What does the future look like?

[MrGrey]

Hello,

Let me introduce myself for those whom do not know me. My name is Matt from PRA 18 and fly a honeybee gyro and would like to express some of my thoughts to those whom wish to get a young persons (25 yrs) perspective on the past and future of the PRA.


I was recently blessed to recieve a large number of back issues of the Rotorcraft magazine and have devoured them and gained alot of insight in to the PRA from them. I look back at the glory days and read the great articles from numerous contributors and wonder how long it continue. I understand that we are a small niche group of eccentric personalities that gravitate to the dream of flight but, I must continue to wonder where are we headed. I want to be able to share the good times for years to come yet I am nervous as to what is going to happen. From my perspective I see an aging association that doesnt have the enthusiasm once held in the PRA. My first and only trip to Mentone this year left me with a sour taste in my stomach and somewhat compelled me to voice an opinion.

I eagerly await to see what Rusty has spooled up for the PRA in the coming year. I was encouraged by his Ultraflight radio interview and wish him the best of luck. That is a large undertaking for one man but we should not let him do it alone. He has a great immediate support team behind him but we can all help with our own efforts at a grassroots level at home.

That said I would like to share how our chapter is doing our part to keep the sport alive. Our club is going through a rejuvenation with the influx of three 25 and younger aged pilots that dedicate a lot of time together to share our dream. We spent countless hours over the summer flying, building, designing gyros, traveling, spreading the gospel of gyros, and become great friends. And that is what gyros are about. I think that grassroot efforts are the key to continuing on in to the future. If we all do our part to draw attention to ourselves about the positives of our sport we will, in all likelyhood, begin to sew new seeds. Remember this all starts at home. Host a fly-in, go to a fly-in, join a parade, invite friends to the airport, create a build night, take a club trip to a museum, organize fundraisers, get ahold of the local media (not by crashing), make club meetings easily accessible by aspiring pilots, take a friend for a ride, advertise events, invite people to the forum, join the PRA, pass on Rotorcraft issues, and watch as we begin to grow again.

I hope that my words do not go unheard and maybe i am wrong but if we all do our part we can make this sport more fun and safe for all. I am an enthusiastic person and DO look forward to the future. I know we all can make a difference. And like I said before this is all my opinion and in no way am here to tell someone how to do their job or how to run a chapter. I hope that we will all benefit a little from enthusiasm and get the PRA in to the coming years. Thank you for your time and I appreciate the opportunity to voice my opinions to others.

Sincerely,

Matt

[Vance]

Thank you for your thoughts Mat.

I believe our future is secure with thoughtful hard working young people like you involved.

Change is the only constant in life. What worked yesterday won’t work as well today, but the fundamentals are the same. Passion drives our sport and it sounds like you have the passion.

Thank you, Vance

[Dean_Dolph]

Matt, have Adam share with you the email I sent him 9/27 that deals with your chapter and the influx of 'youth'.

The PRA has always been an older person's organization. I don't have any stats to back up that statement but when I attended my first PRA convention in 1967 I looked around and wondered what were all those 'old' people doing there! Old being a relative term. But through the years there were enough younger and middle age people joining to keep the pipeline full enough that the oldtimers had replacements and the organization continued to flourish. But for what ever reason the pipe line stopped being filled and in fact some of those already in it decided to climb out.

I'm not aware of any concerted effort over the years to entice or create younger enthusiasts. I guess the leadership at the time was content with the membership numbers since the fees covered expenses and there wasn't any big plans to improve member services. So, there were no PRA promotional events. There have always been a few individuals and chapters that unofficially did this. But there was no organizational wide promotional effort.

If you get an opportunity to see the note I sent Adam you will see more in depth comments.

[Heron]

Sensei . . .you dont need the stats, just look at the pictures.
When I first joined and started bugging on the Forum, my question were:
Where are the young people?
What about African descent pilot's?
Did we invite the Latinos?
Matt came along some years later and just voiced the same concen . . .are we pointing our guns to the right target?
Many technical issues where debated, reviewed and our gyros are way better today. Also the data available for newcomers is there (here)
If we go to HIgh School once a year, a lecture, static display or demo flight where possible will bring new guys and parents to check this out . . .
There is where the Future is!
But I think we are going to do better now!
The Latino group is the one more likely to respond, becoming part of a group like ours is a step up on their social integration and they will do it with pride!
The gyro manufacturers should help on this task, after all it is their market we are going to expand.
thanks
Heron

[gyroplanes]

Heron,
I disagree with you a little.
I don't think the future of gyroplanes in this country will be much improved by advertising. Our club has been doing about everything possible to recruit new and interested prospective gyro pilots for many, many years.

