Plastic Gyro

[eruttan]

Are there, or were there, ever any foam and fiberglass gyro plans a la burt rutans long ez?

If so where can i get more information?

If not then would foam and fiberglass be a good match for gyros, or perhaps would there be any issues with foam and fiberglass construction on a gyro?

Thanks

[Brent_Brown]

I have been looking at this same thing for some time now. If you use the center spar as the hard points for the mast it would work great. I see two ways to get the tail right. make it a drop keel like most pusher gyro out there put the tail tail and lots of HS and you got it. The other way is to use the wing attaching points off the center spar and use booms on each side of the prop that are joined behind the prop with a HS. In the two photos below you can see the the ez could have some life out of the short wings. not sure how much it would effect the flight but you could remove any lift if you wanted to just have the spar alone like on the other gyro below.

[rehler]

The only all fiberglass gyro that I am aware of is McCutchen's Wind Rider. It was a beautiful ship.

[Dean_Dolph]

Ken, you beat me too it! I had to take time out to go back to the 1989 Feb-March issue of the PRA magazine before I found text written about the machine. There were other references before and after that but that is the first one I ran into.

Kurt Shaw and Jim McCutchen were the ones that developed the machine and there was no denying that it was a beautiful machine. I checked and there is a Chris Wilson that is a member of this Forum. If it is the same Chris Wilson that rebuilt a 'bent' Wind Ryder then maybe he will comment here. He did an outstanding job and literally cut up that machine when there was concern expressed about its safety. On hearing that, I was almost literally sick!

[MattPearson]

Since this picture, the gyro has been finished and painted. Just needs to be engined and flight tested.

[eruttan]

Looks very cool
I think I would prefer the larry goodhind/chuck beaty design of a tail to the mast VS a drop tail.

[Dean_Dolph]

Matt, is the the machine that Chris supposedly cut up? It looks like it has been re-engineered to get close to CLT. Is that correct?

[MattPearson]

The reengineering was done by Larry Neal. It is now a CLT ship.

[quadrirotor]

very ugly!

[Brent_Brown]

Ugly come on this is going to fly great. When your in the pilot seat who cares what it looks like. I think flying a safe UGLY gyro is better then crashing in a good looking gryo. Sorry to hear about what happened to quadrirotor but his gyro looked good.