As a result of this retooling, the helicopters are now able to carry an additional 2,000 pounds (11,000 pounds total), fly 17 miles per hour faster, and travel 70 miles farther on the same fuel load.
The company’s entire fleet of Sikorsky S-61 helicopters has been rebuilt to include Langley’s patented airfoil design on the main rotor. These services range from airlifting external cargo, suppressing wildfires, and carrying out emergency rescues, to performing high-rise rooftop installations, pouring concrete, and erecting steel structures and power lines in areas ground-based cranes cannot access (soft grounds and swamp areas, environmentally protected areas, and elevated/mountain terrain). It’s better than most anyone else has yet to come up with.”Ĭarson Helicopters provides a unique array of services that require hauling heavy loads. “The NASA Langley airfoil is one of the best airfoils in the world. Regardless, it was well worth the wait for Frank Carson, president of the Perkasie, Pennsylvania-based company and a longtime helicopter pilot and designer.
The new Carson composite main rotor blades did not receive full Federal Aviation Administration certification until 2003. licensed the Langley RC4 series of airfoils in 1993-2 years after the Comanche project commenced-and began development of a replacement main rotor blade for their helicopters. The Langley airfoil design, technically known as RC4, has managed to “lift off” and find much success in other applications.Ĭarson Helicopters Inc. The improved blade offered significantly greater lift capabilities, less drag, and less pitch (alternating lift and descent of the nose and tail of an aircraft during flight) than its predecessor and other conventional blades, when compared during high-speed flight-performance testing.
While these airfoils did not get applied to the Boeing-Sikorsky Comanche rotor, they did advance the state of the art for rotorcraft airfoils. The helicopter’s airfoils were designed as part of the Army’s basic research program and were tested in the 6- by 28-inch Transonic Tunnel and the Low-Turbulence Pressure Tunnel at Langley. Army engineers working with NASA’s Langley Research Center were part of the Army’s risk reduction program for the LHX (Light Helicopter Experimental), the forerunner of the Comanche helicopter. Advanced rotorcraft airfoils developed by U.S.
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