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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 0253.PDF
for the transportation and defence indus tries, but Walsh had recognised that poten tial business was being lost because of advances in composites, which now often replaced large metal forgings. Walsh decided to diversify, and first bought an investment-casting company be fore moving in for Scaled Composites, which he saw as an ideal prototyping workshop for designs which could be pro duced by other parts of the company. This was made possible by the take-over of KDI, a composites manufacturing plant in Buena Park, California. Now renamed Wyman Gordon Composites it has become a partner to Rutan's design shop. Rutan says: "We know that when we deal with a research and develop ment customer now, we can promise him that we will not only do the research work in composites manu facturing efforts or prototyping air craft, but we can also flow that expertise down to our production company and build the product for him too". Wyman Gordon Compos ites employs about 300 people, and has annual sales of around $20 mil lion, while Scaled Composites has sales of $4 million-$5 million a year, with a team of 60 employees. FROM SPACE TO SAILS Over the last few years, Rutan's shop has taken on work as diverse as developing the composite wings and tail surfaces for the Orbital Sciences/ Hercules Pegasus air-launched space booster, the sail for the defending catamaran in the last America's Cup race series, and sub-scale radar cross- section models of aircraft such as the Sukhoi Su-25. Rutan has also worked on various classified programmes for the US Department of Defense, but the primary business remains aircraft prototypes. Of these, the most impor tant project is the ARES (agile responsive effective support) multirole fighter, al though the Triumph business jet remains in storage, ready to be re-activated if a manu facturer is found. Rutan is also building a revolutionary piston-powered racer (the PondRacer) for the entrepreneur Bob Pond, which is expected to achieve speeds of up to 465kt (860km/h), a potential record for a piston or turboprop aircraft. The ARES concept evolved from a 1981 US Army design study undertaken by Rutan for a low-cost battlefield attack aircraft (LCBAA), which was primarily designed for offensive missions against UH-1 Huey-type helicopters. It was to be powered by a turboshaft engine converted into a turbo prop with the addition of a solar gearbox, and armed with a 25mm cannon, four Stinger missiles and two AIM-9 Side winders. Rutan says: "It was a relatively low-performance aircraft, compared with ARES, but it was fast enough to chase a Huey and get him from the top, where he is not very well armoured". After the design study was completed, Rutan waited for the Army to return with funding for a prototype, or for another study to upgrade the configuration for air-to-ground missions, but nothing materi alised. He remembers: "Things that you would have thought would have no trouble getting funded, because they were inexpen sive, seemed to get bogged down while the Army and the Air Force argued about who did fixed-wing". He adds: "We felt many times that we A General Electric GAU-12/A 25mm cannon has been installed were very close to a funded programme, but several things happened as it picked up more interest among the military commu nity. There would be requirements that grew the aircraft out of its class. When they bring in the experts in avionics and offen sive armaments and defensive armaments, for example, each group wants to put the latest thing into the aeroplane. By the time it ends up having what each group thinks should be in it, you have an aeroplane that looks like an A-10. It's just as big, and just as expensive." Eventually, by 1987, frustrated with the bureaucratic in-fighting among the services, Rutan approached the Beech and Raytheon management with a proposal to develop a prototype attack aircraft in-house. He was authorised to start a $2 million-$3 million research programme which would involve building and testing a proof-of-concept model, with the condition that a customer would have to be found to fund continued testing of avionics or armaments, once initial verification of the aircraft's flying qualities was completed. The original design, which was based on the Army's LCBAA concept, was for a turboprop-pusher configuration, optimised for the anti-helicopter role, and for air-to- ground missions. The turboprop idea was dropped, however, when Beech started no ticing propeller-efficiency and blade-fatigue problems with the twin-pusher Starship. Rutan says: "Propellers behind the aero plane work in a field of varying dynamic pressure and angle-of-attack of the blades, because of the fluctuating inflow. Blades that were almost stalling on the sub-scale model were stalling on the full-scale Starship. We also had to align the propellers more carefully with the airflow to reduce blade stress and reduce noise." He adds: "LCBAA would spend half of its life manoeuvring hard, through a large angle-of-attack range, so the issue of having a pusher propeller behind the aircraft became a high-risk technical problem". Rutan decided to abandon the pusher design, and redesigned the aircraft to take a small turbofan —something which had not been considered for LCBAA, because of the expense. He says: "I could use the turbofan to build a slightly bigger aeroplane, and it had a 400kt capabil ity instead of 290kt, which made it more attractive. In addition, it would solve the major technical problem of how to put a propeller on the back of an agile aeroplane." Although Bleck cancelled the fund ing for ARES and Triumph when he took over Beech in May 1987, Rutan persuaded him to allow scaled-down versions of both programmes to con tinue. Triumph was reduced from three variants to one (the planned piston- and turboprop-powered prototypes were scrapped), and ARES was allowed to con tinue with a skeleton staff of just five or six people, with funding cut by two-thirds. TRIUMPH SUBDUED The Triumph project represented more than half of Scaled Composites' workload at the time, with two flight-test aircraft under construction, together with a static-test article and a manufacturing methods pro gramme. Rutan remembers: "Triumph was within a couple of weeks of receiving its engines for the first version, which was the turbocharged [piston], I persuaded Bleck thiat the turbofan should continue, because it had the potential for enormous improve ments in efficiency compared to the King Air. It was as fast as the Citation II, but had 60% better fuel economy." The aircraft, powered by two Williams FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 30 January - 5 February, 1991 31
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