How I managed to destroy my gyro.

[jucie]

As many of you knows, I am a newbie. After 2 hours of gyroglyder + 5 of dual with a certified instructor on a biplace instruction gyro (my gyro is a monoplace), the instructor tolds me that I achieved a level he considered enough for me to solo. His criteria is (or was) : after all planned lessons (culminating with emergency landings trainning with engine idle), I was able to fly 2 hours in a row without any errors. So, despite my few hours, he considered me ready to solo. I agreed.

After carefully inspecting and test flying my machine, for ultimate security he attached a GPS on my instruments panel and said "if by any event you find yourself lost at the sky, follow the GPS arrow and you will be back here". He went to the biplace to follow me. At ground a bunch of pilots were told to help me by doing gestures and signaling if needed.

After I left the ground, first surprise: my machine wasn't near as fast to climb as the instruction biplace I was acquainted to. I remember thinking: "oh-oh - the ground is too near". During trainning, I always saw some trees near the far end of the runway by looking down. Now I was seeing the same trees by looking over my right shoulder. I keep myself calm and proceeded as told by my instructor "if you want to climb, puts more throttle and keep the joystick ahead". So I increased throttle a little, and a little more, and a little more ("when is this supposed to climb?"), and a little more. Enough. I was climbing. That alleviates my tension.

I took a deep breath and got quite happy because that was the first moment I was actually flying alone. Wonderful sensation. I crossed a little cloud. "Cloud? Uh, mama mia, I am very high! I must go down!" And I was fast! The instruction biplace fly at 40 up to 60 Mph. My instruments now showed I was at 80 Mph and going faster and faster. "Be calm, JuciE.", I told myself, "Just pull the throttle." I pulled a little, and a little more, and a little more ("when is this supposed to go down?"), and a little more. Yes! I was going down at a steady pace. My instructor was too far away much lower than I was, he was trying to show me the path I should do. I followed him, but as I aligned to the runway I was very high, so I pulled the throttle, not a little, but a lot! As I reach the begginning of the runway I was stil very high, so a pilot on the ground made a signal for me to do a curve to the left, a ride to go down and approach the runway much lower.

I turned left, made a gesture to my friends on the ground (an error) and thinked "Ok, let me appreciate the view a little bit, as I take this ride". I no longer looked to the panel, because I was looking straight ahead. For my surprise, a few moments after that, the ground were up rising towards me! I was descending vertically. "What happens?" As my last error, I turned right, pointing to the runway. As a deserved gift, I got a tail wind. I looked down and saw the green grass approaching me faster and faster... CRASH!!

I released my belt and managed to get out of that pile twisted metal that only 15 minutes before was my gyro. I standed up, and did a gesture to show to my friends I was ok. They were running to me like crazy.
- ARE YOU OK?
- Yes, I am fine.
- WHY DIDN'T YOU PUSH THE THROTTLE?

Then I understood. That was my falt. When I approached the runway, I pulled the throttle a lot to go down fast. When I turned left, I forgot to push the throttle to it's position to go straight ahead again. So, the gyro went down, as she was told to do. Sad, but true. Rigth now, I am in the process of acquiring the parts with some suppliers here around.

I didn't try to explain that before because I think my poor English woldn't allow me to, but now I think you got the idea.

[Aussie_Paul]

Well writen Jucie, nice English describing your accident.

Aussie Paul.

[chuter]

Glad you're ok Jucie. Sorry about your broken gyro.

[Friendly]

Thanks Juice,
I have not got off the ground yet, your experience reinforces me to keep taxi until my reactions to throttle become instinctive. I know there was a lot going on for you and your story will help other beginners. It is also a testimony of instructors trying to make honest decisions to allow someone to advance and not just extend training hours for money as some people have commented at times. I am glad to read your comments and not read about your death. *80 mph , wow !!! you really put the "juice " to it. lol.

[Heron]

Jucie . . .by the way they described your crash landing I thought you were flying behind the power curve, not so . . .
How is your rebuilding going? Easy or hard?
Good you walked away in one piece!
Heron

[barnstorm2]

Jucie,

I am glad to hear you are alright. I am also glad to hear you are already working on rebuilding your gyro.

I am suprized that your instructor did not have you crow-hop and fly the run way in your monoplace for a few hours before he had you fly the pattern.

Considering you only have 5 hours of duel and no time crow-hopping I think you did very well. I also think your instructor owes you a new gyro.

[PW_Plack]

Jucie,

I'm glad to hear you are OK! It might be good practice to try some aborted landings over a long runway. Just practice coming down, but not flaring, then powering back up and climbing out for another pass. It may help you develop the throttle instinct.

[ToddP]

Jucie,

Glad to hear you walked away. I have no doubt you've gone over the accident a thousand times in your mind. I'm also positive you know what you did wrong. It sounds to me like your instructor had you trained to the point where you were doing everything really well. He failed in the fact he didn't train you to handle the unexpected or unusual.

