Hi Aerofoam- have you ever flown a RC gyrocopter? Sounds like really cool background!
Well, it's honestly a strange background, but entertaining to say the least!.
Snipped from my intro letter:
"In 1995 before I was in the airplane biz. I designed and built a 32" RC tractor gyro with a delta 3 rotor head.
In the RC world, autogyros were either side by side twin rotor, coaxial stacked, or fully articulated helicopter heads.
I think I may be the first one to pull off a working RC teeter bar design in the US, but I don't know that for sure...
A great RC autogyro guy in Phx. put together an international fly in in 1996, I think we had over 40 people from all over the globe.
Most crashed due to trying to take off like a fixed wing aircraft..."
The tractor gyro was interesting, I had Steve T do the maiden because he had a lot of gyro time with his coaxials
and I had none..
He later on started Arizona Autogyro Co. and markets a line of 3 bladed gyros. Someone figured out the secret was
semi flexible hinges, I think the first ones were plastic from a 2 liter pop bottle. "Viola", simple rotor head.....
His aircraft are great, I think he still sells them.
Once it was flown, (it was very easy, uneventful) we put it through more difficult tasks.
I finally had the nerve to climb into a half loop and let if fall backwards on the rotor, bringing it to a complete stop.
I let it dive and in about 50 to 75' the rotor came to life and off it flew.
It could roll (not very axial) loop and do ridiculous maneuvers. The delta 3 teeter head was difficult because I built it with hand tools and a drill press.
I bought a "hobby king Dura Flight" gyro a couple of years ago and had some issues with it. It has a great pre-rotor, but seems to have a narrow envelope
of rotor RPM for flight. It would take off normally, but when I would try to turn back, it generally quit flying. I think the blades may need tip weighting
because it seems to lose a lot of RPM during turns. I watched videos of successful ones and most people had no issues, but the videos were a few years old and it makes
me wonder if there were later MFG issues that are common with chinese junk....
I never encountered flight issues like that with the ones I built from scratch.
The big RC gyro fly in was a great learning experience. RC pilots SOP on take off is fire-walling the throttle down the runway
and then lifting off radically....
Needless to say, with the gyros, many of which were debuting maiden flights at the event, didn't fair well.
They would scream down the runway, spin up and lift off prematurely, then tank to one side, or spin up sufficiently
with too much airspeed then lift off too abruptly presenting all that surface area and immediately violently PIO into the ground.
I had noticed on my gyro that a smooth application of throttle, followed by waiting for the rotor to load up, would result in just flying off the runway...
The rotor condition was easily recognized by the aircraft slowing a bit at the point it had good lift and you could hear it.
That is something I noticed with the Benson gyro kite when I was doing take offs. I don't think it was set up right because it took a huge
amount of forward pressure on the stick to keep it from lifting prematurely. I could tell when the rotor was at speed because the sound began
to get the characteristic thumping of an approaching helicopter, I noticed that on the first take off and afterwards I would hold the nose
down until the blades sounded right, then ease back a bit and it would smoothly fly off the deck..
Do other full scale gyros require a lot of forward stick force to prevent early rotation?