The following is from last month's PRA Chapter 73 20th year anniversary booklet:
First was the early era autogyros; basically airplanes with rotors mounted on top and having big radial engines out in front. They circulated through this region, doing exposition flights and possibly were also barnstorming.
The Oregonian newspaper has four articles chronicling the appearance of the new Pitcairn autogiros in the Portland area.
The first, August 2, 1931, was about a planned event on Hayden Island, at the Jantzen Beach amusement park that ended in a crash.
Six months later, on February 5, 1932, a second article about how the Portland Auto Show was held on SE Belmont at 11th Avenue and the display of the autogiro there.
A third article, on February 20, 1932, describes how King Baird piloted two forest service officials in a two hour flight over Mount Hood to demonstrate the features of the autogiro, and how it would work out well for forest patrol, because “it can hover low over selected areas”.
And, the fourth news item was on October 9, 1933, when a short blurb was printed about an autogiro owned by the Coca-Cola company of Atlanta. It had been flown from Salt Lake City to Seattle, and stopped to refuel at Portland’s Swan Island airport.
Corporations such as Champion (Spark Plugs), Coca-Cola, Beech Nut Gum (who employed a tall, young woman by the name of Amelia Earhart to fly it and hand out packets of their gum to the crowds that greeted her when she arrived), and The Detroit News, used the autogiro for advertising purposes mainly.
We know Johnny Miller used it for a mail delivery contract, flying his gyro from the rooftop of the Philadelphia Post Office for over a year.
The next article The Oregonian printed regarding these auto-rotating aircraft was not for another 28 years, on August 4, 1961, when they reported a Bensen gyrocopter registered by its builder.
The onset of America entering into the supporting of its allies in the beginnings of World War II hampered the gyroplane, essentially stopping it as being a viable aircraft when the helicopter was developed.
Harold Pitcairn allowed the US government and the military use of the Pitcairn autogyro patents and designs to help speed the war effort. Finally, there was a proven, effective control system that was already working in the jump take-off gyros that made it easier to control the helicopter than the original controls were able to.
Here is another photograph of one of the Pitcairn gyros flying at Yosemite National Park, in the foothills of the California Sierras.
They most likely flew all around California even more so than in the Pacific Northwest, due to California being more populous; there were more potential buyers for this new type of aircraft!
Look closely in the foreground by the base of the evergreen tree to see someone running across the meadow as the autogyro approaches!
An additional photo from that era shows one of these gyroplanes with the states of California, Oregon, and Washington listed as the business territory of the Pacific Giro Sales Company, authorized dealers of the Pitcairn autogiro on the side of the fuselage.
Once the advantages of the helicopter over the autogyro became known, the helicopter received all the military funding that helped it grow to what it is today.
The airplane was able to fly faster than the autogiro to a further destination, and the helicopter could take off and land vertically, as well as hover, and can provide urgent medical evacuations to the military, although it is usually slower than the airplane.
Both have their advantages over the autogyro.
Also unknown to us at the present are possible visits of the early gyroplanes to other parts of Oregon and Washington.
Other newspapers around Oregon (including the Oregon Journal in Portland) have not been researched to see about articles featuring these new aircraft that Juan De La Cierva and Harold Pitcairn were promoting.
It would be safe to assume these new rotorcraft visited the larger cities adjacent to Hwy. 99 (the main north-south corridor up and down the west coast decades before there was I-5 and the Federal Interstate System), such as Salem, Eugene, Roseburg, and Medford, where automobile and trucks traveled extensively to and from.
These visits were most likely to promote the sales of these gyroplanes, as well as giving rides to the public to help spread the word of a new aircraft that had amazing flight capabilities that airplanes couldn’t match.
In Portland at Jantzen Beach (Hayden Island), in the summer of 1931, a plank boardwalk had been constructed to act as a runway for the strange new aircraft. The only problem was it was not wide enough for any errors.
One wheel slipped off the edge and caused the machine to overturn enough for the rotors to hit the ground. King Baird was the pilot.
