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The
Hiller Flying
Platform
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The Hiller platform used a five foot fiberglass ducted fan with twin counter-rotating coaxial propellers. The propellors were powered by two 44 horsepower two-cycle, engines. The design made use of the Bernoulli principle to generate 40% of the vehicle's lift from the air moving over the ducted fan's leading edge. The remaining 60% of lift was generated by thrust from the propellers. The original concept & prototypes were developed by Hiller Advanced Research from the work of engineer Charles H. Zimmerman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (N.A.C.A.). The machine was patented in 1960.
Seven prototypes of this machine were built. The Arizona Aerospace Foundation has one of these in their museum, and a picture of this bird can be seen at -
fusionanomaly.net/hillerflyingplatform.html
The Hiller VZ-1 "Pawnee" of 1955 is shown at
avia.russian.ee/vertigo/hiller_platform-r.html
A brief history of the work of Stanley Hiller may be found at
www.scalehelis.com/hiller/hiller.html
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