“The airplane won’t amount to a damn until they get a machine that will act like a hummingbird
-go straight up, go straight down and alight like a humming bird”
(Thomas Edison)
                                                               THE HARRIER

Developed for the British Royal Air Force , the Harrier is at the edge of aircraft technology. It can fly at super sonic speed with an action ray of 400 miles (about 640Km - see Medidas). The Mariners adopted this non-conventional bomber Fighter. Today it’s so normal to see the Harrier doing things other planes can‘t, that it’s easy to forget the long and difficult VTOL history. By the way, VTOL means Vertical Take Off and Landing. That means a plane which can behave like an helicopter, but the Harrier can do much more than  this.
In the 50’s, the Rolls Royce Company created a device with 2 jet engines for development purposes of the VTOL system. It gave important information about the problem that was more complex than it may seem at a first sight. Many companies were studying the VTOL system and it took a long way to get to the Harrier's configuration.

The Harrier taking off (decolando)  

A major problem was the changing from vertical take off  to conventional flight, and many systems were tried and left behind .The question is that, during the transition, the engines stop providing sustentation before the plane has enough speed for the wings to work properly. Therefore the change in sustentation should follow the increase of speed. And the Harrier solved the problem. The Harrier uses a system of four pipes, that can send the engine power backwards or downwards, under the pilot's command. The plane takes off with the pipes pointing down and by turning them slowly backwards the transistion is made easily. The pilot can choose a short run take off with adjsuting the pipes angle to 60 degrees. This saves fuel for longer flights.
There are also air outputs on the nose , the tail and the wings edges, making it possible to hover like a helicopter with the advantage of high speed flight instead of the 200 miles maximum speed (320 Km/h) of the helicopter.
In Carrier Ships, the fighter plane is launched by a catapult, but the Harrier does not need any help operating more efficiently. During the landing on a Carrier, the plane arrives at 200 knots speed (360 Km/h) and its 10.000 kilos are stopped by a hook system. The Harrier arrives like a cat nesting itself on the deck.
In this 21 Century, the Harrier is getting old but it is still a powerful machine able to do impossible things to other fighter planes.
In the beginning of the 20th Century Thomas Edison said the phrase at the top of this page. Well, the day has come. The Harrier is here.