From the photo, as the aircraft was just about to set down, it appears that Baird had it too far to the left of the plank runway, near the edge, as he was straightening it out after slide-slipping it down.
We featured a reprint of that Oregonian article with photos of the mishap in one of our chapter newsletters in the early 1990s. Tammi and Dan Jordan found an article in the Astoria area informing that Baird also was flying his autogyro there on the coast, probably before the incident occurred on Hayden Island.
Former Chapter 73 associates John Van Vorhees, Scott Malone, and Dan Jordan may have very well set the next point in history over 60 years later when they became the first to fly a tractor gyroplane design (like the Pitcairns were) in modern times, flying John’s Pitbull gyro design at both Scappoose and Astoria airfields.
The Swan Island airport was the Portland airfield before being re-located out by the Columbia River on Marine Drive where PDX is now situated. The McDonald’s restaurant on Swan Island has large photo murals on its dining area walls depicting a few of the events when the airport was there, such as Charles Lindberg visiting with his famous Spirit of St. Louis.
It is interesting to note from this article that Jantzen Beach Park in Portland, Playland Park in Seattle, and King Baird were all three owners of that Pitcairn autogiro.
In addition, an another interesting tidbit is that the Oregonian Aviation Editor wrote that the airflow of the propeller powered the rotorblades, and then, just a few sentences later, states that if the engine quits, the blades keep turning because of gravity!
From the hot days of summer, back in August, 1931, here are the photos with captions and the story.
It is too bad that the original photographic prints of that article are not available to reproduce here. Sadly, we only have grainy images, photocopies of microfilm copies from newspaper archives.
The accident scene appears to be near where the large swimming pool area of the old Jantzen Beach amusement park was. Now a houseboat marina parking lot is there, just west of I-5 on the south shore of Hayden Island.
In the photo of the crashed aircraft, behind Baird, there is the left side of a young woman in a bathing suit holding up her left arm, possibly to shield the sun out of her eyes (photo 5).
The elevated roadway in the background on page three with vehicles on it is what is now I-5 crossing the slough that is just south of Hayden Island. The shadows and bridge indicate Baird was landing west, and being summertime (August), probably around early afternoon.
The SE Belmont St. appearance of King Baird’s Pitcairn autogyro is a mystery. The Oregonian only mentions it being flown in to Swan Island airport and did not elaborate how it got to automobile show on SE 11th & Belmont, a distance of several miles.
Whether it taxied from Swan Island on Portland’s streets, or landed right on Belmont Street, (as autogiros did in Washington, D.C., giving rides to members of Congress, showing them how they could get to the golf links faster this way), which is not safe enough at present, being about 60’ across, counting sidewalks.
The Pitcairn was 45’ wide, at the rotorblades.
Belmont may not have had all the wires overhead like now, nor was it as developed as in later years. Most likely, the aircraft landed in a nearby field and then taxied a short bit on the road to the show.
Going forward a quarter century, it was the late 1950s when the Bensen gyro-glider and gyrocopter was being marketed to the homebuilder through advertisements in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines.
The astonishing aspect, and the biggest attraction of these ads, was that an actual rotor winged aircraft could be homebuilt either by following detailed plans using Reynolds aluminum parts. Or, it could be bought in pre-fabricated stages from the factory in Raleigh, North Carolina, ready to be assembled by the builder with simple, basic hand tools.
The Oregonian had an article about individuals in the area receiving their paperwork from the Civil Aeronautic Authority (now the FAA) to fly their newly minted Bensen aircraft.
Others told of learning to fly their Bensen gyros in the area out by what used to be a tire plant in Portland near where NE 181st and I-84 are now.
Also in the 1950s, Chuck Vanek started his work designing and building his own gyroplane, called Vancraft, and started selling his machines to others bitten by the rotorcraft bug. Soon there were fellows hanging out together at his place on Mohawk Street in the St. Johns neighborhood of north Portland.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Air & Space 18A and the McCulloch J-2 were certified by the FAA for flight instruction and flight over populated areas; these two-place gyros used standard aircraft engines.
