Hi everyone there !
I´m Indalecio from Argentina, presenting my helicopter design project.
http://sentidos.atspace.com/prodCH14.htm
It´s a tandem 2 seat light helicopter for transport, instruction and patrolling. The first prototipe is already in flight.
I was responsible for the exterior and cockpit design, and I also collaborated on the mechanisms design and 3d modelling.
Hope you like it !
and of course!
comments and critics are welcomed
indo
looks cool. Can I have one? Right now I have a half a mile walk from the subway to the office. this thing would be perfect.
What made you go with the faceted radar deflecting surface treatment? Any preliminary studies, sketches, lines of thought?
We opted for faceted surfaces because of many reasons:
we still don´t know what happens when entering a radar zone…
thanks for your comments !
Looks good and you’ve already saved so much of money by using flattened surfaces and glass! I was wondering how important it is to reduce the blind spot in case of helicopters. It seems that your narrow front windshield with closely placed a-pillars would cause problem.
Of course, economy was the other important factor !
Yes, reducing the blind spot is very important in helicopters. And tests pilots said that we reached a very wide vision angle.
Anyway the tendency in military helicopters is to reduce transparent surfaces and heading for electronic vision.
In this prototipe in particular we are using the basic instruments. No thermal or night vision by now.
I attached here two more photos from the flight tests with a closer look of the cockpit.
thanks for your comments !
It looks like an X-Wing from Star Wars! Great proportions–very functional and well balanced. The faceted approach is functionally honest and efficient and I like that.
My only criticism is that the landing skids don’t aesthetically fit, and neither do the swoopy graphics! i’d like to see the stealth-look taken further with these two elements.
Great to see something different than the typical consumer product for a change, thanks for posting!
Yeah, I would like to go further with the skids but we opted for something more conventional considering all the fuctional aspects. This solution has proved to work fine in previous models.
And the combination between the sharp edges and the curved graphics… well, you got a point there.
I intentionally tried to “soften” the sharp edges using that curved strips. You know everybody here was not sure about those straights lines.
And when we finally placed the graphics everybody went “Ahhhh”
I attached here a picture from a HueyII helicopter. Our client asked us to use those graphics. The one I used is something like a redesign from this one.
I also attached a photo where you can see the integration between the body lines and the graphics. I hope I´m not the only one that sees that integration… 
Nice project!
You also said you were responsible for the cockpit design, what about that? Can we see the interior and how does it relate to the whole project?
Can´t find photos from the interior here at home.
I´ll try to take some tomorrow.
I attached here a couple of drawings and a photo from the real model for composite material body and interior.
I´m the one with the blue mask !
cockpit images
comments and critics are welcome again
thanks !
Very cool! How many people can say they designed a helicopter? I agree with cg about the skids. They don’t fit visually with the rest of the craft.
I´ll definitely keep that in mind
the good thing is that skids can be modified without affecting the rest of the product.
Thank you for your comments guys !
what software did you use for the interior? Why the chiseled edges? Its all stealthed out on the inside.
For the exterior body and interior I used 3dsmax editable poly. It´s a great tool for the kind of surfaces I was creating.
Working with vertices is easy and fast. And very intuitive too.
I had main mechanisms modelled in rhino and I exported and used that as a reference for modelling the body and interior in max.
Once I had the “skin” ready I exported it again to rhino and added thinckness, cutted doors, etc.
I also used rhino for printing 1:1 profiles for the real model.
It was a great training.
Engineers in the company are using Catia and I had to learn it so we could collaborate closer (I modelled and collaborated in the mechanical parts design too).
And I found Catia is so wide !!
It has the specific tools for creating each stage of the entire product.
So I did this project combining rhino and max but today I´m fully working in Catia.
It looks impressive, I too like the functional look, nice job. The faceted surfaces make it look very much like a Blackhawk. Were there any new techniques you employed with this helicopter?
Did you carry out many aerodynamic studies and did that change the design at all?
No,
What you see is just an intuitive aerodynamic design.
Aerodynamics is a pending task. We are planning to use some Computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
But that would be in the next stage.
This was just a prototipe to demostrate our capabilities in a very short time.
Can’t refrain comments…
Just an awesome project, friend Indalecio.
Congrats for that!!! 
