ZWRRWWWBRZR
That's the sound of the prop-driven XF-84H, and it brought grown men to their knees. It didn't fly all that great either.
IT WAS THE ERA OF SOUNDED-LIKE-A-GOOD-IDEA-AT-THE-TIME DESIGNS. Airplanes that took off straight up, hanging from enormous contra-rotating props or climbing a beanstalk of jet thrust. Jets launched from flatbed trucks, flung into the air by rockets. Inflatable airplanes. Flying wings. Tail-less deltas. Jet seaplanes. Jet seaplane fighters. So there was nothing unusual about taking an early jet fighter, the Republic F-84 Thunderjet, and putting a propeller on it.
But wasn’t aviation trying to get rid of propellers?
Never mind, we’re going to drive this propeller with an enormous turbine engine—two engines, in fact, coupled through a common gearbox—and we’ll spin it so fast that the prop tips will be traveling at 901 mph—Mach 1.18. At least the prop will be supersonic.
The result was the Republic XF-84H, a swept-wing, single-seat, T-tail turboprop that, at the time of its rollout in 1955, had the unhappy distinction of being the loudest airplane ever built.
L'articolo continua qui: http://www.airspacemag.com/how-things-w ... c=y&page=1#
Qualcuno mi sa dire qualcosa in più su questo aeroplano che trovo molto interessante? Ad esempio pubblicazioni varie o altri articoli..in rete si trova poco o nulla..
Da wikipedia:
Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds, the outer 24–30 inches of the blades on the XF-84H's propeller traveled faster than the speed of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was actually powerful enough to knock a man down; .... the aircraft was notorious for inducing severe nausea and headaches among ground crews. In one report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after close range exposure to the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H.