Oddball, Experimental, or One-off

[spenaroo]

They build awesome trucks. at one stage they dominated the Dakar rally before the Kamaz took over

[red750]

[red750]

The Tairov OKO-1 (Opytno Konstrooktorskoye - experimental design section), was a passenger transport aircraft produced in the Ukrainian SSR in the USSR in 1937.

 

Late in 1935 V.K. Tairov helped form the OKO (experimental design section) in Kiev. In 1937 the OKO-1 was completed as a six-seat passenger transport, with all wood construction, this single engined monoplane demonstrated good performance with state-of-the-art systems. Electrically driven flaps, pneumatic wheel brakes, trimmers on all the tail surfaces, heated cabin, lighting and instruments for night or blind flying, full sound-proofing and full GVF(civil air fleet) equipment were all incorporated. The performance of the aircraft in flight tests was regarded as excellent but, for unknown reasons, production was not undertaken.

 

It had a crew of 2 and capacity for 6 passengers. Only 1 was built.

 

[red750]

The Kharkiv KhAI-3 or Aviavnito-3 was one of several Soviet mid-1930s motor glider transports intended to reduce transport costs.

 

Alexandr Alekseyevich Lazerev, who led the Kharkiv KhAI-3 Avianvito design team, already knew some of the problems posed by tailless aircraft. He was on the team which designed the almost uncontrollable KhAI-4 two years before (the Institute's designs did not always appear in their numerical order). That aircraft made only three flights before being grounded as dangerous.

 

The much larger KhAI-3 was intended to show that low-powered aircraft could carry a useful eleven-passenger load with an engine producing just over 100 hp (75 kW). Only one built.

 

[red750]

The Grumman Kitten was a 1940s American cabin monoplane designed and built by Grumman. Two versions were built; the G-63 Kitten I with a retractable tailwheel landing gear, and G-72 Kitten II with a retractable nosewheel landing gear.

 

In 1943, as part of the postwar plan for the company, Grumman started looking at entering the light aircraft market. The first design was the G-63 Kitten I which was an all-metal two/three-seat cabin monoplane with a retractable tailwheel landing gear and powered by a Lycoming O-290 piston engine. The aircraft first flew on 18 March 1944. Although testing continued, the aircraft did not enter production due to the continuing war effort. The original wing was replaced by a ducted mainplane to improve the lift/drag ratio.

 

On 4 February 1946, a version with a retractable nosewheel landing gear and dual controls, the G-72 Kitten II was flown. The Kitten II also has improvements to the wing and the original single vertical tail was changed to twin fins before the first flight, but reverted to the single fin after the first 28 hours of flight testing.

Kitten II on display with single fin and rudder.

The development project was terminated in 1946, and the Kitten II was used as a company transport until it was retired in the mid-1960s. The sole surviving Kitten, it was restored and is now on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum, Garden City, Long Island, New York.

 

 

[red750]

The Grumman XF5F Skyrocket was a prototype twin-engined shipboard fighter interceptor. The United States Navy ordered one prototype, model number G-34, from Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation on 30 June 1938; its designation was XF5F-1.

 

[red750]

The Microjet 200 was a French jet trainer designed and built by Microjet SA. Not so much as a one-off, more a four-off.

 

The aircraft was designed by Microjet SA as a vehicle for the small gas turbine engines produced by Microturbo and as a two-seat lightweight jet trainer. The 200 is a low-wing cantilever monoplane with a retractable tricycle landing gear and a v-tail. It is powered by two Microturbo TRS 18-1 turbojets. It had side-by-side seating for an instructor and student. The all-wood prototype 200 first flew on 24 June 1980. Three pre-production aircraft designated 200B were built of mixed construction and the first flew on 19 May 1983. The third had small winglets on the tail. The project failed to gain any interest and no production aircraft were built.

 

[red750]

The LearAvia Lear Fan 2100 was a turboprop business aircraft designed in the 1970s, with an unusual configuration. The Lear Fan never entered production. Only three were built.

 

The LearFan was designed by Bill Lear, but not completed before his death in 1978. It was planned for production to be carried out in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in a new factory built with money from the British Government in an effort to boost employment. The aircraft had a pressurized cabin and was designed for a service ceiling of 41,000 ft (12 500 m). It could accommodate two pilots and seven passengers, or one pilot and eight passengers.