I'm glad your OK and look forward to hearing about your flying in the future.

[landman]

I learned to fly the Bensen glider then put a vw engine on it with a 50/26 Troyer prop. I lived in rural Alberta Canada so the highway made an excellent runway. I flew in the earley morning and could see miles ahead. Even when I met the odd auto, there was room for everyone as long as I stuck to my side of the road. If I was up, I could fly over the side. My problem was staying up. I would scoot down the road and slooooooly ease back on the stick and paddle along in ground effect as best I could, reluctantly settle down and take another scoot. Once in a while I even flew along at 50 ft or so till I got close to my uncles drive way and power line which crossed the road. No fool that I knew of would try to fly a gyro right OVER a power line.

I guess I should have patented my old Bensen as a trainer.

Anyway one day I hauled it to a buddy of mine who had a bensen with a 72 mac engine and a half mile grass strip and I guess I hit an updraft or something because I was Flying High. I decided to fly down to, land but having never pulled back on the throttle while airborne came up with some pretty damn alarming stick shake. Being way up there and pra magazine qualified to fly. I looked up from the landing strip and noticed my little air bubbly thing was up to 90mph. I chopped the throttle and got squared away and had a blast coming it at 50mph with about three quarter throttle.

A few days later my buddy was found upside down in the barley field still strapped into his bensen. To this day he has no recollection of what went wrong. No witness to the flight. He is ok but has some trouble with his left side. Hand is cold and not too coordinated. This was back about 1972.

Can anyone out there tell me why I had such immediate and violent. Side to side, whop ,whop stick shake?? Could have killed myself??

[mrford61]

Great to hear you are rebuilding Jucie. You obviously have plenty of "ticker"

I have to agree with Tim O, I think your instructor was either inexperienced or a tad irresponsible.

All the best with it and please keep us informed.

[Ralph]

Jucie, glad to hear you are OK. However, reading your account of the flight, your instructor obviously failed to teach the most important "facts of life".

(1) AIRSPEED is controlled by the STICK. If your are flying too fast, you slowly come back on the stick to reduce airspeed and vice versa.

(2) THROTTLE controls CLIMB/DESCENT rate. After any throttle change (slow and deliberate), you use the STICK to RETRIM to the desired airspeed.

(3) The various "speeds to fly" are characteristic of specific gyro models and you should have been made aware to what general airspeed targets were appropriate for each phase of flight.

This is all very basic stuff, but it doesn't look like you were exposed to the essentials.

Ralph

[scott heger]

Landman, great story about your old Bensen. I am going to take a stab on why you had such bad stick shake. You leave out alot of information about your blade size etc, so I am guessing some. If you would have had a rotor tach on your gyro you would notice as you fly slow and are decending the rotor RPM would drop 10-15 percent. Depending on how the blades were set up this could cause a minor low speed blade flap. Some stick shake is a warning and would not be of much concern. Pulling back on the stick and adding power should make it go away. Blades can also be made to slow down due to a condition called retreating blade stall. Again depending on the blade design and size, ther blades will actually start to slow down in the 100+ mph range. This is caused because the wind resistance of the advancing blade causes the rotor to slow. A noticable stick shake will start as speed increases, and if not stopped may cause a fatal plunge. I doubt that you were able to get going fast enough in a low powered gyro, but anything is possible. Violent stick shake is always life threatening, as parts of the gyro can litterly shake apart.
Another way to get stick shake is by performing and very sharp turning move under power. The blades will begin to shake the stick, and can accelerate 30 percent over normal rotor RPM. The blades will normally make a loud wop-wop sound like a huey as they accelerate into the turn.

Hope this is helpful, and maybe you could explain a little more info. Also the rules of the forum state you need to use your real name somewhere in the post. I have my hat is off to all the gyro pilots that self trained and are still around to talk about it.

Scott Heger, Laguna Niguel, Ca SportCopter N86SH

[Hognose]

Jucie,

Glad you are OK. Hell of a way to learn a lesson, amigo mio.

Good luck repairing your gyro. Take some good pictures of the wreck, for years from now when you start feeling immortal!

And yes, your command of our language is very impressive. I know just enough Portugues to wind up in the wrong bar or something.

cheers

-=K=-

[GeneWeber]

Hi JuciÊ,

Thank goodness you didn’t kill yourself. While you are acquiring new parts you might consider acquiring a new instructor.

Best Regards & Be Safe,

Gene

[birdy]

Giday Landman,
Depending on how your machine is "rotored"[blade loading and rpm],at 90 mph I reckon you would have been hitting the teeter stops,which is the same as blade flapping, only in the air.The airspeed differential between the advancing and retreating blades becomes great enough at high speed so as to make the blades teeter enough to make the blade bar touch the stops,which feeds a side to side "kick" to the stick.

