Monarch Butterfly Stands In For CCTD
By ANN Correspondent Kevin O'Brien
What do you do when
you're a technology inventor and your one technology demonstrator
is tied up in a series of projects for various government
contracts? Oh, and no hope of just throwing together a duplicate of
your technology demonstrator, because it's so loaded with advanced
technology it took a lot of time and resources to get together in
the first place.
Well, if you're Carter Aviation Technologies of Wichita Falls,
TX, then you supplement your advanced Carter Copter Technology
Demonstrator (CCTD) gyroplane with a simpler gyroplane, the Monarch
Butterfly from the Butterfly, LLC of Carter (no relation?), OK.
"The flight characteristics of the Monarch closely mimic those of
Carter's full-size CCTD at speeds less than 75 MPH, but in a very
simple design," Carter said in a release.
While many of Carter's innovations are based on the company's
quest for ultra-high-speed gyro flight, and require the CCTD's
power, size, and sophisticated aerodynamics to be tested, many more
can be wrung out on a simple open-frame gyroplane. As the Monarch
was the first aircraft to use licensed, patented Carter technology,
and the principals of the two firms have had many and varied
dealings already, the choice of the Monarch was a natural. The
bolted-frame construction of The Butterfly, LLC's aircraft also
makes modification suitably simple for a technology testbed.
The test program will primarily involve Carter's novel rotor,
propeller, and landing gear technologies.
The Monarch is the experimental counterpart to the part-103
compliant Butterfly ultralight. The Monarch differs from the
ultralight in having a larger Rotax 582 twin-carb engine, and
G-Force energy absorbing landing gear, based on a Carter-licensed
"Smart Strut". (The landing gear in the CCTD is based on the same
Smart Strut technology)
Carter and The
Butterfly celebrated their partnership with a dramatic
demonstration of the Monarch Butterfly's G-Force landing gear
during the Manufacturer Showcase at Oshkosh on Tuesday, July 27th.
This landing gear permits landing with previously unimaginable
vertical descent rates. A patented strut decelerates the aircraft
at a steady rate across the strut's entire range of travel, which
clever landing gear design can turn into quite a vertical
measurement. In flight, the Monarch's gear hangs down like the legs
of a predatory insect; on landing, the Smart Struts compress at a
steady rate and, due to the strut design, no energy is left in the
system to cause a bounce at the end of the stroke.
"The aircraft simply sets down," said Neal (right). "It
doesn't bounce and the deceleration isn't even a hard hit." If your
flight instructor can't cure you of bounced landings, the Smart
Strut will.
Carter Aviation Technologies and Larry Neal have a long-standing
and multi-level relationship. Larry is Carter's chief test pilot
for the Carter Copter Technology Demonstrator; Larry's company, The
Butterfly, LLC, licenses the patented Carter Smart Strut for the
Monarch; and now, the circle is closed with Carter's purchase of
one of Larry's machines.
Larry's name may be familiar to you even if you're not tuned in
to the gyro wavelength; he's a long time fixture in the world of
ultralights as a dealer and one-time manufacturer of the Phantom
ultralight. But Larry's passion is gyros, and he promises that he
is far from finished developing his aircraft.
We'll have more news from The Butterfly for you (tomorrow, we
hope). The avalanche of news is challenging even our capacity for
writing about it. But we will not fail, we will not flag, we will
not falter.
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