Never mind the noise and such, I'd have thought that the sodding great wings and enormous, whirly, pedestrian/cyclist decapitating props are the more obvious drawbacks here.

Not a flying car at all, more a helicopter with knobs on.

...he said knobs!

Alien cos' they know blending!

..but I want it to transform into a submarine and a gun and an Aga as well as a helio-coptor.

"I'd have thought that the sodding great wings and enormous, whirly, pedestrian/cyclist decapitating props are the more obvious drawbacks here."

If it kills cyclists I'll have one.

...but not a cool as an autogyro.

...come with the military version's neat "flip over on landing and kill the pilot and passengers" feature?

Still waiting for the obligatory Rotodyne Fairey comment.

Having done some market research on a similar idea to this a few years back (i was an engineering student not marketing i swear!) this will succeed if its marketed to the right industries.

Its faster then a helicopter so you get where your going faster, using less fuel along the way and then have the convenience of landing without a runway or if your doing something like search and rescue or geological survey hovering which you cannot do in a fixed wing. Yes maintenance costs are higher but a fixed wing cant hover and most of the fuel used by a helicopter is in getting to the destination you want to be operating at so by getting there faster you've just made the job cheaper.

Looks like a winner to me. Will never replace the standard helo or fixed wing but there's defintiely a niche there for it.

Spot on! One of the reasons the original Osprey was so late was the implementation of the cross-shaft arrangement to allow this.

I'd be more interested to see what would happen (from a safe distance or, ideally, on TV) if you got a prop or prop-drive failure. That buggers your two-for-one deal and with very large props mounted waaay outboard like that, anything that you can't feather is even more of a liability than usual.

That is not so much the problem; though helps asymmetric thrust 'issues' a lot.

"If one of the props failed, well you are still better off than if you were in a helicopter with a failed rotor and probably no worse than in a twin engine plane with a failed engine"

Not quite true; a twin engine medium turbo-prop with an engine out can cope with some asymmetrical thrust with enough rudder & trim, and perform a reduced power landing safely. A helicopter can (with enough height) go and autorotate with a rough landing.

As far as I know, tilt-rotors can't land with engines horizontal; (another point of failure - they can't rotate the nacelles then horizontal landing is going to be a nightmare with the massive rotors) so they have to rotate & land on 50% power, which cannot be so easy. I guess with the right height, they could rotate to vertical mode (with ground effect?) and land vertically ; I presume with the remaining engine at emergency power for a rough put-down. Maybe they can collapse the rotors for power-off horizontal landing though...

Still very sensitive to interconnected shafts; long, light-weight shaft's, handling thousands of horse-power coming on fast; one snaps with a power outage and the craft is going to flip very quickly with chances of survival being... not so good..

icon: one sick bird