New Hornet(s) in the works!

[All_In]

Denis nice CAD work too!!!

[robo_nipsy]

I knew I wanted a rigid shaft system to drive the prerotator..
(No offense Tom!!! The flex shafts are nice, but that was just not my "Vision")
I needed some shaft couplings to comply to the shifting of the engine... The standard Lovejoy ones are just too big and ugly....
So, I made my own!!!





I got quite a bit done on the other components as well....



Started to mount everything up temporary to check the fit.... Looking Good!!









I want to actuate this with a "heavy duty" throttle cable... Anybody know of a good source? I thought about hydraulic, But I'm afraid that will start getting too heavy.....

Denis

[Passin' Thru]

Dang Bro, I am absolutely awe-smitten!

About the activation cable, you may want to consider a Harley throttle housing and an appropreate sized stainless stranded control cable with fittings of your choice swaged to each end. Check Aircraft Spruce for the available fittings, or hell, you may prefer to make your own!

[Resasi]

Dennis you blow our minds with this stuff. It's just too much 'Swiss Watch' machining.

Yup like the drawings too.

What is the weight standing at now?

[Jazzenjohn]

Thanks! I needed that!!

Before



After






(OK, OK, I'm not really as good looking as the guy in the pic...)

[Resasi]

Dennis just to ease/increase our pain how about a picture of the whole machine as she is now.

I am really keen to see how she looks with the tall tail.

[choppergabor]

Oh Denis this is like machinist porn!!! DAMN!!!! Anyways. Teleflex cables are absolutely one of the best you can use. They made them for Marine applications so it is completely enclosed and the elements can't hurt the thing. It is solid steel inside and won't frey and it is pre lubricated so it won't ever get stuck. Just my .02 buck Awesome work!!!

[Russ Hobbs]

Denis


OK Denis, here's the deal. I'm not going to tell your wife your distributing porn on the internet, but your going to have to build two more. Seriously, that is just plain eye candy.

[robo_nipsy]

Thanks so much everybody!!!
I'm enjoying the hell out of this!

Leigh,
As requested. I took a bunch of overall view pictures today!

This is the first time the Dragon wings have been out of the box and mounted on this girl!!
I mentioned how excited I was before....That's nothing compared to now!!

Her she is on a beautiful Memorial day!! Life is good! Thank you all!








Here she sits in front of her new traveling home....
If any of you spot this trailer at Mentone (or anywhere else) stop in and say hi!!!





Thanks again everyone!! Now get away from the computer and get outside and enjoy a beautiful Memorial day!!!!

[Resasi]

Beautiful Dennis, thank you very much for that. A lot better looking than I thought the tail would be on her and probably a lot more efficient.

It reminds me a lot of a lovely gyro Toolman Tim from somewhere on the East coast of Fla near WP Beach brought to Bensen days a few years back. It was based I think on a Sparrow and again a lovely piece of work. Sadly he rolled it hurt his shoulder and left gyro flying. Happy Memorial Day.

What diameter prop is that you have, looks as though you could have gone a little more, but I may have the angle wrong? 61'', 62''?

[robo_nipsy]

Thanks again Leigh! Any everyone else!!

John,
I damn near wet myself after seeing your post!! That was good!!!

Leigh,
The Prop is a 62". I have 1 1/2" of clearance to the Tail boom tube and the same to the yardarm.

You asked about the weight before...Since I have it all together today, I threw a scale under her.
As she stands right now, its at 289.2 lbs.
I still have the rest of the prerotator to add along with the throttle/"collective" setup, fuel pump & filter, exhaust bracket....etc.
I'm hoping it will end up at 310ish.....

I just had a serious "oh crap!" moment!!!!!
The rotor hits my tail!!!!



How the hell did this happen???...I spent a lot of time making sure I had this all laid out correctly!

But......

It seems that the Dragon Wings hub bar is bent for the coning angle slightly different that the one I borrowed from sombody to measure....

I made the teeter stop plate with the machined angle so that it would contact the straight section of the hub bar at 9 degrees travel.

This hub bar has the bends for the coning angle inside of the point where the bar hits the stop. This allows the hub to actually teeter closer to 11 or 12° each way before contacting the stop....

I am pointing at the contact point in this picture....



If I was to modify this teeter stop plate so it did indeed limit the hub to +- 9°, then I would have "plenty" of clearance (~2").

The way I laid it out, I made the (maybe not totally safe) assumption that when the blade flaps, it would bend in a somewhat constant radius along it's length......With that assumption then, during a bad flap, the blade would actually make contact with the ground before it would contact the tail or the support arm.....