[jucie]

Dear friends, thank you very much for your nice words and wise advices. I surely will take that into account from now on, so the next time things can be different.

Some day, as I have anything to tell about my progress you will be the first to know of. Today all I have is a bunch of little pieces on the floor of my garage. :rolleyes:

[Chuck Irby]

Jucie, you had already told us of your crash in another thread. So, now I know the rest of the story. I am very happy that you were not seriously hurt. I am sorry about your machine. My only thoughts, after reading what you wrote about how it happened, were in regard to your instructor.

[Doug Riley]

I, too, think that Jucie's instructor did him a disservice. I believe that most instructors here in the U.S. give "limited solo" endorsements before authorizing a student to fly at pattern height and beyond. A typical limited endorsement allows flights over the runway only, under the instructor's supervision, in conditions of ZERO crosswind and less than 10 mph headwind. The endorsement expires after 90 days.

In those early hours, heavy emphasis should be placed on the concept of the stick as an airspeed control. This should be practiced in drills that include "behind the power curve" flight and recovery as well as engine-out practice and turns at bank angles up to 45 degrees or more. Most instructional time beyond the first hour or so should be patterns, touch-and-goes and go-arounds. This can be a little boring for the instructor, perhaps, but excellent drill and challenge for the student.

The instructor may want to finish up the pre-solo phase with practice in the techniques of learning an unfamiliar 1-place machine. This will involve taxiing, balancing, crow hops and gentle S-turns over the runway. These are the same techniques that even experienced pilots will use to feel out a new or unfamiliar machine

A pilot with experience in other types of aircraft may earn this endorsement after about 6 hr. of powered dual instruction. It will take a bit longer for someone with no previous piloting experience. In addition to the 6 hours' time in the air, the student will have spent at least an additional 6 hours in ground school and in briefings and discussions with the instructor. The focus of these "talk sessions" should be on the science of flight, regulations and the development of good judgment and attitudes.

All of the above assumes that both the 2-place instructional craft and the student's 1-place machine are stable machines with correct thrust lines and effective horizontal stabilizers. It takes most people longer to learn in an unstable 2-place, and the student's solo is a more dangerous event in an unstable 1-place.

[Heron]

I've heard some hairy stuff down in Brazil, still the "pioneer" spirit prevail . . .
It seems Juciê did not have a flight plan to follow and was dealing with a new machine as it goes . . .lots of stuff to control and learn in so little time, taking off and landing basically with no previous practice in short sequence.
When he posted that he was going to solo, I counted fingers and that was only one hand. . . "ho-ho". . .way to early . . .
Luckly he is not hurt and ready to go back up as soon as his machine is able!
Heron

[automan1223]

I will be the first to admit here that my crow hops with Maxie would have been "Pancake Hops" if Maxie had not been there to save my ass. My first instinct as a student was to pull power, and like most control inputs, I gave WAY TO MUCH. In my heavy beast pulling power close to the ground in a crow hop with no wind sent the machine falling fast. Maxie's quick reflexes and cat like skill popped the power back in just in time to arrest our "pancake landing" on 2 serious occassions. A small lever for a throttle is best and small adjustments are also the best. The difference between climbing and settling in can be the smallest adjustments that you can barely hear and feel.....at first.

Any new machine requires time to get a handle on. Sometimes a lot of time. I hate crow hops and my skill set feels better or I am more comfortable flying fast and high. When I come into land I like to build up airspeed with lower power settings, power but enough to keep rudder authority. As far as watching spectators DONT DO IT. the more eyes on you the more chance to mess up. #1 law of CHAOS ! Distractions are very bad. My worst runs were with spectators. Pancakes are only for breakfast. Sorry to hear you are a builder again. While your instructor may have felt you were ready in his machine, you might have been behind the learning curve in a newer machine. Every machine flies different unless you are the Great Ron A. or a high time pilot every machine is a new learning experience.

Jonathan

[automan1223]

Instructor Steve Mcgowan told me once......

He asked me what I did for a living. I told him I ran my own repair shop and was a master mechanic. He started asking me about some serious car problems. I told him that unless he had some experience with that kind of thing that he would best take it to a technician. Ah ha he got me. He said "well I want to be a master mechanic".........could you teach me and how long would it take me to learn to fix my car ? I told him he would have to apprentice at least 6 months to 5 years to be competent depending on his background.

I understood his point exactly. Flying gyros may look easy by skilled pilots.

Learning skills takes time

Some students are faster learners than others but are not necessarly better than others in the long run.

Some machines need better pilots to fly safely than others.

Words of encouragement.

You can eat an elephant but only in small bites.

Jonathan

[airRanger]

Words of encouragement.

You can eat an elephant but only in small bites.

Jonathan
ahh Hahhh I remember those words of wisdom from my, "Amway" daze!
:eek: :rolleyes: :D