Plane spotter: Flight of the ‘fenestron’

Some aircraft are just obviously visually distinctive, a characteristic that puts them right in the wheelhouse of plane spotters looking to expand their aircraft-identification repertoires. And speaking of wheel housings, sometimes plane spotters examining an intriguingly novel airframe also find themselves expanding their vocabularies of aerodynamic terms. A striking structural feature of the Eurocopter EC135 helicopter is its shrouded tail rotor. Known as a fenestron, the design—evident to any plane spotter—is a feature of many Eurocopter light models, and the company considers it “a trademark of the brand.”