Interesting Tractor Pic

[Alan_Cheatham]

Interesting Tractor I have not seen before, anyone have any information on it?

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[GyroDoug]

Wow, that's an incredible design. And I've never seen or heard anything about it. I hope there is someone out there that can tell us more about it.

[JAL]

I am seeing this right, the design is using prop wash to pre-rotate the blades or is that a shaft going from the engine to the rotor head?

If the frame is level in normal flight it looks close to clt as well, and if not you could just adjust the engine angle to make sure it is.

[Master Roda]

Looks cool. I like it.

[Redbaron]

I've always wondered if there was some way to duct the prop thrust into the rotor for spin up, this seem much simpler. :peace:
Looks like theres 2 extra small rotors, wonder if these help prerotation?

[NoWingsAttached]

Good grief, it's the flying banana split. That's a drive shaft, engaged by rolling the motor down. He's flying out of a horse race track, and I'm betting this thing was a complete disappointment to the builder and pilot

I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. CLT? The guy in the photo doesn't even know what a hang test is. The thrust line is going through his forehead, not his belly button.

1. I do NOT want my engine on a flappy hinge thingy. If anything can go wrong, and it will, this is scarey death when things go badly.

2. Tell me the story about this rotor. I thought the inner 1/3 of a gyrotor was useless, so why has this guy decided to add not one, but two little dinky 6 foot rotors inside his disk? Probably because he knows nothing about what makes a gyro fly. Given that, I would be hard pressed to come up with any credible part of this design.

3. This has got to be one of the ugliest ducks I've ever seen. You couldn't give me this piece of junk.

4. This may be an interesting piece of historic rubble, but so are all the other missing prototypes leading up to the Wright brother's Kitty Hawk flier.

Anyway, thanks for the post. I LOVE these things, and I will happily add it to my growing file of crazy gyros and aircraft. :D

God, I really hope this was not built by one of my friends. I dont' want to hurt anyone's feelings.

[Alan_Cheatham]

That's a drive shaft, engaged by rolling the motor down.

If you look closely the angled tube goes from mast to the engine tilt pivot point on the engine mount and appears to be a structural member and not a drive shaft. There's also no really good reason to tilt the engine other than to get prop blast up to the rotor for prerotation.

I think the whole thing is pretty stupid. CLT? The guy in the photo doesn't even know what a hang test is. The thrust line is going through his forehead, not his belly button.

A pilots belly button does not indicate where the aircrafts vertical CG is, only the vert. CG of the pilot. Given the weight of the rotor and the location of pilot and fuel I would bet it's thrust line is closer to center line than it looks.

1. I do NOT want my engine on a flappy hinge thingy. If anything can go wrong, and it will, this is scarey death when things go badly.

If engineered and implemented correctly it should be no more scary than hanging from a single rotor bearing bolt.

2. Tell me the story about this rotor. I thought the inner 1/3 of a gyrotor was useless, so why has this guy decided to add not one, but two little dinky 6 foot rotors inside his disk? Probably because he knows nothing about what makes a gyro fly. Given that, I would be hard pressed to come up with any credible part of this design.

Without details it hard to tell what the smaller rotor does but my guess would be it's there the provide aerodynamic reaction to the engine's prop blast for prerotation. It also may be some type of stabilizer rotor.

3. This has got to be one of the ugliest ducks I've ever seen. You couldn't give me this piece of junk.

Some fabric covering over the fuselage would clean up the looks considerably.

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[Alan_Cheatham]

Ok, found a little more info online:


"Autogyros
A Mr Fritz Wigal of Tennessee in the mid-sixties came up with an idea to reduce spin-up time of the main rotor (without mechanical intervention) for an autogyro.

The 72hp McCulloch engine could be tilted, downward, providing slipstream that windmilled the small 4-blade rotor, which in turn rotated the main rotor. Take off time/distance reduced..."

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[Arnie Madsen]

Oldtimers came up with some of the wildest ideas.
With a pivoting engine like that, could you have a variable thrust line ?
At first glance the small top rotor looks like it might also give some lift in flight.
Anyone think it would ? Or just more drag.

[karlbamforth]

I thought Cierva patented tilting engines for thrust alignment on gyro's.

[Alan_Cheatham]

I looked up the N number and found it was only registered for about 3-1/2 years so as NoWingsAttached suggested it's probably just an interesting piece of history that was not successful.

Still, to go from concept to actual machine with several unique features is quite an accomplishment and it would be nice to have some information on such a unique gyro.

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[kolibri282]

At first glance the small top rotor looks like it might also give some lift in flight.
Rotor diameter enters the thrust coefficient to the power of 4. A rough guess is that the diameter of the smaller blades is about one third or less of the main rotor blades so the contribution to thrust would be 2*(1/3)^4*100% = 2.5% of the main rotor thrust. This could be altered if the smaller rotor were connected via a reduction gear to the main rotor blades and thus could spin faster but to me it does not look like it.

[tymbrewolf]

I wonder if Fritz was related to Voorhis F Wigal which I would assume might be the same guy... His patent on this idea...

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3149802.html

[Alan_Cheatham]

It's got to be the same guy as the patent lists the inventors address as Jackson Tennessee, same as Fritz. Also, the patent shows details that appear on the gyro in the picture.

Interesting patent, at least it makes for some good reading. I wonder what ever happened to the prototype, maybe rusting in a barn somewhere.

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[gyroplanes]

I just did a little research on Mr Wigal. It looks like he was a fairly prolific inventor and was also active in gun powder and fireworks. I did not find any listing for a Wigal in TN. The last dates I saw surrounding him were in the mid seventies.