XXavier
Member
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2006
- Messages
- 1,481
- Location
- Madrid, Spain
- Aircraft
- ELA R-100 and Magni M24 autogyros
- Total Flight Time
- 913 gyro (June 2023)
C. Beaty;n1127758 said:JC, during my early days of gyrocoptering, my partner and I wanted to find the limit of pitch setting for rotor blades.
We set our Bensen type metal blades at the upper limit of their pitch adjustment and with the two of us hand spinning the blades, managed to get them started.
Top speed was ~20 mph with the stick against the forward stop. More power; climb; less power; descend, all at 20 mph. It felt like riding a screw controlled by the throttle.
We didn’t have an accurate rotor tachometer; simply a bicycle generator running a voltmeter.
Other gyro flyers tried the same thing with other metal blades available at the time with similar results.
I wouldn't recommend trying this with rotor blades that had a negative pitching moment coefficient.
Like slow-flying a FW STOL plane with deployed flaps and the nose very high... I understand that both lift and drag increase a lot, but lift generation is still enough. If I'm not wrong, that would mean that the rotor turned more slowly, and that the fuel consumption was very high, thus lowering endurance & range...