The Radia Windrunner, a proposal for an aircraft to transport wind turbine blades up tp 105m in length. Is it ever likely to fly, well I think that that is still a maybe. But I have to say that Radia does seem to be making progress, but it isn’t due to fly until 2030 sometime.
So the company has put together a glossy and informative website, well in as much as they can at this point in time. They also have put together a team of people with some impressive credentials, they have put together money to get started on the project. They have engendered intrest from the Military, which is always a good source of funding.
Now as I already mentioned there is interest from the Military, so are we likely to see these in low visibility grey – well I think it’s unlikely. But some kind of joint venture, where the Military can make demands on the aircraft usage is possible. Afterall the Military has the C-5 and C-17 fleets that it can call on, although they don’t have the volumetric capacity – they do have the load capacity and the C-17 does have the semi prepared strip capacity.
At an estimated unit cost of $400M, these will not be a cheap option – even for the military. However Radia seem to be very confidant, for example the company Radia INC has reserved over 60 registrations in the US Civil register. On four of these the company has paid the fee, these are N118WR, N226WR, N232WR and N252WR. So the game as they say is afoot.
Make no mistake here, although I’ve been a bit flipant, possibly skeptical – the reality is that this is a massive undertaking. The Windrunner is designed to operate from a 1800m unprepared strip, The fact that in needs an airstrip is an other oparating hurdle to be overcome, flying in the vicinity of 200m tall wind turbines is risky.
So I will be interested to see if this aircraft makes it through to “in service” status, I for one would quite like to see one. I guess I’ll have to wait until 2030 for that, in the mean time you should have a look at the website.