
The ground effect is well understood by anyone who has seen a hovercraft working. The Conada effect is a little more obscure. This is the effect where a fluid — and for this purpose, air is a fluid — will hug a convex shape. According to the video, the Conada effect inspired the shape, but might not have been very significant for the actual operation.
[Frost’s] saucer was airflow neutral, but with some carefully-placed jet engines, the craft could create a virtual airfoil. In theory, the craft could take off and land vertically, but also be made to perform well at both subsonic and supersonic speeds.
Of course, a theory is one thing and practice often another. The aerodynamic center of pressure was too far away from the center of gravity. The craft was unstable and the mechanical systems of the day couldn’t tame it.
Although the project survived in one way or another from the early 1950s, by 1961 the program ended. What had started as a futuristic combination helicopter and jet fighter had been reduced to little more than a hovercraft. Ironically, if the Avrocar had a skirt to form a plenum chamber, it would have probably been the first hovercraft, which launched in 1959.
We looked at the Conada effect before. You can use it to lift a lot of things.
I lived in Malton at the time. Never saw this fly over but did see and hear the Avro Arrow multiple times. Sad how we lost all that tech to south of the border. Spineless politicians :-(
I’ve always thought there might have been a American “conspiracy” behind that. The Arrow flew just after Sputnik, the Americans set up NASA and needed a shitload of aeronautical engineers, then the Arrow gets canceled (the Americans pressuring allies not to buy it by the way) and the very day of the cancellation American recruiters for NASA and U.S. Aerospace companies happened to be set up at a hotel in Malton to take advantage of all the layed-off Avro engineers. Conspiracy, who knows, but convenient for the American space programme, hell yeah!
The Americans taught the Chinese how to steal ip. Their manipulation re:Arrow was one of their first bullying of other countries. Building Bofors guns without a licence in WWII is another example of their unethical history. The hiring of ex-Avro staff was not a coincidence, they were the best in the world at the time. Fly-by-wire was just one of their inventions.
Bofors were licensed to the US in 1941, granted after they had already started production. I’m sure their reasons for going ahead without license involved Nazis.
A hovercraft doesn’t use the ground effect, is sits on a cushion of air. The ground effect is an increase in lift that an aerofoil experiences when it is within half a wingspan of the ground. Also called the wing in ground effect it is used in things like the Russian Ekranoplan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)
Isn’t that supposed to be “Canada” flying saucer? It is “Canada goose”, not “Canadian goose”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
It was developed by Canadian company “Avro Canada” with the US as the only customer.
Yeah, but not funny.
A White-Fronted Goose that lives in Canada is a Canadian goose.
This isn’t Canada’s unique or distinctive transportation system, it is a lot like the French one, which used mostly American engines, so Canadian flying saucer is correct.
But not funny.
Isn’t that a creation of french engineer Rene Couzinet?
USA equivalent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiller_VZ-1_Pawnee
If I’m going to die a fiery death in one of these contraptions, I want it to be the Avro, at least I’d look cool/silly doing it.
That Hiller Pawnee looks like a flying lawnmower. “Of course he died, did you see that thing he was trying to ride?!”
Disclaimer: Not a test pilot.
“Ironically, if the Avrocar had a skirt to form a plenum chamber, it would have probably been the first hovercraft,” Not really, if I remember somebody mentioned the idea of a skirt for the Avrocar to Frost and he is supposed to have replied “I don’t want to hover, I want to fly!”