Our real and major problem is in the gyroplanes reputation.

Mr. Grey (Matt) failed to mention that our club had over 100 members at one time. It had nothing to do with the age of the membership, heck, I was Matt's age when I joined the club.

Our airport manager has had a love hate relationship with our club for all of his 20+ years as manager. He told me the other day that he'd rather communicate through me than one of the "young Turks" as they don't appear to listen to him. We probably have far more enemies on the airport than friends, due to the "Younguns" disregarding FAA and airport rules. How many times have we cut off a fixed wing in the traffic pattern lately? More than I'd care to count. Did any of these guys try to talk to the pilot's they inconvenienced? I think not. Lose another "friend" at the airport.

I asked the airport manager, who had no aviation interest or experience when he took the job, why he disliked us so much? His response was that in the last 30-40 years there have been 5 fatalities at our airport, 4 of those were in gyroplanes. His primary goal is safety. We are his biggest threat and fear. Many of the neighborhood noise complaints come from gyros. Many of the airport tenant complaints are about gyros. We are the ants at the picnic.

When I'm introduced to someone, eventually the subject of "Where do you work?" comes up. I reply that I work for the helicopter operator at the airport and more often than not, I get asked about the "gyrocopter" crash. It's sad to have to ask "Which one" (I usually don't). I'm more concerned about the "next" fatality.

I just spent a delightful hour or two looking at some web sites involving forum member Herve Terrasson. Flying on "raids" and having air shows where gyros safely fly in from all over the country are the best form of recruitment. We have to establish the gyroplane as a viable aircraft in this country.

It's not about recruiting and selling. It's about a sport that is routinely safe and accessable.

[quadrirotor]

It's not about recruiting and selling. It's about a sport that is routinely safe and accessable.

I agree with you Tom; i think that the only thing we need is what you defined:
A safe and silent gyro, reliable and not more expensive than a trike...
Tell me, Tom...does this gyro exist?

[Heron]

Well
I came aboard just in time to see the transition between the past and the present.
Lets forget the past . . .advertise the future.
We dont have those machines anylonger and the new people never heard of them.
OUr problems is right there in your eyes Tom M. you can see the bad times, general public can't.
Our groups (Chapters and PRA) are geared up to gyro pilots/owners/builders and a very little to general public.
I have received lots of help from the last and a very cold shoulder from the first. My problem is with the stabilishment.
I was right then, I am right now . . .if you build they will come and have been around in greater numbers.
I had enough of what does not work and why it did not work.
It will work and we can make it happen. If I get my legs back I will propose something to RustY Nance, it is just a matter of a little money in my hands.
Thanks
Heron
P.S. take Ron A as an example . . .he came in, never got involved with bad machines and now he still with us. and He has options . . .

[Adam H]

Dean,

Your e-mail has not gone un-noticed! I forwarded it to couple of the younger club members and was planning on talking about it at our next club meeting and responding to you after that.

[PW_Plack]

I can only speak for myself on this.

I saw the Popular Mechanics ads for the Bensen when I was a young teen. At the time, I wasn't old enough to drive, and didn't have the money anyway.

After Dad's PM subscription ran out, I never saw or heard anything about gyros again for years. Then, after 25 years in radio broadcasting, and on the verge of becoming an empty-nester, I wound up at a radio station which extensively covered a major airshow in my area, and saw Jim Vanek's performance. I was bitten hard by the bug then, but what followed was an opportunity few others have.

I was able to go immediately and talk to Jim, discovered that Sport Copter manufactured kits nearby. I found and joined Chapter 73, which meets at Sport Copter. I took training there. I found a reasonably-priced (for Sport Copter) pre-owned but never-assembled kit at an estate sale.

In short, the planets aligned for me.

The problem with numbers of participants in the sport goes beyond demographics. Our demographics don't look much different from fixed-wing sport aviation. That has to do with the point in your life you achieve enough disposable income to participate. Our problem is accessibility, at every stage of my own story above:

(1) Opportunities to see gyros fly are rare. Poorly publicized isn't a strong enough term. We're almost a secret society. Our events are usually conducted where you'd have to drive well off a main road to see them.

