“There's an old saying in the aviation industry that if an aeroplane looks right, it'll fly right,”

[foxOneFive]

Nonsense!!

 

[Tin basher]

Looks like a flying bog roll tube. Those crazy Italians.

If it looks right it should fly right a phrase used about Hunters and Canberra's back in the day.

 

[vim_fuego]

What's the benefit of the design? You've hidden away the prop but taken up space potentially for fuel tanks or cargo/weaponry to go?

Funnelling the thrust onto the rudder means it will turn on a sixpence and the circular shape means strength but other than that it looks like a bet made in a bar between two drunken designers.

 

[SAXAVORDIAN]

Now used as a leaf blower

 

[Talk Wrench]

What's the benefit of the design? .....other than that it looks like a bet make in a bar between two drunken designers.

As a concept it looks pretty bizarre but what did other designers take from it?

A ducted propeller isn't too far removed in principle from the nacelles/thrust reversers and fixed fan ducts that we see housing today's large turbofan engines in modern airliners.

Turbofan - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Furthermore, there's plenty of other examples of ducted propulsors and with the advent of the electric aviation age, we'll see a lot more experimental ducted propulsion systems appearing in our skies as the technology develops.

 

[busby1971]

Just thinking what were they trying to achieve, this just looks like a simple tunnel with no aero trickery, if there was some kind of Venturi effect or air multiplier magic going on it might have been worth it. Saying that it probably cleans up some airflow, but I would have thought this would be cancelled out by the facing surfaces being larger.

Any video of it crashing?

 

[foxOneFive]

Thankfully they had their "helmets" on encase it flipped over on landing?