As flocks of well-funded eVTOL projects race to market, a seemingly anachronistic design from another era has reemerged in an updated form. Italian planemaker Leonardo has flown an offshoot of the Bell/Agusta AW609 tiltrotor aircraft. The newish Next Generation Civil Tiltrotor – Technology Demonstrator (NGCTR-TD) has different engines (GE CT7 turbines instead of PT6C-67s) and a different tilt design that does not move the whole nacelle. It also has a V-tail. The AW609 fuselage has been retained and performance figures improved to a cruise of 280 knots and range of about 1,000 nm. It’s being partly funded by the European Union’s Clean Sky 2 initiative. The plan is to eventually integrate improvements from this project into future aircraft.
The NGCTR-TD is an extension of what is one of the longest active certification efforts. The original AW609 first flew in 2003 and was then projected to hit the market in 2007. It’s also survived various corporate partnerships. Boeing was Bell’s original partner but pulled out before anything was built. Bell and Agusta Westland formed a company to develop the AW609 after Boeing quit. In 2011 Bell bowed out as a partner but stayed on to do design and certification work. There was a fatal crash of one of the two prototypes in 2015 in which both test pilots died. The AW609 is apparently in the final stages of certification, but market acceptance has been lackluster and there are fewer than 100 orders.
Russ, it appears to be similar design to the MV-75 that is set to replace the Blackhawk helicopter for the U.S. Army. In that case only the rotor tilts, not the engine.
It looks to me that the only thing that tilts is the rotor portion with the engine remaining stationary.
From the press documents.
It introduces visible and functional changes, including a V-tail and a simplified tilt system in which only the engines rotate while the nacelles remain fixed
No, the engines are in the part of the nacelle that doesn’t rotate. The rotation function is done within the gearbox.
Ok. I removed the reference to the moving engine. If you guys are correct, it would appear I accurately repeated an inaccuracy.