There is a wealth of crazy airplane videos on YouTube.com. Here's a couple interesting small aircraft.

Homebuilt gyrocopter:



Mosquito ultralight heli:


A weird glider:



A modern ornothopter:

a-qS7oN-3tA

I'm fascinated w/ the Kamov Ka-26. Two 9 cyl radial engines burning 13gal/ hr ea. would suck though!


Ka with passenger pod


Ka with spray setup

Wanabe sent me this link to a huge list of rare/odd/never produced aircraft:

http://rareaircraf1.greyfalcon.us/UNITED%20STATES.htm

Those are some neat pics. Nothing quite like a P-51 with ramjets on the wingtips!

The P38 on skis is kind of kind of neat.

Tim

I'll take this one!

Bump for weird aircraft!

Only slightly weird but there is a 104 Wilga for sale on Ebay right now.

1SeventyZ wrote:Wanabe sent me this link to a huge list of rare/odd/never produced aircraft:

http://rareaircraf1.greyfalcon.us/UNITED%20STATES.htm

Some neat flyers there Z....seen some of these on older episodes of Wings on the Discovery Channel.

Fren Hopper, there's a whole bunch of similar photochops out there like that one you posted. Pretty funny.

I don't know how to add pictures but Google the Gwinn Aircar for a large dose of weird!!

1SeventyZ wrote:Fren Hopper, there's a whole bunch of similar photochops out there like that one you posted. Pretty funny.

Ya that was one of the funnier ones, couldn't find any chopped backcountry aircraft though.....

Gwinn Aircar




From this website....

http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Gwinn_Aircar-Hawks.htm

Gives a pretty good history behind it.

Brian.

Brian - Steve's Aircraft wrote:From this website....

http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/Gwinn_Aircar-Hawks.htm

Gives a pretty good history behind it.

Brian.

Pretty sad story! As for the air machine in this case, the old adage: If it don't look right..it ain't right.

fern_hopper wrote:

That would have to be one hell of an APU to make that thing fly!!

58Skylane wrote:

fern_hopper wrote:

That would have to be one hell of an APU to make that thing fly!!

Yeah. Cutbacks for ya.

The Arup S2 & S4's "Flying Heels" are great. 97 MPH Top Speed, 37 HP and 23 MPH Landing speed, whats not to like. I actually joined a site to look up the patent drawings but I couldn't find anything about them. Would be a great Backcountry Plane if it has any payload. Plus with having round wings you could probably build it in your garage.

The Arup airplanes were really incredible achievements for the day. You might look up the similar Vought V-173 "Zimmer's Skimmer", which has a nearly round planform. It was capable of very impressive STOL performance. I believe it was 23 feet in diameter. The original aircraft used some wacky gearbox-driven large diameter propellers with two Continental A-80 engines mounted inboard. But the large diameter props turning "against" the tip vortices was a significant part of the performance... so...

The better way to accomplish this IMHO would be one higher HP engine (good old bullet-proof 180 Lyc?) mounted in the center with a belt or chain drive turning a spanwise carbon/kevlar tube drive shaft. On each end of this shaft would be a simple 1 to 1 bevel gear, turning a fore-aft propeller shaft. All the gearing or PSRU function would be at the chain drive at the center, between the engine and the main spanwise shaft. Although critical for a slow flying aircraft, the cooling system would be fairly straightforward, a simple updraft system taking air off the high pressure lower curface and exiting rearward off the top surface of the wing.

The downside to this overall configuration is that a large four-place cabin would do more aerodynamic damage to the overall efficiency than a short, low aspect wing can handle well. So a tandem 2 seater with that narrow canopy is probably where it would wind up... more in the Super Cub category than the 180/185 category. But it would make an interesting experimental project for sure, with some very unique performance benefits to pay you back for all that wrestling wi th drive shafts and gears.

I have long secretly harbored a desire to show up at Johnson Creek sometime in one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27-R0E6bKXE&NR=1

Transavia PL-12 Skytruk. They don't get much weirder.