(2) Supposed someone gets lucky, and happens to see one in the air. "Cool! What was that thing?" How many people have even heard of "gyroplanes" or "gyrocopters?" If they have, the term probably carries baggage. If they haven't, they'll probably go home and Google "small helicopter."

(3) How will they ever find your chapter or other local meeting? If they don't even know what the machine is called, where will they look? Will they persist through the ten people who try to talk them out of flying gyros, to find you?

(4) If they get past this point, they'll discover that they have to build their own.

(5) If they get past that, they'll usually have to travel to train.

(6) The safety record is abysmal. I don't blame the machines for that. Yes, there are unstable machines which have contributed more than their share of statistics, but our sport has developed a culture in which it's considered normal to routinely bang up machines during and after training. This is not tolerated among fixed-wing students.

Tom noted above the "bad boy" image at airports. We're seen as the crowd that won't follow rules and worse, has never learned them. IMHO, ground instruction in this sport must be substandard compared to the rest of general aviation. I see questions here on the forum from certificated pilots, on the most basic material from the PTS, and wonder how they got their certificates!

I see a couple of possibilities to turn this around. Someone needs to write a gyro into a hit TV show or movie, something that will approximate the buzz Bensen achieved with those old ads in Popular Mechanics. Remember the old Kodak commercial featuring the Bensen?

The other big hope is that SLSA gyroplanes will become available for sale alongside all the new Czeck fixed-wing LSAs. This could also backfire, because there will be no filter to strain out well-heeled, impulsive, reckless people who will take jump into the sport and take shortcuts.

In the meantime, we could move things forward with well-organized chapters, well-publicized meetings and events, and turning whatever evangelistic zeal we have for the sport toward improving our manners in the traffic pattern.

Maybe anyone with a gyroplane related website needs to includes meta tags or a title on his page which includes the words "small helicopter", not necessarily where it will be seen by visitors, but where search engines can find it. I really wonder how many people have seen a gyro fly, then had no clue how to find out more.

[MrGrey]

Great responses fellas! Plack i welcome your comments because I feel they shadow some of my opinions regarding getting gyro acknowledgment out there to the people. I did however realize that I missed an important part that Tom and others have picked up on. That would have to be the conceptions currently held and portrayed regarding gyros, safety, and the image. That got me thinking and I will admit I have been a culprit of some of the things listed. I will make a continued effort that I have started as of late to continuing flying safer and not becoming a nuisance to others. In addition I will continue as stated to spread the gospel of gyros. In fact, today I have a co-worker that is VERY interested in gyros after working a full day with him answerin questions to the best of my ability. I brought a new member in just recently and may have another on the way now. Hopefully I can help our chapter grow to be widely recognized chapter again with a cleaner record for the future.

[Dean_Dolph]

Adam, any insight you guys can offer will be of value to the whole organization.

There was an 'exit' poll being conducted after Mentone to find out why members dropped out to see if there was an answer to this problem. Appealing to a younger crowd isn't the same type of situation since it is more proactive the reactive. The trick is to find the reasons certain groups of people join and then highlight those reasons to those outside the PRA.

I believe what Matt and Tom have said is true as far as the gyro rep. However, I doubt that the bad rep is the only or may not even the major reason for lack of PRA growth or even a contributor to the loss of members. And it isn't likely we will ever know unless the 'exit' poll gives us an indication.

Tom, how come Chapter 18 doesn't have 100 members now? Why didn't it continue to grow? There weren't any specifics mentioned as to where advertising or promotional activities have taken place but I suspect that the vast majority of them have been at aviation events. While we can use them to keep our aviation brethern aware of us; I really think there is more value in exposing home built rotorcraft to the public at large if growing the PRA is the objective. Paul's mentioning a gyro being a focal point in a TV show or movie would promote to the public at large.

In this thread the word 'grassroots' and then chapters were mentioned. I find that they are starting to be mentioned more often and if that continues then this means that PRA members are starting to recognize that they are the key to the organizations success. Hmm, this could get to be interesting if the whole organization suddenly and collectively has a light bulb moment!

[GyroRon]

here is these Young guns! :party:

[WHY]

The strength of any foundation is the cornerstone, be it the foundation of a person, a organization, or a business, and that cornerstone is "reputation".

