Back Weir W.6
1939

Weir W.6, the picture was scanned from a towel I had bought at the Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare, England :)

Much larger than its predecessors, this two-seater helicopter was powered by a more powerful fan-cooled engine located in the nose. Each of the two rotors had three blades made of compressed wood with leading edges in metal. They rotated at 275 r.p.m. and had both cyclic and collective control all enclosed within the hub. A ratchet-type freewheeling device was used for flying in auto-rotation.

The maiden flight took place in Scotland in October 1939, but World War II, then in its early stages, caused all work to be stopped on the W.6 in the middle of 1940.

P.Lambermont "Helicopters and Autogyros of the World", 1958

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Technical data for Weir W.6

Number of seats: 2, engine: 1 x Gipsy rated 205hp, rotor diameter: 7.62m, length: 8.53m, height: 3.2m, gross weight: 1070kg, cruising speed: 128km/h, rate o climb: 198m/min, absolute ceiling: 3810m

Comments
Charles E. MacKay, e-mail, 15.07.2013reply

First flew in Dalrymple Ayrshire Scotland in October 1939.Supposodly designed for anti submarine work It had the de Havilland Gypsy Queen Engine. It had wooden rotor blades and was made at Thornliebank Glasgow, the Weir factory. From there it was towed by motor car to Dalrymple. The pilot was Raymond Pullin son of the designer. It was a magnificant machine and flew with two passengers at Thornliebank, one was AVM Tedder and the other was Ken Watson.It never flew after June 1940 and the engine went into the Cierva W9 - "W" stands for Weir

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