Tuesday, June 30, 2015

P.V. Engineering Forum helicopter, 1940's

Macauley, C.B.F.  The Helicopters Are Coming.  Whittlesey House (McGraw-Hill Book Co.), 1955.

The Piasecki-Venzie PV-2 first flew on April 11, 1943, making Frank Piasecki the second American to fly a helicopter of his own design.  The PV-2 had a number of advanced features:   the first dynamically balanced rotor blades, a rigid tail rotor with a tension-torsion pitch change system, and a full cyclic and collective rotor pitch control.  While Piasecki hoped his aircraft would open a new era in personal transportation, his company went in another direction, building large cargo helicopters for the military.

The PV-2 is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

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