You can go into most any public airport today and mention "gyrocopter" and you will get one of two responses, "a what" or "you mean one of those death traps"

When the "gyrocopter" first came out it had no Hs but was closse to CLT when used with the original short prop, but then very quickly the props became longer and they began to raise the engine and thrust line and you had the HTL, enter the serious potential for PIO and PPO, even Bensen knew of this problem and gave a procedure for stopping it, (but did not correct the design )this with the fact that for some time a two place trainer did not exist, and the fatal accidents began to soar, to the point that it developed a public reputation of being the most dangerous flying machine in the air.

Back in the 30's the gyro had the reputation of being the "safest" flying machine in the air, but the aviation of today does not remember that, I would"nt know it if I had not studied some of the gyro history.

Our organization is like the girl in high school that got pregnant, before she got pregnant every body wanted to date her. afterward nobody wanted to date her, much less marry her (join her?). Our fatality toll is like her getting pregnant, we will be forever overcoming that reputation, and what makes it ever so difficult is that even now some machines are not exactly stable and perhaps the most troublesome of all,anyone wanting to get into "the gyro sport" can find a good supply of the old unstable machines that have been setting around in sheds and barns and are not only dangerous by design but now rusted and corroded also. These can be found on E-bay and Barnstormers for sale by a "friend" of the owner and the "seller" "know's nothing about this machine".

The price is "great" compaired to newer machines and the newbie thinks he has made the steal of the year, little does he know and even less is he going to like it when he finds out what he really has. Worse yet is if he does not find out and tries a llttle "self training" ( there so simple you know) he is likely to become another statistic, and on goes the reputation.

UNTIL WE PRODUCE A BETTER PUBLIC IMAGE AND A BETTER REPUTATION, GROWTH WILL BE SLOW TO NON -EXISTANT

Tony

[Heron]

Good post Paul P.
"The planets lined up for me!"
I have been lining up planets for 5 years now but, Pluto is mad for been demoted and does line up well . . .
My suggestion:
Paint or bumper sticker . . . This is a gyroplane! (www.rotaryforum.com)
Big on the side of the trailer, we had more people stopping us on route to the airport than coming to it . . .
Go to School . . .Cience project . . .lecture (kids will pest the parents)
Poster on airports
`PRA marketing Director
etc
thanks
Heron

[MrGrey]

Boy I tell ya if that guy in the middle of Rons pic could pick up new PRA members like he does the women we wouldnt have any problems... J/K just lightening up the conversation

[gyroplanes]

Tom, how come Chapter 18 doesn't have 100 members now? Why didn't it continue to grow? There weren't any specifics mentioned as to where advertising or promotional activities have taken place but I suspect that the vast majority of them have been at aviation events.


Back when I joined our club (PRA Chapter 18, The Greater Midwest Rotorcraft Club) It was an era when most people didn't know what a gyro was (we weren't even competing with the Greek sandwhich then) Those that knew of gyros, dismissed them as "Unsafe. Before I discovered the club at a fly in, all I heard was "death trap", "More dead than flying", "Bensen himself died in one", "Many dead in our area" (there was one local fatal, an in-flight heart attack)

Thanks to guys like Dick Wunderlich, Frank Marchetti, Bob Fitzpatrick I learned the truth about our little "trick on mother nature" (as Igor Bensen used to say). I joined and became a PRA "lifer".

Our club slowly grew and eventually rented a small farm strip and hangar. This was a major turning point and gave us a home. People found us.

Our growth came from air show attendance. We also did a very unique thing. We had a very large shopping mall near us that was failing to attract stores and shoppers. We were asked to put some gyros in an empty store window to attract attention. We also put a sign in the store window saying we were holding our next meeting there. We had 13 new attendees and kept a good number of them as quality members.
We have been in several parades (this year our club wasn't, but we had two gyros in the parade. A church and the local EAA chapter borrowed them)

We participated in a Mall Show featuring sport aviation. We gained the most members from this event.

We have also had a club display at pancake breakfasts and even a gun show.

For club unity, we do non flying get togethers such as movies (Aviator, Fly boys) and visits to air museums (EAA, Wright-Patterson)

When we numbered over 100 members. We tried to keep our club meetings fun and educational.

Our decline started when we had a double fatality in 1999, a clearly preventable accident that took the lives of two of our most popular members.

We lost several members who either sold their gyros or never flew them again after the tragedy. We probably lost 10 or more over a short period of time.

