[3e] Merlin Autogyro

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by copeab

I'll note here that the VE2 formulas for several parts of aircraft performance just don't seem to work with autogyros, especially for top speed and stall speed, which come out far too high (even with the better stall formula from the Vehicle Expansion). I found that raising rotor area to the 1.5 power in the drag formula and to the 1.75 power in the stall formula brings the numbers into somewhat more realistic ranges, although they aren't kludges I'm happy with.

What I ended up doing was working backward from the real-world speed to find out how powerful the motor needed to be. Then I reverse-engineered the rotor surface area to get the right stall. Essentially, this means I rebuilt the design 3 times (*sigh*) but I'm pretty pleased with how the numbers line up.

I was surprised at the low power required of the motor (using your design of the Japanese gyro and the Soviet one in Red Tide as guides).

And I forgot about the Stall formula in the expansion. That may hit the mark even better, since I'm still high.

In the end, this was a dry run for building a TL8 machine for my post-apocalyptic campaign idea, so your suggestions may still come in handy.