Eurocopter’s X3 hybrid helicopter has taken to American skies for the first time after being transported stateside aboard a chartered cargo jetliner early last week. The X3 is in the U.S. as part of a month-long tour in which Eurocopter will demonstrate the aircraft's operational capabilities for civil and military use.
To date, testing has been conducted from the Istres Flight Test Center in southern France, where the X3 demonstrator previously surpassed its original speed target of 220 knots (407 km/h or 253 mph) by maintaining a true airspeed of 232 knots (430 km/h or 267 mph) in level flight, while using less than 80 percent of available power.
The first U.S flight took place on June 15 in Texas, ahead of the official start of the U.S. demonstration tour, which kicks off on June 20 in which it will visit five cities.The tour will see Eurocopter’s test team demonstrating the helicopter’s full hover flight capabilities and cruise speeds of a turboprop-powered aircraft. This is enabled by the aircraft’s two turboshaft engines that power a five-blade main rotor system and two propellers installed on short-span fixed wings.
During its U.S. tour, the X3 will be based at the Grand Prairie, Texas, headquarters of Eurocopter’s U.S. subsidiary, American Eurocopter, which is where the tour will kick off on June 20. While the remaining cities are yet to be revealed, Eurocopter is also making the X3 available for flight evaluations for selected U.S. armed forces personnel and civilian operators.
The following video shows the X3's first flight in the U.S.
Source: Eurocopter
see these comments by Marco at Phys.org:
There is no easy and safe means of deploying a rescue winch, because of the twin rotors outboard the center of the craft.
Also, there is no platform to mount external stores because the side mounted propellors are in the way. Therefore not much good for weapons, fuel or emergency relief delivery.
The ingress and egress from the craft is also dangerous, because of the spinning propellors nearby.
First the X3 is not a production design, it is a proof of concept prototype/technology demonstrator and the evaluations are to generate interest and specifications for the production models.
But you can fire machine guns through propellers without blowing them off, there is room for rocket pods between the propeller and the cabin, and while I would not want to to do a hot Z extraction in it, a little forward motion (under 5 knots) would keep the poor infantryman out of the propellers in a hot Z insertion.
Using a trapdoor, or having the hoist a little aft of optimal would allow such operations with adequate safety.
This had a single, central main rotor, twin (Rolls-Royce Dart), turbo-props for forward flight, a rear loading ramp and some of us will even remember building the Airfix kit, back in the sixties...
So this is yet another example of an old idea, rehashed & fitted with an (almost obligatory, these days), glass cockpit - and which may or may not prove practical for some applications.
Wouldn't it be refreshing, though, if someone could actually come up with something new - just to prove that 21st-century thinking has indeed moved on from that of Leonardo da Vinci's era...?
The propeller blades had colorful protective sleeves installed during the in hanger shots.