>>64150414
Listen, we did not “copy” the Sikorsky SB-1. We executed a culturally appropriate parallel solution set to the universal problem before us. When two engineers on opposite sides of the Pacific feed the same Bernoulli into the same blender of retreating-blade stall, tip-Mach heartbreak, and vibration demons, guess what ? Coaxial rotors with a pusher prop. Convergent evolution. Nature keeps reinventing the crab.
“B-but the silhouette!” you say. Sir, the silhouette of any fast helo is a rectangle with opinions. Aerodynamics is a harsh HOA: break the rules and the noise complaint is called at Mach 0.85. Coaxials cancel torque, raise disk loading, and with a pusher you trade hover flex for dash speed.
Intellectual property? Friend, ideas are public domain after they collide with reality at an airshow. If your concept can be understood with a pair of binoculars and a napkin, that’s “open-source .” Also, “IP” stands for Inspirational Prototype. Thanks for the inspiration.
And those “calipers” you saw by the fence line? Lunch chopsticks. The notebook? Poetry.
“But the gearboxes, the fly-by-wire, the rigid hub—surely copied!” No, comrade… uhh, cowboy. That’s just what happens when you tell a transmission it’s married to two angry ceiling fans and a tail thruster. You go rigid and digital. Poles in the transfer function don’t care about flags.
We didn’t steal; we localized: switched to fasteners with a sensible thread pitch, added a maintenance panel, put the avionics on a menu, and painted it a color.
Also, consider ethics. If physics belongs to everyone, denying us the right to spin two rotors and a prop is aerodynamic apartheid. Are you really going to gatekeep lift?
So yes, ours looks familiar. That’s because speed looks like speed. If you wanted it to be unique, you should’ve convinced the Reynolds number to pay licensing fees.