The smaller, single place gyros were much more affordable to the average person than these certified designs, so they became more used as a result. Chuck also added room for a passenger in his ships, with the extra seat behind and below the pilot’s.
Later in the 1980s, Jim Vanek started his own designs of gyros, named Sport Copter. Air Command, Dominator, SnoBird, Soma, and Barnett gyros also helped start a new wave of gyros. moving away from the McCulloch military drone engines, most used the Rotax two-cycle engines as a replacement to the harder to find and more finicky drone engines.
Most of the gyros showing up at the chapter meetings over the years are these single place Bensens, Vancrafts, Air Commands, Sport Copters, and the two-place enclosed RAF 2000s.
The Small-Scale Gyros:
Former member Jack Moody, besides owning a VW engine powered Vancraft two-place gyro, also has flown radio controlled scale models of autogyros at a few chapter events in past years.
The Chapter Presidents:
Our chapter has had several presidents in these last 20 years, starting with Jim Vanek as the first. After holding that position for many years, he stepped down and Dick Moore was elected next. Hubert Finke filled in after Dick as the chapter’s third president for about a year before suddenly passing away in his sleep.
Dick once again stepped into the president position for a while, and after retiring from working, stepped aside as president. Bob Johnson was elected next and has served for several terms, interrupted only by Paul Plack serving in that position for a year. Bob continues currently as chapter president, also filling in as chapter treasurer/secretary/newsletter printer/newsletter mailer when needed.
Chapter membership has grown and shrank over these 20 years. Some original charter members are still around, while others have moved onto other interests, or moved away.
The Instructors:
With a tow trainer, members were able to get airborne with another experienced gyro pilot at their side. It was used at Scappoose and Tillamook airports to introduce many to flying the rotors.
After that, Jim Vanek built a powered two-place tandem trainer and many more were able to achieve their goals of receiving a rotorcraft-gyroplane certificate by using the several CFIs the group has had at their disposal.
Rod Scamahorn, John Hardy, Jim Vanek, Dave Wiley, Chad Wille, Bill Granewich, and Pat Warren have helped Chapter 73 members work on their ratings.
The Ones That Have Passed On:
Sadly, like Hubert Finke mentioned above, Dave Stubblefield, Chuck Vanek, Rod Scamahorn, Dave Wiley, Chad Wille’s wife (Betty), Paul Smith, and Don Stuart are no longer with us.
The Future:
Do you want to see our chapter grow and prosper? Do you have friends you can introduce to the world of flying rotors? Do you want to help our chapter work by serving in an officer or other volunteer position?
Are there folks that are wishing to fly and do not know what? Are there new pilots wanting to be licensed?
Are there designers to introduce new ideas and machines?
Will we see the advent of the road-able gyroplane? Will we see the military adopt a gyroplane for its uses? Will the gyro become as common as the small airplane?
Twenty years from its beginning, Chapter 73 members can peer into the past and reminisce. Looking forward, we try to imagine what the future of gyroplanes will look like.
Senor Juan de la Cierva of Spain was the inventor of the autogiro aircraft, the first practical rotorcraft to be widely flown. He designed it after a particular airplane accident that was the result of a stall. He wanted to make an aircraft that would be safe and not stall.
After several versions, he succeeded and began selling licenses in various countries. Harold Pitcairn bought the rights to sell them in the United States. The PCA-2 model, the one we learned about from The Oregonian microfilm records, is the type that first flew in this region.
Being such a work horse, it was flown across the US, first by Johnny Miller, shortly after, by Amelia Earhart, and racked up many more thousands of miles soon after, being flown into Mexico and Cuba.
Are there any of these old autogiros left that are undiscovered, stored in an old barn or hangar? Its fun to imagine…but like an old Bensen gyro that has been laying around for decades in bad shape, it is unlikely these “flying windmills” (as some referred to them as) have survived, mainly due to wooden (even the rotorblades) and fabric construction.
(Thanks Tim and Paul for the advice about converting to PDFs. Have done so, but still too large for this forum, so will have to reduce them to the 150 KB limit. Will post them soon.)
