Photoblog of experimental aircraft

x planes is a blog about "experimental aircraft. exotic aeromachines. oddities. sleek silver cigars. pedal-o-trons. soviet hive-mind bombers. aerial joy. the olden days. action shots. propaganda posters."

The Gyrodyne Model GCA-55 single-seat ground cushion vehicle of the annular jet type, powered by a 72 h.p. Porsche four-cylinder engine. It was developed under a U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics contract and flew for the first time in October, 1959.

(Thanks, Len!)

[#1 posted by telaquapacky, July 13, 2009 3:07 PM]

What's this guy doing sitting on a giant Hershey's Kiss? Valentine's day isn't until February.

[#2 posted by buddy66, July 13, 2009 3:58 PM]

Man, I love flying machines, successful or failed. An ideal documentary would be a looong compilation of such, from Icarus to the latest fire-belching dragon at Canaveral.

[#3 posted by gollux, July 13, 2009 4:13 PM]

Cool! Thanks, neat span of history, from zeros to heros.

[#4 posted by gollux, July 13, 2009 4:21 PM]

Oh, and an aeronautical maxim, "If it looks ugly, it probably flies ugly."

[#5 posted by slain by an elf, July 13, 2009 5:59 PM]

I love the X-Planes.

[#6 posted by Anonymous, July 13, 2009 6:29 PM]

Is that the Orbits guy?

[#7 posted by Anonymous, July 13, 2009 7:06 PM]

check out his shoes..just everyday office loafers,no heavy duty boots..i have seen other stuff like this where "test pilots" look like they just pulled a jumpsuit on and took off..

[#8 posted by Piers W, July 13, 2009 7:27 PM]

The secret life of sergeant Bilko.

[#9 posted by RedShirt77, July 13, 2009 8:47 PM]

oh, so that is how they cracked the liberty bell.

[#10 posted by MTLP, July 13, 2009 8:52 PM]

I can't tell if that's Phil Silvers or Woody Allen

[#11 posted by Stefan Jones, July 13, 2009 8:52 PM]

There was a Gyrodyne plant a few miles from Stony Brook, where I went to college. What a great name!

[#12 posted by TroofSeeker, July 13, 2009 11:38 PM]

Honey I Shrunk The Minivan!

[#13 posted by FoetusNail, July 13, 2009 11:54 PM]

It's Zelig!

[#14 posted by Anonymous, July 14, 2009 1:24 AM]

#6, #10, #13 etc - you're all wrong.
it's the dude out of Man... or Astroman? (obviously)

[#15 posted by Anonymous, July 14, 2009 5:45 AM]

That fellow has some x-planeing to do.

[#16 posted by Anonymous, July 14, 2009 6:26 AM]

They can claim it's a Porsche engine, and indeed the differences are few. BUT. That's a VW engine there, m'friends (Built quite a few of both, me). If it ever saw the inside of a Porsche it was either one of the VW-engined Porsches or an early speedster.

[#17 posted by airshowfan, July 14, 2009 10:06 AM]

@#2 (and anyone else who likes this kind of stuff), I highly recommend Back to the Drawing Board, The World's Worst Aircraft, The World's Strangest Aircraft, and The Wrong Stuff. As for the "real" X-planes, the ones flown by NASA as proof-of-concept aircraft, two awesome books are The X-Planes and X-Planes at Edwards. There's also a superb series of videos from the mid 90s called "Strange Planes" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) but I have not found them for sale anywhere, so all I have are the ones I taped over 10 years ago, which are all dubbed in Portuguese since I was in Brazil at the time. Teenage years spent watching/reading this material leads straight to an aeronautical engineering career, I guarantee it ;]

[#18 posted by airshowfan, July 14, 2009 10:09 AM]

... and here's the episode guide for the Strange Planes series, so you can get an idea of just how thorough it was.