Hanging and hovering with a Helicycle

[StanFoster]

Yesterday my Turbinator and I celebrated my birthday with two stimulating flights. This video captures what I tend to do a lot......hovering...and enjoying going nowheres fast.......or going fast to get to a place to hover.


One of my favorites is hovering over mud. What a mess retrieving it would be if my engine would not keep me one foot away from those mud tenacles trying to capture my skids. Another nice thing about mud hovering is that there is no debris...dust..being recirculated through the rotor. Its the cleanest flying there is at one foot elevation.

One part of the video was coming down over a farm that had just spread some cow manure. I had never hovered over cow manure before, but as soon as I got down to about 50 feet...I could smell the methane gas. I was afraid my turbine inlet might start enjoying the mixture of methane and kerosene!

I hovered over this farmers bridge and hovered next to his tractors. Then departed and came back at 110 mph.

Towards the end of the video I hover taxiied around my woods and then parallel to State Route 9. I couldnt resist waiting for no traffic...then hovered underneath the powerlines to the centerline of Route 9....saw some traffic down the road...then went back into the field.

The last of the short video was flying up to the shop and doing a moderate quick stop. That is weird just flying into a corner with no way out...and just hauling back on the cyclic and dumping the collective with some right pedal....and say "whoaa boy"

I have another video from yesterday , but this one took 4 attempts and the last attempt took 3 hours and 45 minutes to upload.

Enjoy, this is one example of the way I am wired to fly.

Helicycle hovering over Illinois - YouTube

Stan