PZK-2

[WhoNeedsRunways]

All :

While trogging round the Weston-super-Mare Helicopter museum last weekend, I saw a model of a helicopter that I've not seen anywhere else before.

It's designated a PZK-2, and dates from WWI or just after. It's a contra-rotating co-axial design, with 2-bladed wooden main rotors, and three booms for the body, each of which resembles an A-frame, all connected together at a central body.

There are plastic scale kits available but I didn't get one. I'm just intrigued as to why I've never seen this before.

Any ideas ? Even www.helis.com (http://www.helis.com) didn't appear to have anything.

[hover lover]

WNR -
Just came across your posting. Turns out the Summer 2000 issue of ROTOR magazine printed by HAI has your answer.
[[Warning: LONG POST]]
Little is known about the PKZ2. What is known is that it was the second helicopter to come out of the Petroczy, Kaman, Zurovec office, and that it was probably the world's first truly flying helicopter. Its inception was in 1918. Its purpose to replace tethered observer baloons.....
The project led by Vilem Zurovec began in early 1918. The first test flight was in April 1918. The aircraft when loaded with enough fuel for a sixty minute flight, weighed 1200 kilograms. It made several successful unmanned flights. Unfortunately the Austrian Army was unable to use it because minor problems prevented it from going into full production prior to the Armistice..........
The craft was a light tubular structure with four bag type pneumatic shock absorbers, 3 mounted on outriggers and 1 central mounted.
There were 3 tether cables to adjust flight altitude. Two counter-rotating airscrews with diameter of six metres, driven by 3 Gnome rotary engines, 120 hp apiece. A observer would stand in the nachelle mounted above the airscrews, nachelle looked similar to an oversize 55 gal oil drum....

WNR, there is an advantage to living 4 miles due west of Helicopter Association International hdqr!

[WhoNeedsRunways]

Hover :

Thanks for that. Do you know if the article is on line ?

And, as I say, if people REALLY want, there is a plastic kit available. That's the advantage in living less than an hour's drive from the International Helicopter Museum.