Eurocopter’s X3 compound helicopter demonstrator continues its US demo tour, and they continue to share videos from said tour. I still think it looks a bit strange, but I suppose people said the same thing about helicopters and tilt-rotors when the were new concepts too. But they’re really going to have to do something about the prop location on a production model, IMHO.
In this video we learn that ‘X3′ is pronounced ‘X-Cube’. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard that, I was mentally reading it as ‘X-Three’, of course.
Eurocopter isn’t the only vendor working on a compound helicopter, of course. Sikorsky continues to develop the S-97 Raider coaxial compound helicopter, based on their earlier X2 demonstrator. Each month they release a program update video, and the June release focuses on Esterline, one of the primary suppliers to the program.
Esterline is providing the Human/Machine Interface technology, which includes the cockpit flight displays and the HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) fly-by-wire flight controls (the cyclic and collective), as well as the control surface actuators for the elevators and rudders.