First was the early era autogyros; basically airplanes with rotors mounted on top and having big radial engines out in front. They circulated through this region, doing exposition flights and possibly were also barnstorming.
The Oregonian newspaper has four articles chronicling the appearance of the new Pitcairn autogiros in the Portland area.
The first, August 2, 1931, was about a planned event on Hayden Island, at the Jantzen Beach amusement park that ended in a crash.
Six months later, on February 5, 1932, a second article about how the Portland Auto Show was held on SE Belmont at 11th Avenue and the display of the autogiro there.
A third article, on February 20, 1932, describes how King Baird piloted two forest service officials in a two hour flight over Mount Hood to demonstrate the features of the autogiro, and how it would work out well for forest patrol, because “it can hover low over selected areas”.
And, the fourth news item was on October 9, 1933, when a short blurb was printed about an autogiro owned by the Coca-Cola company of Atlanta. It had been flown from Salt Lake City to Seattle, and stopped to refuel at Portland’s Swan Island airport.
Corporations such as Champion (Spark Plugs), Coca-Cola, Beech Nut Gum (who employed a tall, young woman by the name of Amelia Earhart to fly it and hand out packets of their gum to the crowds that greeted her when she arrived), and The Detroit News, used the autogiro for advertising purposes mainly.
We know Johnny Miller used it for a mail delivery contract, flying his gyro from the rooftop of the Philadelphia Post Office for over a year.
The next article The Oregonian printed regarding these auto-rotating aircraft was not for another 28 years, on August 4, 1961, when they reported a Bensen gyrocopter registered by its builder.
The onset of America entering into the supporting of its allies in the beginnings of World War II hampered the gyroplane, essentially stopping it as being a viable aircraft when the helicopter was developed.
Harold Pitcairn allowed the US government and the military use of the Pitcairn autogyro patents and designs to help speed the war effort. Finally, there was a proven, effective control system that was already working in the jump take-off gyros that made it easier to control the helicopter than the original controls were able to.
Here is another photograph of one of the Pitcairn gyros flying at Yosemite National Park, in the foothills of the California Sierras.
They most likely flew all around California even more so than in the Pacific Northwest, due to California being more populous; there were more potential buyers for this new type of aircraft!
Look closely in the foreground by the base of the evergreen tree to see someone running across the meadow as the autogyro approaches!
An additional photo from that era shows one of these gyroplanes with the states of California, Oregon, and Washington listed as the business territory of the Pacific Giro Sales Company, authorized dealers of the Pitcairn autogiro on the side of the fuselage.
Once the advantages of the helicopter over the autogyro became known, the helicopter received all the military funding that helped it grow to what it is today.
The airplane was able to fly faster than the autogiro to a further destination, and the helicopter could take off and land vertically, as well as hover, and can provide urgent medical evacuations to the military, although it is usually slower than the airplane.
Both have their advantages over the autogyro.
Also unknown to us at the present are possible visits of the early gyroplanes to other parts of Oregon and Washington.
Other newspapers around Oregon (including the Oregon Journal in Portland) have not been researched to see about articles featuring these new aircraft that Juan De La Cierva and Harold Pitcairn were promoting.
It would be safe to assume these new rotorcraft visited the larger cities adjacent to Hwy. 99 (the main north-south corridor up and down the west coast decades before there was I-5 and the Federal Interstate System), such as Salem, Eugene, Roseburg, and Medford, where automobile and trucks traveled extensively to and from.
These visits were most likely to promote the sales of these gyroplanes, as well as giving rides to the public to help spread the word of a new aircraft that had amazing flight capabilities that airplanes couldn’t match.
In Portland at Jantzen Beach (Hayden Island), in the summer of 1931, a plank boardwalk had been constructed to act as a runway for the strange new aircraft. The only problem was it was not wide enough for any errors.
One wheel slipped off the edge and caused the machine to overturn enough for the rotors to hit the ground. King Baird was the pilot.