 

It featured a pusher configuration in which two engines powered a single constant-speed three- or four-bladed propeller at the rear of the aircraft. A purpose-built gearbox allowed two Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6B turboshaft engines to supply power via two independent driveshafts. The intent of the design was to provide the safety of multi-engine reliability, combined with single-engine handling in case of failure of one of the engines.

 

The aircraft was made of lightweight composite materials instead of the more common aluminum alloy.

 

Specifications here.

 

[red750]

Agile Responsive Effective Support (ARES)

 

The Scaled Composites ARES is a demonstrator aircraft built by Scaled Composites. ARES is an acronym for Agile Responsive Effective Support.

 

One prototype only. Details here.

 

[red750]

The Laird LC-EW was a six seat cabin sesquiplane designed for the industrialist George Horton. It first flew in 1934. One only built.

 

[red750]

Meyer's Little Toot

 

Design of the original Little Toot was started by George Meyer in 1952. Along with drawings, a scale model was built of the aircraft during the design phase. It was designed with aerobatics in mind and is stressed for 10g+/- loads.

 

The Little Toot is a single seat, open cockpit, biplane with conventional landing gear. Its design accommodates an optional cockpit canopy. The fuselage is welded steel tubing aluminum covering. The original tail section is a metal monocoque truss section from a Luscome 8A. The wings use spruce spars with wooden ribs and are fabric covered. The upper wing is swept back eight degrees. The lower wing has 2.5 degrees of dihedral with nearly full-length ailerons. The landing gear and wheel pants were sourced from a Cessna 140 tail-dragger. The production cost of the original Little Toot aircraft was US$2,000 in 1958. Only one built.

 

 

[red750]

The Blériot 125 (or Bl-125) was a highly unusual French airliner of the early 1930s. Displayed at the 1930 Salon de l'Aéronautique in Paris, it featured accommodation for twelve passengers in separate twin fuselages. Between them, these pods shared a tailplane and a high wing. The centre section of wing joined the fuselage pods and also carried a nacelle that contained an engine at either end and the crew compartment in the middle. When flown the following year, it displayed very poor flight characteristics and although attempts to improve it continued on into 1933, certification could not be achieved and the sole prototype was scrapped the following year. Only one built.

 

 

 

[red750]

The SNECMA C.450 Coléoptère (meaning "beetle" in French, descended from Greek for "sheathed wing") was a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft that was designed by the French company SNECMA and manufactured by Nord Aviation. While work on the aircraft proceeded to the test flying phase, the project never progressed beyond experimental purposes.

 

[sfGnome]

I look at some of these designs that you dig up, Red, and think “geez, I’d love to see them fly”. The last two in particular. Clearly the result of designers thinking “what haven’t we tried before”. As time goes on, it gets harder and harder to break the orthodoxy. As an engineer, I’ve worked for a company that was trying to break the mould. It’s a very hard row to hoe. 

[red750]

The Bellanca 19-25 Skyrocket II was a prototype light airplane built in the United States in the 1970s. Despite its advanced design and exceptionally good performance, it never achieved certification or entered production.

 

[onetrack]

An absolutely fabulous piece of aeronautical engineering from the mind of the U.S. Navy Aerospace engineer, August Thomas Bellanca. August Bellanca started as a teenager in his father's aircraft factory in New Castle, Delaware, and went on to work at Douglas, Grumman, and other large aircraft corporations, before starting his own aviation company.

 

NASA was so intrigued by the aeronautical "slipperiness" of the Bellanca 19-25 Skyrocket II, that they utilised the prototype as a test bed to check out the laminar flow properties of the wing design on the Skyrocket II.

In 1975, within months of its first flight, the prototype claimed five world airspeed records for piston aircraft in its class. Three of those records still stand in 2022. The Skyrocket II had a cruise speed of 222kts and was powered by a 435HP  Continental GTSIO-520-F flat six. It was built from composite materials, a ground-breaking design at the time.

 

Another interesting thing about August Bellanca is that he was a member of the secretive Quiet Birdmen club. The QB club was about on a par with the Freemasons - only you had to be an outstanding aviator or aircraft designer, an astronaut, or an air combat veteran to join - and you had to be selected for entry to the QB club, you couldn't just roll up and join.

