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started. The other three stalks are oriented with their blades, wings and engine centerlines perpendicular to the long axis of the airship. Once the lower engine is warmed up and running at full power that stalk is quickly rotated ninety degrees. As soon as the stalk begins to point forward the thrust generated by that engine starts the airship center body into rotation. After a revolution or two the other engine (or engines) are started. When the rate of rotation (in the two ton slingload
Cyclocrane) reaches thirteen revolutions per minute the relative wind over the wings, is sixty-miles-per-hour. That airspeed is sufficient to create the lift needed to lift one ton, if the airship is loaded, or to hold the ship down against one ton of buoyancy if it isn't.
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mixture, carried the weight of the aircraft, including fluids and crew, and half the payload. The wings on the ends of the blades generated the lift needed to either carry the rest of the payload or to hold the airship down if it was unloaded. In a two-ton slingload
Cyclocrane, for example, (which was the nominal size of the proof of concept models) the lifting gas would lift the weight of the vehicle, fluids and crew and one ton of payload. The wings would produce one ton of force to either lift one ton of payload or to hold the ship down against one ton of buoyancy when the payload was released.
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rotating them toward the direction of flight, causing them to function as propeller blades and pulling the airship forward (or backward). This forward velocity component allows for a reduction in the rate of rotation to maintain the necessary sixty-mile-per-hour relative wind over the wings. The result of this mixing of velocity components means that the path that the wings trace through the air as the ship reaches full forward flight is a helix, the rotation rate decreases as the horizontal speed increases and at full forward flight the ship is no longer rotating.
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was made eight days later. By mid-1985 it had accumulated 7 hrs of flight under a US Forest
Service contract, but the lack of power limited the spin rate to 10 rpm, rather than the designed 13 rpm so that the aircraft was less nimble in its movements than intended and also only able to lift loads of about half of the target 2 tons. AeroLift received several military contracts in the late 1980s to keep the CycoCrane idea afloat, particularly one from
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storm and was never flown. It was rebuilt by 1984 and fitted with an 18 faceted, ring shaped tail wire braced to the central axis. The aerostats in both versions were 68 ft 0 in (20.73 m) in diameter and 136 ft 0 in (41.45 m) long and manufactured by ILC Dover of
Frederica, Delaware, USA. Partly to save weight, this version had only two engines, a pair of 150 hp (112 kW)
136:(wherein the blade surfaces were perpendicular to the long axis of the airship and the eventual direction of flight) toward the direction of flight. At the end of the blades, above the wing, were pylons that carried propeller driving engines, oriented at right angles to both wing and blade long axes, so they powered the aircraft forward in normal flight.
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to control the airship and to lift the other half of the load. The aerostat contained a rigid internal axle along its long axis. Halfway along the axle, two long beams were fixed at right angles to it and to each other, passing through the aerostat (envelope) where they carried four wings of symmetric
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To fly to his destination the pilot executes a cyclic command to the wings that causes them to change their orientation through each revolution to either lift the load or counteract the aerostatic lift. Once hovering at the desired altitude a collective command is issued by the pilot to the blades,
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A "hybrid airship" is defined as an airship that employs two forms of lift; aerostatic and aerodynamic, or buoyancy from gas that is lighter than air and lift from aerodynamic surfaces like wings and rotors. In the
Cyclocrane the lighter than air gas, which was either helium or a helium and hydrogen
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Flights began with the airship either attached to the slingload, or tethered, and allowed to rise until the net buoyancy is transferred to the tether or the load. The "stalk" (the assembly the engine is mounted on) that is hanging beneath the aerostat (the gas bag) is pointed forward and the engine
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Two proof of concept versions were built, identical in size and varying in some details. Each had a fabric, oblate spheroid gas bag, or aerostat, to provide aerostatic lift sufficient to support the aircraft and fifty percent of the payload. Airfoils attached to the structure generated forces used
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AeroLift Inc was set up in 1980 by CycloCrane inventor Arthur
Crimmins, with funding from five major Canadian logging companies, with the objective of building a hybrid airship capable of conducting aerial logging at remote sites inaccessible by conventional means. The CycloCrane was a most unusual
