CarterCopter Technology Goes Offshore: Commercial Variant with Full Hover Capability

Carter Aviation Technologies, LLC has been developing its Slowed Rotor/Compound (SR/C™) technology for over 20 years. A key enabler of the SR/C technology is a rotor and related control system that permits high advance ratio flight while maintaining rotor stability. Carter has demonstrated this capability in flight with its Personal Air Vehicle (PAV), which has jump takeoff and zero-roll landing capability. A decade ago, Carter established a full hovering configuration employing SR/C technology in response to the Joint Heavy Lift (JHL) requirement. Today, Carter is taking that same approach, but sized for the offshore oil platform service mission. This paper briefly describes the history of SR/C development and the JHL configuration, and then focuses on the Carter CC-221, a new platform aimed at the offshore oil rotorcraft market. The development and analysis of the CC-221 configuration demonstrates that Carter's SR/C technology is directly applicable to hovering aircraft with performance that is very attractive, particularly for those missions requiring high speed and/or long range.