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VZ-9-AV Avrocar: Jack Frost's Flying Jeep (1958)

By Glen Taylor - September 27, 2007

in Object Culture

Wikipedia has a fascinating section devoted to the maverick engineer "Jack" Frost's "proof-of-concept" test vehicle he called the Avrocar. Funded by the US army who were undertaking several experiments on smaller VTOL aircraft that would act as a "flying Jeep", 2 units were built and later abandoned due to stability issues.

Pilot control was entirely through a single side-mounted control stick. Pitch and roll were controlled through conventional fore-aft and side-to-side motions, while yaw could be controlled by twisting the stick. No mechanical linkages were used, the stick instead controlled the flow of high pressure air around the craft, which either directly attached to various control surfaces, or indirectly through local cable linkages to replace controls that were intended to be cable-actuated (like throttle controls on the engines).

Spotted over at the Antenna Research Facility

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David Dobson

15 years ago

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Thanks for posting this note on Avro. This company was involved with all kinds of interesting projects.....all ahead of their time. I remember watching as a kid on the local cable station old training videos from Avro. They blew my mind and we very captivating and served to motivate me into wanting to design interesting products myself. This business has a special place in my heart because my family all worked for Avro R&D near Toronto (Iï¿½m not sure on what projects). My Dad was an engineer, my Mom was a secretary to the president (you can see how they met), my aunt was the Social Coordinator (4K + people all needing some events to encourage team spirit), and my uncle was in shipping and receiving. I even worked in this same facility when I graduated OCAD (when it was owned my McDonnell Douglas).

What an inspiration these very creative people were!

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