Airfix 1/72 Fairey Rotodyne (Pete Noyle)

Description Airplane helicopter combo passenger airliner and flying crane.

Country of Origin UK

Wingspan 46.5 ft 14.17m

Length ft 17.88m

Height m

Rotor diameter 104 ft 31.7m

Engines Two Rolls Royce turboprops, 5 250 SHP 7 040kW

Range 450 miles 724km

Max weight kg

Max speed 185mph 297.7km/hr

Seating 2 pilots, 40 passengers, I cabin crew

Model scale 1/72

Kit manufacturer Airfix

On June 16th 1959, a small group of passengers boarded a turbo prop airliner at London’s Heathrow Airport, and prepared for take off. Their destination was the Paris Air Show. There was nothing unusual about this, except for the weird and wonderful aircraft waiting on the tarmac. It was half an airplane and half a helicopter - the revolutionary Fairey Rotodyne - the first ever aircraft to combine vertical take off with a spacious airline fuselage, conventional turboprop engines, a wing and a tail. The first flight that this select band of passengers were taking was the first that the Rotodyne had taken outside of the UK. Five months earlier, pilots Gellatly and Morton had set the E2 Convertiplane speed record of 190.9 m.p.h. in a Rotodyne on a closed circuit in the south of England. It seemed as though the implications for civil and military aviation were boundless.

Unlike conventional helicopters, the Rotodyne’s main rotor was powered by small ramjet engines at the tips. Compressed air from the main engines, combined with fuel and ignited produced tremendous power without the torque reaction. Once flying horizontally, the wings took over the lift and the rotors windmilled as in an autogyro. In 1953 the Ministry of Supply issued a contract for a Rotodyne prototype powered by two Napier Eland NE13 turboprop engines (3761kW - 2805 SHP). The first flight on the 6th November 1957 was so successful that two further flights were made the same day. The first transition from and to autogyro to airplane mode was made on the 10th April 1958.

By 1959, after many years of development at Fairey Aviation, the Rotodyne prototype had evolved into a proven vehicle that with minor cosmetic changes could have gone into mass production. Streets ahead of any other rival vertical take off concept, the worldwide interest in the Rotodyne was huge. Kaman Aircraft negotiated a licence for construction in the United States. New York Airways signed letter of intent for 5 aircraft, NYA were already operating helicopters on a big network basis around New York City at a seat/mile cost of 25 cents, were looking for a vehicle with a bigger passenger capacity to reduce costs by half. The Rotodyne promised to cut seat/mile costs to just 4 cents, with the bonus of higher travel speeds as well. But, the project never really got off the ground. The Rotodyne program was called to a halt in February 1962, by which time most potential customers had disappeared. One problem concerned noise, even in the 1950’s the airplane was acoustically unfriendly, especially over the city. From showing so much promise, this amazing aircraft became unwanted. A Rotodyne-a-sour you might say. The above is from the Airfix instruction sheet and from information supplied by others.

If the project had gone ahead you would see Rotodyne’s everywhere, perhaps even instead of the Osprey?

My connection to the Rotodyne occurred in 1976 or thereabouts. Rolls Royce maintained a noise test facility at a little used RAF airfield at Aston Down, UK, and one rotor from the Rotodyne was used in one of the rigs. Because the tip of the rotor was in effect a combustion chamber, RR could measure ‘fly-over’ noise without the interference of noises from other things such as propellers or fans. The single rotor was mounted on a tripod stand and balance weights were used to counteract the centrifugal forces. Balancing of the rig was quite an art and if the test engineer (me) did not get it quite right, the whole thing swung about in a crazy fashion. Attached to the tripod was the control cabin where the driver and test engineer wrestled with the controls and calculations to produce good data. The ring of torpedo netting around the rig did not produce a sense of well being! Princess Ann moved into one of the nearby manor houses and she complained about the noise, so RR shut the place down.

I wanted my model to be something special so I wrote to Airfix (Humbrol) for more information and also to Mr. Clive Bunyan, Assistant Curator, Aeronautics Collection of the Science Museum, London, England. Both these sources provided abundant details about the aircraft and I thank them for their invaluable help.

Molded in gray plastic, the parts are festooned with rivet pimples in Airfix tradition. The clear parts are good, especially the nose molding.

On seven pages of 8” by 12” paper. Page 1 provides a description of the aircraft in five languages, page 2 provides general construction advice (in 12 languages), and the actual assembly instructions come on pages 3 to 6. Page 7 provides the painting and decal positioning. Painting is by numbers, Humbrol numbers, so a conversion chart will be needed if any other paint manufacturer is used. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. No reference is made to provide a nose weight and it is needed.

I decided that my model would have a complete passenger section and a detailed cockpit. I started making ribs for the insides of the cargo cam-shell doors, but I made such a mess of it that I cleaned them all off and left the area ‘as is.’

I hacked the pilot and copilot about unmercifully, sawing off legs and arms and heads, then glued them back together. The model is supposed to depict the crew going through pre-flight checks just before the passengers arrive, so the copilot is holding the check-list and the pilot is switching switches.

Construction is quite straight forward, but joining the two fuselage halves gave me problems. I could line up the upper surface and I could line up the lower surface but no way could I get both to line up. I decided to get the upper surface correct and fudge the bottom, after all, few would actually look at the bottom surface and I was not expecting to win any exhibition prizes.

Assembly followed the instructions up to stage 11 at which point I masked the lower fuselage (below the white roof line), and the nose transparency and spray painted the roof with two coats of Testors Gloss White, applied fairly thickly. The thick coating ‘softened’ the appearance of the oversized rivets and yet still allowed them to show.

The next job was the application of Bare Metal Foil – Aluminium, to the lower fuselage from the horizontal blue decal line downwards. Once the foil had been applied and burnished the decals were applied. The long decal that outlines the windows went on very well, no stretching at all.

Bare Metal Foil was applied to all the other assemblies as well except the main rotor blades which were painted with Testors Aluminium enamel. Bare Metal Foil – Chrome, was applied to the prop hubs and the main rotor hub.

Humbrol Mediterranean Blue matched the color of the decals quite well and I brushed this on the required areas of the nose.

I did not glue the rotors in place, they make the model too large to fit on my shelf!

I was impressed with the decals, especially the one that is applied to the fuselage sides. This decal has the cut-outs for the oval windows and I could find no misalignment at all. Settling the decals on to the rivet detail was a problem though and I am still not satisfied with the way my model looks in this respect.

The model comes out well in overall dimensions and certainly captures the look of the prototype as I remember it from the Farnborough Air Show.

My model takes pride of place in my small collection. I casually mention to the ‘young ones’ what the aircraft was all about. I’m not sure if they believe me. She first flew in 1957 – 43 years before the Millennium. A vertical take-off airliner – the thing of dreams. She flew from downtown parking lots. I recommend this kit to anyone.