Gyrodyne

A flight wrench is an aircraft, the drives of aircraft and rotorcraft combined (English compound). Unlike the helicopter that uses one or more main rotors to the drive, the forward thrust is not, or not produced solely by its main rotor, but by one or more in the longitudinal (horizontal) acting propellers.

The design allows for vertical takeoff and landing ( VTOL), but at the same time better flight performance compared to a helicopter. The speed of a helicopter is limited not by the lack of propulsion of its rotor, but by its aerodynamics. After some early designs were recognized, therefore, that this construction only makes sense if the wings are used, they are then referred to as a precise combination wrench flight. This most commonly encountered construction is counted in the English speaking occasionally to the category of convertible aircraft ( Convertiplanes ).

Main rotor and the propeller can have separate drives, but usually the propeller drive is derived from the support screw drives, although this requires complicated gear. In practice, it also showed control problems, as with many VTOL vehicles, especially during the transition between flight modes. The flight screwdriver could therefore not enforce it were built only few experimental samples or prototypes that did not go to series.

As part of an American experimental program an entity belonging to the change aircraft structural design were tested in the 1980s, in which the rotor in horizontal flight is shut down completely and as an additional airfoil acts: Boeing X -50 and Sikorsky X-wing.