From the photo, as the aircraft was just about to set down, it appears that Baird had it too far to the left of the plank runway, near the edge, as he was straightening it out after slide-slipping it down.
We featured a reprint of that Oregonian article with photos of the mishap in one of our chapter newsletters in the early 1990s. Tammi and Dan Jordan found an article in the Astoria area informing that Baird also was flying his autogyro there on the coast, probably before the incident occurred on Hayden Island.
Former Chapter 73 associates John Van Vorhees, Scott Malone, and Dan Jordan may have very well set the next point in history over 60 years later when they became the first to fly a tractor gyroplane design (like the Pitcairns were) in modern times, flying John’s Pitbull gyro design at both Scappoose and Astoria airfields.
The Swan Island airport was the Portland airfield before being re-located out by the Columbia River on Marine Drive where PDX is now situated. The McDonald’s restaurant on Swan Island has large photo murals on its dining area walls depicting a few of the events when the airport was there, such as Charles Lindberg visiting with his famous Spirit of St. Louis.
It is interesting to note from this article that Jantzen Beach Park in Portland, Playland Park in Seattle, and King Baird were all three owners of that Pitcairn autogiro.
In addition, an another interesting tidbit is that the Oregonian Aviation Editor wrote that the airflow of the propeller powered the rotorblades, and then, just a few sentences later, states that if the engine quits, the blades keep turning because of gravity!
From the hot days of summer, back in August, 1931, here are the photos with captions and the story.
It is too bad that the original photographic prints of that article are not available to reproduce here. Sadly, we only have grainy images, photocopies of microfilm copies from newspaper archives.
The accident scene appears to be near where the large swimming pool area of the old Jantzen Beach amusement park was. Now a houseboat marina parking lot is there, just west of I-5 on the south shore of Hayden Island.
In the photo of the crashed aircraft, behind Baird, there is the left side of a young woman in a bathing suit holding up her left arm, possibly to shield the sun out of her eyes (photo 5).
The elevated roadway in the background on page three with vehicles on it is what is now I-5 crossing the slough that is just south of Hayden Island. The shadows and bridge indicate Baird was landing west, and being summertime (August), probably around early afternoon.
The SE Belmont St. appearance of King Baird’s Pitcairn autogyro is a mystery. The Oregonian only mentions it being flown in to Swan Island airport and did not elaborate how it got to automobile show on SE 11th & Belmont, a distance of several miles.
Whether it taxied from Swan Island on Portland’s streets, or landed right on Belmont Street, (as autogiros did in Washington, D.C., giving rides to members of Congress, showing them how they could get to the golf links faster this way), which is not safe enough at present, being about 60’ across, counting sidewalks.
The Pitcairn was 45’ wide, at the rotorblades.
Belmont may not have had all the wires overhead like now, nor was it as developed as in later years. Most likely, the aircraft landed in a nearby field and then taxied a short bit on the road to the show.
Going forward a quarter century, it was the late 1950s when the Bensen gyro-glider and gyrocopter was being marketed to the homebuilder through advertisements in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines.
The astonishing aspect, and the biggest attraction of these ads, was that an actual rotor winged aircraft could be homebuilt either by following detailed plans using Reynolds aluminum parts. Or, it could be bought in pre-fabricated stages from the factory in Raleigh, North Carolina, ready to be assembled by the builder with simple, basic hand tools.
The Oregonian had an article about individuals in the area receiving their paperwork from the Civil Aeronautic Authority (now the FAA) to fly their newly minted Bensen aircraft.
Others told of learning to fly their Bensen gyros in the area out by what used to be a tire plant in Portland near where NE 181st and I-84 are now.
Also in the 1950s, Chuck Vanek started his work designing and building his own gyroplane, called Vancraft, and started selling his machines to others bitten by the rotorcraft bug. Soon there were fellows hanging out together at his place on Mohawk Street in the St. Johns neighborhood of north Portland.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Air & Space 18A and the McCulloch J-2 were certified by the FAA for flight instruction and flight over populated areas; these two-place gyros used standard aircraft engines.