 

The list of names in the QB "Hangars" (as the various regional groups were called) is a roll call of many outstanding and brave airmen. Of course, it was an all-male club, and each meeting was essentially a good old BS session between the boys, with regular semi-nude female entertainment.

 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/182074190/august-thomas-bellanca

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellanca_Skyrocket_II

 

https://veteranlife.com/military-history/quiet-birdmen/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Birdmen

[red750]

The Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 is an American single-seat, twin-engine stealth fighter aircraft technology demonstrator designed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The design was a finalist in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) competition, battling the Lockheed YF-22 for a production contract. Two YF-23 prototypes were built, nicknamed "Black Widow II" and "Gray Ghost". The YF-22 (later F-22 Raptor) won.

 

[red750]

The Nord 1601 was a French aerodynamic research aircraft designed and built by Nord Aviation. The aircraft was designed to investigate the aerodynamics of swept wings and related high-lift devices. Only one built.

 

[red750]

A wonderful photo of the Short Brothers Mayo Composite which consisted of two aircraft. The lower aircraft G-ADHK named ‘Maia’ was built specifically to launch the upper component G-ADHJ named ‘Mercury’ into the air without Mercury using valuable fuel for the takeoff. These were used in 2 major experiments, the first when Mercury was launched from Foynes on the West Coast of Ireland and flew non-stop to Montreal and the second when Mercury was launched from Dundee in Scotland and landed 42 hours later on the delta of the Orange River on the border of SouthAfrica and Namibia having flown in excess of 5,600 miles.

 

[red750]

The Bell X-22 is an American V/STOL X-plane with four tilting ducted fans. Takeoff was to selectively occur either with the propellers tilted vertically upwards, or on a short runway with the nacelles tilted forward at approximately 45°. Additionally, the X-22 was to provide more insight into the tactical application of vertical takeoff troop transporters such as the preceding Hiller X-18 and the X-22's successor, the Bell XV-15. Another program requirement was a true airspeed in level flight of at least 525 km/h (326 mph; 283 knots).

 

 

[sfGnome]

How big are those tail feathers! I can’t imagine that the size is anything to do with the vtol capability. 

[facthunter]

Gives a potential Rapid  Pich correction though. It's a "blown" control surface.  Nev

[red750]

The Seversky SEV-3 was an all-metal cantilever low-wing monoplane powered by a nose-mounted 420 hp (313 kW) Wright J-6 Whirlwind radial engine. It had two cockpits in tandem, a forward cockpit for the pilot and a rear cockpit for two passengers, both with sliding canopies. It could either be fitted with twin amphibious floats which had main wheels fitted in the floats to allow it to operate from land, or with a fixed tailwheel undercarriage with the mainwheels enclosed in large fairings.

The SEV-3 first flew as a floatplane in June 1933, demonstrating excellent performance as both an amphibian and a landplane. It was built in small numbers mainly for export.

 

 

[red750]

The Fairey Delta 1 (FD1) was a research aircraft developed and produced by British aircraft manufacturer Fairey Aviation. It holds the distinction of being the first British-designed aircraft to be furnished with a delta wing. Only one was built.

 

 

 Further development resulted in the Fairey Delta 2, a longer and much more streamlined aircraft, which was the first jet aircraft to exceed 1,000 mph, (1,600 km/h) in level flight. Two were built.

 

 

The Fairey Delta 3 never made it past the drawing stage.

[Student Pilot]

On 13/03/2023 at 12:21 AM, red750 said:

The Seversky SEV-3 was an all-metal cantilever low-wing monoplane powered by a nose-mounted 420 hp (313 kW) Wright J-6 Whirlwind radial engine. It had two cockpits in tandem, a forward cockpit for the pilot and a rear cockpit for two passengers, both with sliding canopies. It could either be fitted with twin amphibious floats which had main wheels fitted in the floats to allow it to operate from land, or with a fixed tailwheel undercarriage with the mainwheels enclosed in large fairings.

The SEV-3 first flew as a floatplane in June 1933, demonstrating excellent performance as both an amphibian and a landplane. It was built in small numbers mainly for export.

 

 

A bit like the machine Will Rodgers and Wiley Post were killed in.