The Windspire Aeros is an American

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

that was designed and produced by Windspire Inc. of

Long Green, Maryland Long Green is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. Until 1958, the community was served by the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad at milepost 15.8. Prospect Hill was listed on the National Register of Hist ...

. Now out of production, when it was available the aircraft was supplied in the form of plans for amateur construction.Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook, Fifth Edition'', page 335. BAI Communications, 15 July 1998.

Design and development

The Aeros was designed to comply with the US ''Experimental - Amateur-built'' aircraft rules. It features a single main rotor, a two-bladed tail rotor, a single-seat enclosed cockpit with a

bubble canopy A bubble canopy is an aircraft canopy constructed without bracing, for the purpose of providing a wider unobstructed field of view to the pilot, often providing 360° all-round visibility. The designs of bubble canopies can drastically vary; s ...

and skid-type

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin ...

with integral ground-handling wheels. The standard engine used is a four-cylinder, air-cooled, four-stroke,

Volkswagen air-cooled engine The Volkswagen air-cooled engine is an air-cooled, gasoline-fuelled, boxer engine with four horizontally opposed cast-iron cylinders, cast aluminum alloy cylinder heads and pistons, magnesium-alloy crankcase, and forged steel crankshaft and ...

. The aircraft

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraf ...

is made from a mix of

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

and steel tubing. Its diameter two-bladed rotor has a chord of and employs a NACA 0012 airfoil. The drive train consists of a primary belt drive connected to a geared transmission built with

Volkswagen Volkswagen (),English: , . abbreviated as VW (), is a German motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party and revived into a global brand post-W ...

gears and a belt-driven tail rotor drive. The tail rotor has a diameter of and a chord of . The aircraft has an empty weight of and a gross weight of , giving a useful load of . With full fuel of the payload for crew and baggage is . The cabin width is . The supplied plans include a fully illustrated guidebook and a parts list. The manufacturer estimates the construction time from the supplied plans as 300 hours.

Operational history

By 1998 the company reported that 40 sets of plans had been sold and three aircraft were completed and flying. By April 2015 no examples had been registered in the United States with the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

Specifications (Aeros)

References

{{reflist

External links

Photo of a Windspire Aeros

Aeros Aeros is a Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer founded by a group of ex-Antonov engineers in the early 1990s to build hang gliders. It is located in Kyiv.Bertrand, Noel; Rene Coulon; et al: ''World Directory of Leisure Aviation 2003-04'', page 41. Pag ...

1990s United States sport aircraft 1990s United States helicopters Homebuilt aircraft Single-engined piston helicopters

Design and development

Operational history

Specifications (Aeros)

See also

References

External links