So my question to you all.....
If I limit the hub bar to 9° travel each way, will this be enough to allow the blades to fly as they want during normal flight without hitting the stops prematurely???

I'm thinking that it would be fine....People swap out other brands of blades all the time...Some with straight hub bars....This would be limited to 9° by the stops, so why would the Dragon wings need more?????

I'd rather not have to shorten the tail, but I certainly will if necessary.

Denis

PS I have a plan to deal with those ugly fingerprints all over the tail!!!

[All_In]

Hi Denis
It really is well build looks like machine shop art!

Good job!!!!!!!!

[Resasi]

Hi Dennis, 310ish sounds very good, particularly as you have gone with the DW's and prerotator. You really have been watching weight and with the 503 every pound counts.

Yup had a lot of those sort of moments. Thing is when the rotor is turning it cones up, so I don't think this is a problem, however like you, Stu and I planned it so that the stops limited the back tilt so that it touched neither the tail, prop or ground when not coned.

Can't offhand remember what we had on the + but it was plenty and I am sure in excess of 9* degrees, I know we made sure to be able to get -1* in order that facing the wind we could slow the rotors on the ground.

I seem to remember that some advocated having a fore and aft range of travel of 20 degrees, some were happy with 16 degrees, the roll at around 10 degrees either side seemed OK.

The forward and aft travel as I remember was also tied to the set up of the cheek plates and mounting of the Rotor head. We used Ralph Taggart's advice on rotor head setup in his plans for the Gyrobee since Don Shoebridge did not include these in his, perhaps deliberately.

[choppergabor]

Denis 9° in each direction is pretty much the standard. Now don't forget that you have the head moving back and forth PLUS you have the hub bar moving too!!!

[robo_nipsy]

Howdy all!

It fits!

Just barely!

I did a test fit of my gyro in the trailer this weekend.

I wanted to stay with the smallest trailer I could to make towing easier.

This is going to be a multi-function trailer…The wife and I will be using it as a camper, for motorcycles, bikes, kayaks, etc…

I knew the gyro was going to be too wide and too tall to fit in this trailers as it was…Even with the folding mast. But, I went ahead and bought the trailer anyhow..

Here is how my plan came together.

I made a little removable cart to mount the machine on just for transportation.
I refer to them as my "training wheels"! I have some details to finish up on them, but they were close enough for a test!



The cart has a crank mechanism that allows me to raise and lower the machine. (I'll have to make something a little fancier for the crank)

I hook the cart to the gyro frame via a couple attachment point studs that I made. And then, crank it all the way to the top. This allows me to disconnect the landing gear. The main wheels are now off the ground enough that I can drop the support strut out of the bottom of the attachment point on the frame. Now I simply fold the gear up against the machine (to make it narrower). The landing gear struts are then attached to another temporary bracket that gets pinned in place where the folding mast used to be when it is in the upright position.

Now I crank the cart down almost all the way to the floor. (To make the gyro shorter)





I have less than 1 inch of headroom clearance as it enters the trailer!

I need to finesse the crank up and down as I enter the trailer at a couple points to get the whole works to hug the contour of the ramp as I transition from the ramp to the flat floor of the trailer.

I've had it in and out about 6 times already. Works slick!

This also takes care of the problem of the tail wheel contacting the ground as the machine transitions from the ground to the ramp.

This is exactly what I was after! Small, but functional.



I have a rope and pulley system that attached to the front nose of the trailer. I get about a 16x mechanical advantage using this. I can pull the gyro up the ramp with one hand!
I had thought about installing an electric winch, but I like this system better. It is simple, and it gives me finesse and “feel” as I roll the machine in or out of the trailer.

I am going to build some blocking that will act as a cradle. When it is in the trailer, I will be able to lower the frame down into this cradle to give the whole machine real good support and basically lock it into position.


This was a big step for me. I still have a lot of work to do on the machine itself, but at least now, I will be able to bring it to my Chapter 17 meetings and such.
Our next meeting is July 14 at the Princeton MN airport. A couple of our members have hangers there.
My goal is to have the engine running so that I can do some taxi tests on that day!

You can see my motorcycle just fits in the front corner of the trailer as well. This is so I will have transportation when I go to Mentone.
My wife will be traveling with me, but she is going to drop me and the trailer at Mentone, while she continues on to Cleveland to visit a friend for that week. So, it will just be me, solo, hangin' out with ya all, and talking about and drooling over flying machines all week!
I think someone mentioned that there might be some partying involved as well!!!
Boy, that is not going to suck AT ALL!!

I have a bunch of other advancements to share as well...
I'll try to throw some of those out in separate posts over the next week or so...

Cheers,
Denis