Our club president, while a well meaning guy, made the accident the main topic of every meeting for many months. More and more members stopped coming and simply dropped out. The president himself, was a new pilot, and pretty much stopped flying. A pall was cast that was very hard to get out from under.

We were attempting to hold the group together and were welcoming in the New Year with our annual Polar Bear Fly-in. A new member and gyro student pilot made an apparent last second decision to fly in a gusting wind and PPOed in to his death, right outside the party, while dozens watched.

The cloud of doom hung over our chapter and most activity waned. Viewing sudden, unexpected death has a way of slowing down enthusiasm.


The future looked bleak for us. The local papers ran articles about the unsafe aircraft known as gyroplanes. Thanks to the computer age, they were able to dig up and rehash the previous fatalities. The airport manager didn't want us around (4 out of 5 airport fatalities were in gyros)



The slate has a way of wiping itself clean after a while. Chuck Roberg started instructing in his SnoBird tandem, Chuck became a CFI and attracted a few new members to our club. Among them were a couple of gyro scam victims (victims of an out east company selling old B-7 Bensen plans with spindle heads) we set them straight and eventually elected one of them as our new club president, Adam Helwich (forum member). Matt (Mr Grey) was drawn in by the gravity of our faster rotating sphere and has become a welcome enthusiast (as you can tell by his posts)

You hate to slow down such youthful exuberience, but I don't want to start the fight with our airport manager all over again, or worse yet, see another fatality.

There are a few mysteries that still confound me regarding our chapter. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, when we numbered 25 or so members, we would see almost every one of them participate in the PRA convention, wherever it was. (and with aircraft) Today we have a hard time getting more than a handfull to go to the convention, even when it's as close as Mentone (about 125 miles away) It's something I can't figure out.

[Chuck_Ellsworth]

I have spent many decades in the flight training business and the following comment is probably about as close as you will come to why gyros have such a poor safety record and are seen as dangerous.

Paul wrote:

" (6) The safety record is abysmal. I don't blame the machines for that. Yes, there are unstable machines which have contributed more than their share of statistics, but our sport has developed a culture in which it's considered normal to routinely bang up machines during and after training. This is not tolerated among fixed-wing students. "

Correct Paul, it never ceases to amaze me that " Tearing up " a machine one or more times is seen as a right of passage to becoming a gyro pilot.

Even more perplexing is when some instructors seem to accept this as normal.

Until this mindset is no longer tolerated gyros will continue to earn their dangerous reputation.

The gyro properly designed and properly flown should be the safest flying machine not the most unsafe.

Chuck E.

[Dean_Dolph]

........
Our growth came from air show attendance. We also did a very unique thing. We had a very large shopping mall near us that was failing to attract stores and shoppers. We were asked to put some gyros in an empty store window to attract attention. We also put a sign in the store window saying we were holding our next meeting there. We had 13 new attendees and kept a good number of them as quality members.
We have been in several parades (this year our club wasn't, but we had two gyros in the parade. A church and the local EAA chapter borrowed them)

We participated in a Mall Show featuring sport aviation. We gained the most members from this event.

We have also had a club display at pancake breakfasts and even a gun show.

For club unity, we do non flying get togethers such as movies (Aviator, Fly boys) and visits to air museums (EAA, Wright-Patterson)

When we numbered over 100 members. We tried to keep our club meetings fun and educational...........Ha, it wasn't my intention to draw this out but your post reflects my thinking about taking gyro promotion to the masses rather than just preaching to the choir at aviation events.

There isn't a breakdown to tell where the most members were acquired but it really doesn't matter. What matters is that we use our imagination to find venues to introduce the gyro to the public. I personally feel that the mall shows have the best chance of picking up members if only because of the higher pedestrian traffic. However, we do need to remember we have a responsibility to new enthusiasts to educate them and provide mentorship.

[Heron]

I went to a fly-in down here and the talk of the moment was the number of crashes and showing of scars as proud medals of honor.
The new gyro presented at the fly-in, after 4 years in the shop, did not fly with two as I told them before, they want to fly a 2.2 direct drive with two people, it ain´t going to happen.
Many people that joined the Brazilian Forum are already flying trikes, there is no option for training here.
To grow we need to explain how a gyro works, the changes in the last few years and the future right around the corner.
And be in lots of places where young people are. In my little home town they have a motorcicle club with around 20 guys and they told me gyros would be too expensive . . .the bikes cost double what a good gyro will cost.
thanks
Heron