Carter trainer CTD-T

[Heron]

Thanks Mitch
WE are having an atypical spring. Lots of thunder and little rain.
Today is cool and a beautifull breezy day, the only thing lacking is Brad's voice on the headphone "Do you wanna go somewhere?"
I visited the airstrip we are going to use for training, 2000 meters (6.600 feet)
it is on top of a hill with lots of empty area around, big cattle ranch and some sugar cane.
Grass strip with heavy airplanes capability, it was intende to fly coffee from it to the US. Traffic not existent and we have another stip 7 miles to the south, it will make a great training circuit.
Dollar low 30% ate my budget, back in to door knocking, start to pay off now!
cheers
Heron

 

[Greg Mitchell]

Now Screw has me 'wound up'.

I have a question about the CAT strut. Watching it slowly sit up on short take off (awesome takeoff, very impressive) and looks like its decended in flight. So is it simply a 'landing gear system' or is it a 'suspension sytem' also?

And what was the motivation for developing such a strut incorporated in a landing gear system?

There are some blokes that just dont see the value of G-FORCE LANDING GEAR on the one hand and yet on the other, agree it offers some level of safety to the envelope. Huh?

So I have a real desire to understand Jay Carters motivations and views on landing gear systems. Perusal of the CarterCopter web site provides us with some answers to my questions. Anybody help me out here?

Cheers,

Mitch.

 

[PW_Plack]

Mitch,

Watching the old film from the 1930s of Johnny Miller landing on the post office roof in a Pitcairn autogyro, it looks as though a "normal" landing then was nearly vertical. Same thing with the Japanese military autogyros developed for carrier landings in WWII.

I think the G-Force setup has the potential to make otherwise impossible landings routine, such as rooftop helipads, etc. The bad news is, you need to be able to make a near-vertical take-off to get you out of the places a G-Force gyro will get you into.

If this gear scheme works with gyros weighing 2,000 pounds, with a safe, effective, consistent prerotator to match, they'll be able to build gyros that compete with helicopters at a fraction of the maintenance costs.

 

[Greg Mitchell]

Cheers Paul,
Yeah agreed, seen the footage, lots of it. Larry is testing Metro Launch System at this time, It negates the use of heavy battery and elec pre-rotator. Larry says he it has no bad habits thus far and he gets airborne in less than 30 feet.

You could just fly that 'sucker' off that roof top.

Unfortunately, Larry has not persued the jump take off, preferring the more user friendly very short take off jump. This affords much more directional control.

I guess what the Carter boys are doing is what Larry is doing but there are different methods employed to achieve similar goals.

Fly Safe.

Mitch.

 

[Heron]

With a roadable machine, landing pads on top are not necessary . . .or totally avoidable!
Been thinking for long time, way before I met Larry, how to use gyros for near door-to-door transportation.
Sao Paulo City is a model to be studied, huge vertical city, but with enough landing areas to get you less than 3 miles from down town, you drive the rest!
I am looking in to flying corridors for gyros, not to many emergency landing places, maybe convert the top of Malls in to emergency pads, lowering devices to get them down.
Out here in the country side it is all good, the city exits from high ways are like big clover leaves, 3 or 4 loops with plenty of area to land and take off.
In Bauru I found 10 landing spots and the airport is 1.5 miles from down town with buses if you cant be roadable.
Carter insists on a triangular landing gear, have no clue why . . .
His shocks can do a good job if you have to land on a pad.
But why?
thanks
Heron

 

[Hognose]

A couple points about Carter:

1. Jay considers it a technology company. They do not want to build aircraft or kits or issue plans and support homebuilders. They are willing to license their technology. I believe they have a licensee ready to go on the propeller (awesome tech there).

2. The light gyro prop is not the same as the CS prop used on the big CCTD of your. The prop has two pitches, essentially flight pitch and neutral pitch. WIth the prop at neutral pitch the engine is revved and the rotor prerotated. With the rotor at flying speed "plus", and the gyro light on the mains, the prop collective is popped and you're airborne and climbing.

You can see the test pilot work to maintain directional control. A jump takeoff seems to be a demanding maneuver... Dick DeGraw, who has certainly done a lot of them, says it is, also.

(UPDATE: Here is the explanation of how the CTD-T does its jump act: https://www.cartercopters.com/faq-general.html#question8b )

3. Carter's site says they have finished the rotor, but that their priority right now is the PAV (Personal Air Vehicle) prototype. This is a smaller machine than the original CCTD, incorporating lessons learned in both the long, successful but often challenging CCTD program, and in the light training gyro.

Two of the key decisions which should greatly reduce the amount of downtime the old program suffered with:
a. Use a reliable aircraft engine. This eliminates the biggest single trouble spot in CCTD development.
b. Make more than one airframe so that you don't need to canc the test program to modify stuff, and you aren't grounded by a mishap. This takes the "stutter" and frustration out of the test program.

cheers

-=K=-