Vertiflite May/June 2021

ships for one year. It was a beautiful experience with big engines — 20,000 hp turning one revolution per second.” Coincidence nevertheless provided a new direction. “One day, I saw a helicopter landing on the beach to unload passengers, and I said, ‘How beautiful.’” Krysinski knew French national helicopter maker Aérospatiale needed engineers, “So I wrote a letter and was invited for an interview, and that’s how my helicopter career started.” Krysinski started at Aérospatiale modeling rotors and rotor mechanics. “One of my first jobs was when we still produced Gazelle helicopters. I was asked by my boss in aeromechanics to model a change in the blades.” Diligent work earned the new engineer an assignment at the company flight test center to change the position of the horizontal stabilizer on the Gazelle. Krysinski recalled, “At the flight test center, I had my dictionary, but ‘horizontal stabilizer’ was not in there.” I got a pilot to explain the situation to me. I knew right then he immediately called our technical director and asked ‘Who did you send me?’” An all-night effort generated a plan to incline the helicopter stabilator to unload the main rotor. “It was my first success in this area.” The Aérospatiale design office gave Krysinski more chances to do rotor computations, and it brought him into contact with German engineers during the Eurocopter merger with Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB). “I was very open- minded to external work, speaking several languages, so I was quickly enlisted in relations with MBB. They had worked with Aérospatiale in the past, and it was a fantastic period. Mixing the cultures between engineers, you learn a lot. You can give your opinion. If you disagree, it’s excellent. Either you can change your mind or vice-versa. I had the pleasure of meeting very brilliant MBB designers, Helmut Huber, Dr. Dieter Braun and Heiniger Strehlow. For me it was a fantastic period, this merger of the companies, the merger of the cultures as well.” The merger in 1988 gave Krysinski an important role on Eurocopter’s first joint product, the Tiger attack helicopter. “One of the most important items was vibration. I was in charge of the anti-vibration device called SARIB — it’s a soft suspension which disconnects the gearbox from the fuselage. For me, it was a fabulous experience between the calculation, the design, the laboratory tests, the shake tests and the flight tests. It was then that I learned the power of the cooperation — the key power of Airbus is really the cooperative spirit. I learned the most important lesson is the diversity of culture.” Racing to Market One late work night, Eurocopter design chief Philippe Roesch showed Krysinski a preliminary drawing of what would become the X 3 high-speed compound helicopter (originally designated the X 3 or “X-Cubed”). Krysinski became X3 chief engineer. “We prepared the project very quickly and got agreement of the top management.” The highly modified Dauphin with anhedral lifting wings and auxiliary tractor propellers flew for the first time on Sept. 6, 2010. Krysinski noted, “From the drawing to the flight, that 2 ½ years, I took, I think, three days of holiday [vacation], and we were working two shifts. Fortunately, my wife was supportive. I was in the office with the first shift at six o’clock in the morning and

left after the second shift at 10 o’clock at night. It was a tremendous experience in teamwork.” The highly modified Dauphin achieved 255 kt (472 km/h) in level flight and 263 kt (487 km/h) in a descent. X3 lessons shaped the RACER, which will soon start final assembly for flight tests next year at the German armed forces flight test center at Manching Air Base, north of Munich (and east of Airbus Germany’s Donauwörth facilities). “RACER is the logical consequence of the X3,” said Krysinski. “We made a lot of improvements. First, we have the box-wing with much less downwash effect, so we improve performance in the hover. We settled on pusher propellers which reduce the power needed in forward flight. RACER also has an interesting start-and-stop mode. You can stop one engine in flight and continue at 190 kt [350 km/h] due to the specific behavior of the rotor.” Early this year, Airbus unveiled its H130 testbed to experiment with a range of helicopter technologies. Krysinski explained, “We have our flying laboratory, Flightlab, where — in a very efficient way — our prototyping and flight test people can put in flight very quickly all the ‘technobricks’ which can bring these technologies to market very quickly. I’m thinking about, for instance, our RSAS Rotor Strike Alerting System, which allows much better awareness of the pilot around the helicopter. We are testing a very advanced health-and-usage-monitoring system based on digital accelerometers. We are also doing noise measurements to better predict the trajectories of aircraft in flight and better understand what is the impact of noise on the population on the ground. We are testing functions related to autonomy like the Eagle guidance and landing camera on the nose of the helicopter to capture images and artificial intelligence processing and detection, coupled with the automatic pilot, which allows us automatic landings.” Krysinski continued, “Very soon, we will test the hybrid- electric system for single-engine aircraft, which will help with autorotation and help with noise. This is also one of the first signs of electrification coming to the helicopter. We are very happy that at Airbus we are investing in electric flight. We’ve already tested two concepts: one is Vahana and the second is CityAirbus, currently undergoing testing in Manching. There are 200 eVTOL startups around the world, but we are the only ones with an aircraft with reasonable mass and a really useful load. “We firmly believe by working on this concept, electric flight will come. There is big progress — I call it converging technology — in batteries, which are getting lighter and lighter; electric motors, where specific power obtained per kilogram is much better; new materials for the fuselage, which make it very, very light; and we have all the sensors and computers that are very light to provide redundancy. All those converge to make electric flight possible.” Tomasz Krysinski joined the then-American Helicopter Society in 1989, and the Board of Directors last year; he will become President of VFS after Forum 77 and observed, “The most important value is connecting with the passionate VTOL community, sharing experience and knowledge and meeting extraordinary people and pioneers.”

May / June 2021

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