[kolibri282]

It takes indeed that many formulae if you want to fly a gyro........on your computer. During my visit at AutoGyro in Hildesheim I met Dr. Holger Duda, head of the DLR Flight Dynamics and Simulation department and Insa Pruter who programs a gyro flight simulator as her PhD. I think that a good simulator could help to reduce the accident rate since you can practice things like maintaining rrpm safely on the ground before you get to the real thing. In the pictures you can see that the sim faithfully reproduces the instrument panel of the MTOsport. What you can't see is the force feedback they built into it, if you operate the prerotator you get a good kick from the stick to make things as realistic as possible. They have a very comprehensive set of flight test data for the MTO to get as close as possible to the real flight characteristics, her sim e.g. uses section data of the blade profile to calculate rotor lift and drag from local angle of attack, thus making it possible to account for stalled parts of the blades. Holger Duda is so kind as to answer a few of my dumb questions regarding my own flight sim and I will try to get a copy of Insas PhD from him and post it to the "Technical Papers" section as soon as it's finished.


PS: now that you all know that it's them math nerds who meet the nice girls, interest in the "Theory of Flight" section of the forum will surely soar!!!...;-)