Long Unedited Video of Flying over the Florida Pastures and Wetlands.

Joe Pires

star hoarder
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
2,901
Location
Geneva FL FD92
Aircraft
Aviomania GS2.
Total Flight Time
600 ish solo gyro and 190 ish two place
Found this on my gopro. Its too long and not edited at all. But if your looking for a few minutes of distraction here you go.
 
Notice the total freedom from airframe shake on Joe’s Aviomania gyro that usually acompanies rotor vibration.

The rotor is Dragonwings of 9” chord using a Boeing VR-12 airfoil and with drag struts to stiffen it inplane.

The absence of 2/rev is explained in my post #82 in the Swedish Yoke thread:

 
Notice the total freedom from airframe shake on Joe’s Aviomania gyro that usually acompanies rotor vibration.

The rotor is Dragonwings of 9” chord using a Boeing VR-12 airfoil and with drag struts to stiffen it inplane.

The absence of 2/rev is explained in my post #82 in the Swedish Yoke thread:

I don't know a lot about dragon wings, have they always been vr12 or is that only the newer rotors?

wolfy
 
Wolfy, those VR-12s were the last few rotors just before Ernie sold the business and retired.

The main line was 7” blades with an airfoil similar to NACA 2312 reflexed for zero pitching moment. They were the standard blades on the Mosquito helicopter.
 
Thanks for the ride along Joe, some great country you got there.
I watched one the other day from I think "Florida Flying" where you did some low level flying, mate that was some great country for gyro flying.
By the way love your hangar too.

wolfy
 
Thank you. As a nature lover it would be hard to match the natural beauty of my area. We have an AirBNB, on the airport. I am happy to share the air to my forum friends who are visiting FL, After this Corona virus calms down.
 
How is the VR-12 performance? Did Ernie ever try VR-7?

wolfy
I really don't have an ability or desire to make a comparison. I will say that I have flown regularly from a grass strip, I have taken 435 pounds in the summer and had no problem lifting it. I have flown 445 once (combined weight me and pax), from a hard runway, and do not believe I was anywhere near its limit, although it is my limit. And it is the smoothest 2 place I have ever ridden in.
 
Australia, after Antarctica, is the second driest continent on Earth so Florida, with all its water must seem pretty strange; eh Wolfy?
 
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Yeah absolutely Chuck, we as you probably know have parts of Oz that are also tropical but certainly not my side of the country. Western Australia is as dry as a chip in comparison. With all that water over there comes high humidity, that's something you can keep. I'll take all the rest though.
wolfy
 
Yep; summer temperature and relative humidity both in the low 90s, Wolfe. Not even automobiles had air conditioning when I was a kid and a big promotional giveaway at places such as funeral parlors and automobile dealerships was fans: a piece of stiff cardboard stapled to a stick for a handle.
 
I used to spend some time on cattle stations up north (as we call it) which was about half way up Western Australia in an area called the Pilbara.
I was only up there in the dry, and the hottest I have seen was 48.9 c (weather station on the neighbouring station) but it's dry heat so it's no worries for me. But get that humidity up at 90% and even 25 c is no fun, full respect for you fellas that live like that.
Sounds like you have been there long enough Chuck to be almost a local.

wolfy
 
My wife lived in the Marshall Islands growing up, and very hot and humid there out in South Pacific. She mentioned they get use to it, but probably easier as a kid then older....
 
I used to spend some time on cattle stations up north (as we call it) which was about half way up Western Australia in an area called the Pilbara.
I was only up there in the dry, and the hottest I have seen was 48.9 c (weather station on the neighbouring station) but it's dry heat so it's no worries for me. But get that humidity up at 90% and even 25 c is no fun, full respect for you fellas that live like that.
Sounds like you have been there long enough Chuck to be almost a local.

wolfy
I am almost a local, Wolfy. My great grandpappy’s Georgia militia unit was called to federal service during the Seminole Indian wars of the 1850s and he received a land grant along the Florida-Georgia border for that service. Global cooling resulting in major freezes in the 1890s wiped him out and my grandpappy moved south around the turn of the century.

Anyhow, if you want to grow cows at greater density than 1 per square mile, you need grass and that takes water and water causes humidity. The norm in Florida is 1 cow with heifer needs ~2 acres.

Florida beef is tough and stringy so most cow growing is for yearlings to go to feed lots in the northern grain belt.
 
You warm-climate dudes cannot imagine the bliss we Northerners feel when we step off the plane in Florida (having left home amid winter temps that can be -20F hereabouts) into HUMIDITY! And it smells like living soil! Dreamlike and intoxicating.

I'm sure glad we made it down and back this Feb. before the lockdown.

Back to gyros: That video shows significantly less rotor vibe than my Tandem Dominator ever managed. It had 28-ft. standard-chord DW's and a slider. Maybe the 2x3 mast with steel down-tubes to the front seat was, with perfect hindsight, too stiff. And the slider can only move along one axis -- typically 90 deg. to the spindle. The rotor disk's angle to the spindle, OTOH, varies with blowback angle, but is seldom 90 deg.
 
I’ve been exposed to the miseries of the frozen north, Doug; spent a winter in Denmark when the straits between Sweden and Denmark froze over and a winter in upstate NY when both of my ears froze and turned as white as a sheet from being underneath my car putting on tire chains.

The solution of 2/rev in a single place gyro is simple and straight forward; round tube mast and stiff inplane rotor but I’m not so sure about a 2-place tandem with forward leaning mast. The strut braced rotor on Joe Pires’ tandem seems to be the solution but there may be more to it than that.

There is no 1/rev problem, it’s merely a matter of track and balance.
 
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