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The revised CycloCrane began uncrewed flights in August 1984 and made its first crewed flight on
October 15, 1984 with Colonel JJ Morris as the pilot, Robert Crimmins as co-pilot, Bill Giordano as the flight engineer and Arthur Crimmins as flight engineer and commander. The first untethered flight
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Both versions of the CycloCrane were 178 ft (54.25 m) long. The first version, completed in 1982 had four piston engines and was fitted with a large, inverted Y-shaped tail needed to stabilise it at its moorings by keeping it pointed into wind. That version was destroyed at its moorings in a
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section, or blades as AeroLift termed them. Each blade carried at its tip another, shorter wing mounted with its long axis perpendicular to the plane of the blade, making a T shape. Aerolift termed the blade and wing assembly a "stalk". The stalks could be rotated from their orientation in hover
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To come to a stop so the load can be released or to moor the airship the process is reversed. The stalks are gradually rotated in the opposite direction causing them to act as a propeller again to take the ship back into rotation and hover. The load is then released and the ship can return for
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derived airfoil control for low speed flight manoeuvring by spinning on its axis. It was intended to be a heavy load lifter, initially aimed at the
Canadian logging industry. A proof of concept vehicle flew at times during the 1980s, but no large production aircraft were built.
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in 1988 for mooring investigations on a 36 ft model and renewal of the proof of concept aircraft for military suitability tests. For its final flights the tail was altered again into a combination of the early inverted Y within the ring of the first rebuild.
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horizontally opposed piston engines driving 4-bladed propellers. This left the CycloCrane rather underpowered, particularly in lift.
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Cyclocrane flight test – 1984 – Pilot
Colonel JJ Morris, Flight Engineers Bill Giordano and Arthur Crimmins
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Cyclocrane
Internal components including the longitudinal structure and two of four stalk support struts
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4-cylinder horizontally opposed air cooled piston engines, 150 hp (110 kW) each
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aircraft, utterly unique in its method of three-dimensional drive and attitude control.
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another load or if the ship is to be moored it can be secured to a tether or mast.
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255 ft 0 in (77.72 m) overall, from hook to uppermost engine
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Cyclocrane hybrid airship undergoing tests in 1982 in Tillamook, Oregon
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When the defense funding ended in 1990, the company ceased to trade.
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330,000 cu ft (9,300 m) helium volume, notional
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303:. Coulsdon: Jane's Information Group, Ltd. pp. 670–1.
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Specifications (proof of concept vehicle, second version)
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1,500 lb (680 kg) helium filled buoyant weight
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Arthur Crimmins during Cyclocrane flight tests in 1984
381:. Coulsdon: Jane's Information Group, Ltd. pp.
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199:Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1989/90 p.671
213:178 ft 0 in (54.25 m) overall
258:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiU71GFs4Fs
413:1980s United States experimental aircraft
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329:Kocivar, Ben (September 1985).
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418:Airships of the United States
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256:Video about the CycloCrane:
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78:(crewed) October 15, 1984
299:Taylor, John W R (1989).
239:Textron Lycoming AEIO-320
166:Textron Lycoming AEIO-320
46:Airship for heavy lifting
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67:AeroLift, Blimp Avenue,
204:General characteristics
373:Lambert, Mark (1991).
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263:Related development
96:AeroLift CycloCrane
331:"Whirling airship"
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423:Tillamook, Oregon
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69:Tillamook, Oregon
16:US hybrid airship
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24:CycloCrane
407:Categories
358:August 24,
341:(3): 96–7.
277:References
107:helicopter
197:Data from
252:See also
247:4-bladed
223:Volume:
217:Height:
211:Length:
133:airfoil
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182:DARPA
43:Role
387:ISBN
360:2023
305:ISBN
237:2 ×
94:The
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100:US
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