loftus
Super Member
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2013
- Messages
- 1,340
- Location
- Ponce Inlet, Florida
- Aircraft
- Aircam; Previously owned Autogyro MTO
- Total Flight Time
- 800 hours
Essentially it is the prequel to balancing on the mains, not a crazy sprint down the runway, but mostly starting out with feeling how at fairly low speed , as the stick is brought forward RRPM slows and aircraft speed increases and visa versa, from there to then feeling stick position and power management for lightening and then eventually lifting the nose and then balancing on the mains. I guess that's the best way I can describe it. Desmon Butts was my instructor. The first place he took me for that was a strip north of Houston somewhere which had a runway that if I recall was close to a mile long. When I learn anything, I try to distill it down to one or two simple things. I have not flown a gyro in a while now, but if I could distill landing and takeoff in a gyro to one thing I would concentrate on, that was knowing and feeling what the nose and hence the nose wheel is doing. I felt that if I got that right, everything else followed. I actually fly my FW Aircam very much the same, as in many ways being a high drag FW I don't find it that much different. All I have to do is maintain the right attitude and the landings particularly take care of themselves.The only thing I am not clear about is how do you experience sustained "nose lightness" practicing on a long runway? Does the nose wheel lift off occasionally or make contact with the runway, or does it stay planted? Does one experience "nose dart" if rudder is applied in a linked nosewheel? How is it different from taxying fast with the blades spinning? Even the FAA Gyroplane Handbook explains the "balancing on the mains" as part of a normal take off.
In every take off at some point the nose wheel will lift off before the mains do.
Could you give me the name of the CFI that taught you this method? I'd like to have a discussion with him/her regarding this just to understand maintaining this "nose lightness" along the length of the runway better. How is keeping the nose wheel actually up and balancing on the mains without contacting the runway not a safer technique?
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