Hot Wings
Newbie
My interest is in building an ultralight tractor gyro. Designing something that flies well and is a legal US part 103 is hard enough for a fixed wing. To get good performance with part 103 restrictions means optimizing as much of the aircraft as possible - within a defined budget.
To that end I'm starting with the rotor since it is the defining feature of a gyro. There has been much discussion here regarding 'tail heavy' rotor blades and the related pitch change as a result. A variable collective seems to have some advantages but given the weight limit of part 103, and the complexity added, this doesn't seem to be an option. However with modern composite technology we can, or should be able to, design a rotor blade that has about any desired aeroelastic response we desire. In other words a passive collective should be possible.
In the various threads where there has been debate about rotor speed not changing because the rotor blades balance aft of the 25% chord, but it being alleged that the rotors do in fact balance at 25% how much of the blade twist might be due to undetected sweep effect?
The sketch below shows how even if the blade has been strung so that the line between the same point on each tip crosses the rotor axis a small amount of sweep, either for or aft, would go undetected and result in a large torque about the aerodynamic axis. It seems to me that this sweep could be used to our advantage?
Scale 1"=1'
To that end I'm starting with the rotor since it is the defining feature of a gyro. There has been much discussion here regarding 'tail heavy' rotor blades and the related pitch change as a result. A variable collective seems to have some advantages but given the weight limit of part 103, and the complexity added, this doesn't seem to be an option. However with modern composite technology we can, or should be able to, design a rotor blade that has about any desired aeroelastic response we desire. In other words a passive collective should be possible.
In the various threads where there has been debate about rotor speed not changing because the rotor blades balance aft of the 25% chord, but it being alleged that the rotors do in fact balance at 25% how much of the blade twist might be due to undetected sweep effect?
The sketch below shows how even if the blade has been strung so that the line between the same point on each tip crosses the rotor axis a small amount of sweep, either for or aft, would go undetected and result in a large torque about the aerodynamic axis. It seems to me that this sweep could be used to our advantage?
Scale 1"=1'