The smaller, single place gyros were much more affordable to the average person than these certified designs, so they became more used as a result. Chuck also added room for a passenger in his ships, with the extra seat behind and below the pilot’s.
Later in the 1980s, Jim Vanek started his own designs of gyros, named Sport Copter. Air Command, Dominator, SnoBird, Soma, and Barnett gyros also helped start a new wave of gyros. moving away from the McCulloch military drone engines, most used the Rotax two-cycle engines as a replacement to the harder to find and more finicky drone engines.
Most of the gyros showing up at the chapter meetings over the years are these single place Bensens, Vancrafts, Air Commands, Sport Copters, and the two-place enclosed RAF 2000s.
The Small-Scale Gyros:
Former member Jack Moody, besides owning a VW engine powered Vancraft two-place gyro, also has flown radio controlled scale models of autogyros at a few chapter events in past years.
The Chapter Presidents:
Our chapter has had several presidents in these last 20 years, starting with Jim Vanek as the first. After holding that position for many years, he stepped down and Dick Moore was elected next. Hubert Finke filled in after Dick as the chapter’s third president for about a year before suddenly passing away in his sleep.
Dick once again stepped into the president position for a while, and after retiring from working, stepped aside as president. Bob Johnson was elected next and has served for several terms, interrupted only by Paul Plack serving in that position for a year. Bob continues currently as chapter president, also filling in as chapter treasurer/secretary/newsletter printer/newsletter mailer when needed.
Chapter membership has grown and shrank over these 20 years. Some original charter members are still around, while others have moved onto other interests, or moved away.
The Instructors:
With a tow trainer, members were able to get airborne with another experienced gyro pilot at their side. It was used at Scappoose and Tillamook airports to introduce many to flying the rotors.
After that, Jim Vanek built a powered two-place tandem trainer and many more were able to achieve their goals of receiving a rotorcraft-gyroplane certificate by using the several CFIs the group has had at their disposal.
Rod Scamahorn, John Hardy, Jim Vanek, Dave Wiley, Chad Wille, Bill Granewich, and Pat Warren have helped Chapter 73 members work on their ratings.
The Ones That Have Passed On:
Sadly, like Hubert Finke mentioned above, Dave Stubblefield, Chuck Vanek, Rod Scamahorn, Dave Wiley, Chad Wille’s wife (Betty), Paul Smith, and Don Stuart are no longer with us.
The Future:
Do you want to see our chapter grow and prosper? Do you have friends you can introduce to the world of flying rotors? Do you want to help our chapter work by serving in an officer or other volunteer position?
Are there folks that are wishing to fly and do not know what? Are there new pilots wanting to be licensed?
Are there designers to introduce new ideas and machines?
Will we see the advent of the road-able gyroplane? Will we see the military adopt a gyroplane for its uses? Will the gyro become as common as the small airplane?
Twenty years from its beginning, Chapter 73 members can peer into the past and reminisce. Looking forward, we try to imagine what the future of gyroplanes will look like.
Senor Juan de la Cierva of Spain was the inventor of the autogiro aircraft, the first practical rotorcraft to be widely flown. He designed it after a particular airplane accident that was the result of a stall. He wanted to make an aircraft that would be safe and not stall.
After several versions, he succeeded and began selling licenses in various countries. Harold Pitcairn bought the rights to sell them in the United States. The PCA-2 model, the one we learned about from The Oregonian microfilm records, is the type that first flew in this region.
Being such a work horse, it was flown across the US, first by Johnny Miller, shortly after, by Amelia Earhart, and racked up many more thousands of miles soon after, being flown into Mexico and Cuba.
Are there any of these old autogiros left that are undiscovered, stored in an old barn or hangar? Its fun to imagine…but like an old Bensen gyro that has been laying around for decades in bad shape, it is unlikely these “flying windmills” (as some referred to them as) have survived, mainly due to wooden (even the rotorblades) and fabric construction.
(Thanks Tim and Paul for the advice about converting to PDFs. Have done so, but still too large for this forum, so will have to reduce them to the 150 KB limit. Will post them soon.)
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