I know this has nothing to do with woodworking…but I have a passion for things that turn and climb…curved stairways and gyrocopters. The first picture is a view on a cross country trip I took Saturday of Lake Shelbyville in Illinois. I flew to a rotorcraft regional fly-in. The second is Champaign, Illinois on my return flight. The third is my machine…the fourth is a two place machine that I want to own someday..and the last is just a shot of some nice gyrocopters at Shelbyville, Illinois.
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Replies
nice, as usual , stan...
onea desedays
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
ever think oof getting roof racks for those things and landing in a customers backyard?
Totally awesome bro......makes us all wanna own one!
Be safe
andy
You can "be" the universe, but you can't know it. You are the answer- but you can't know you know.
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Stan
What do you think of these babes?
View Image
You can "be" the universe, but you can't know it. You are the answer- but you can't know you know.
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Andy: Thats a nice machine there. A tractor type...very stable...the rotor is like all gyrocopters...NOT powered but just in a constant state of autorotation. Here is a photo of a similar gyrocopter...a Little Wing model. It has a seven cylinder radial engine and is one sweet piece of engineering.
Stan
Been reading over the past months about gyro's (no not the sandwhich....lol).
Its odd that under a certain weight you need no liscense. Why is that? One can hurt someone no matter what the weight?
seems like a boat liscense around here...you don't need one....kind of odd if you ask me.
the amount of hours to lean to fly a gyro also seems ridiculously small. 15hrs?
Whats up with all that? Is it so simple?
Be safe
andy You can "be" the universe, but you can't know it. You are the answer- but you can't know you know.
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
I don't have the gonaz to go up in one of those
I don't think its so much you going up..its the coming down.lol You can "be" the universe, but you can't know it. You are the answer- but you can't know you know.
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
it's not the coming down, it's the sudden stopWe become by effort primarily what we end up becoming
- Zig Ziglar
Andy: If a gyro weighs 254 pounds or less, has a top level speed no greater that 63 miles per hour, and holds no more than five gallons of fuel..it is then an ultralight and will not need a license to fly. Mine exceeds all the above so I have to have a private pilots license and it has to be under the "experimental" catagory.
These limits make ultalights slower and take less training to learn to fly. I trained myself to fly but I already had my pilots license and had flown an ultralight several years.
A gyrocopter has to have a lot of study in their unique flight characteristics. They can fly from 0 to almost 100 mph with full control. A gyrocopter can not stall like an airplane...except in excessive high speed dives where you enter a condition of retreating blade stall. There is a lot to learn about managing the initial speed up of the rotor. Negative or zero g flight is to be strictly avoided. There are several other areas of serious study as well. This being said...they are then very easy to fly...they land like a crow...there descent angle with a dead engine is about the same trajectory that a badger follows when it leaps off a hayloft.
They are much safer than a normal fixed wing aircraft or ultralight during a forced landing. I have had 14 since 1985 and havent scratched my machine or myself yet.
Stan
I also noticed how inexpensive they are considering.
$15 grand for a kit with an engine???? How long to build one from a kit?
What does it cost to keep it at an airport?
I'm assuming you cant keep it in your yard for take offs even if you have 2 acres?
I've never seen one here on Long Island....is there a reason....although I've seen a few ultra lites several years ago.
Be safe
andy The way we regard death is critical to the way we experiance life.
When your fear of death changes, the way you live your life changes.
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Andy: They take up little space in a hanger..abut 6 feet by 23. It costs me just $20 a month to store it at the local airport. You can land in a very small space...takeoffs can take up to five hundred feet to as little as a few feet depending on the wind.
There was a story on a local gyroplane company in one of our local papers at:
http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=19615
I was just at an auction where one of their slightly used gyrocopters went for $14,000 including the trailer. Looked to be in pristine condition. The only one I have seen for sale around here.
Sure can't blame ya fer lovin it, but them thangs scare the sh** outa me. I've owned two Mooneys and practically lived in em. Nice shots.
The pictures are great! Is there a publication devoted to gyrocopters? Ocassionally I see stories in the homebuilt aircraft magazines.
I have another question, too. Can a ballistic chute be fitted to a gyrocopter? I am not sure how the rotor would complicate things. Just seems like a very safe little machine could be made even safer. Please keep the photos coming. Thanks.
Funny story relating to gyrocopters - I used to be a caretaker at a little airport in southwest Ohio (http://www.airnav.com/airport/OXD). I lived there, hangared planes, pumped fuel and so on. The fuel pumps were about 50 yards from the office. That was usually not a problem, since I only fueled a couple planes a day...
One weekend, someplace nearby was having a fly-in of gyrocopters. On Sunday, they were all doing some kind of formation flying and they stopped in at our airport for fuel.
I must have spent two hours filling these things up by myself. All of them wanted about two gallons of fuel; they wanted to charge it on their credit card; and they wanted a receipt. My day went like this: Fill the copter, run fifty yards to office to process the credit card, run 50 yard back to give the pilot his credit card and receipt, repeat 40 or 50 times... Some of the pilots were very patient, and some were downright rude...
For a long time, I didn't like gyrocopters very much.
Mike: Sorry for the slow reply,..my computer has been out for repairs. There have been gyrocopters with ballistic chutes set to blow down...the idea is to flip it over and set off the chute....I dont knowwwwwwww about that however. I have never heard of an actual deployment. These machines have a parachute already..the rotor. They land beautifully with a dead engine. I shut mine off a lot and just love hearing the popping sound of the rotor with the engine off. You just come down at about the same trajectory as a badger jumping off a hay loft....then you time the cyclic inputs so as to flare and there is little if any ground roll when you touch down.
Edited 9/24/2003 7:06:21 PM ET by Stan Foster
I knocked off early today and went out and viewed the harvest underway in Illinois. Here are a few shots of combines from about 50 feet altitude. One picture is I-57 near my home town of Paxton, Il.
Nice pictures Stan but I can see the steam rolling from the top of Boss Hogs head as he opens that first picture!
Doug
Whydat MF looks pink ???
That guy got off his line. He was either looking at you, or at the wet spot in the field.
When I am driving, and get distracted by something I tend to steer toward it if it is something that I am very interested in, so I slow down, and pay more than just quick attention to. I tend to steer away, if it is just something that catches my eye, and I look at it quickly, without slowing down.
That said, it seems maybe he was concentrating on the wet spot, to try to see it's shape from his relatively higher vantage point in the combine.
Makes me wonder how interested he would be in buying pics from you, of the spot.
A good heart embiggins even the smallest person.
Quittin' Time
Luka: Sorry for my slow response. I cant get all my posts to come up. That combine is an old Massey..and it needs new paint. He did have a big pond he was driving around. One thing I love to do is catch a combine from the rear...and slow fly above with the shadow of the whirling rotor blades just in front of the combine. They usually clutch the combine and open the door and wave. At least I think they are waving at me. One farmer did have four fingers missing that was waving. Maybe a combine accident????
Holy ka-pow a-popter! Those are taken from up high, it looks like, and getting dark too. Whoo-eeee!
I always run to look over your shoulder for these 'popter threads. Thanks for tickling my imagination. When I make enough to afford a Harley Davidson, I think I'll go for a 'popter instead.
Excellence is its own reward!
Great pics Stan.
A happy customer took me for a ride in this:
Ditch
I have always thought gyrocopters were cool. I think I'd like one of those Mad Max post-apocalyptic looking (sp?) ones.
Frank