For those who ever flew in Blunder Beast. It’s almost gone

MikeBoyette

Gold Member
Joined
Oct 30, 2003
Messages
3,414
Location
Plant City, Fl
Aircraft
Dominator
Total Flight Time
200+
Dad told me a few days ago he dug this oldie out of the side hangar and removed the engine. He is selling it to a airboat builder. He said when he gets back from his North Florida home he will be hauling the rest to the dump. It’s a sad day. This machine is like the brother I never had. I know quite a few got their first gyro ride in it. Steve McGowen being one of them. A moment of silence for a legend gone but not forgotten. Blunder Beast.
 

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Mike why didn’t your Dad pursue the design ? It looks like it would make a good side by side trainer. Is there anyone in your Dads location willing to do a restoration (if your Dad agrees) ? Looks too nice to scrap.
 
Dad told me a few days ago he dug this oldie out of the side hangar and removed the engine. He is selling it to a airboat builder. He said when he gets back from his North Florida home he will be hauling the rest to the dump. It’s a sad day. This machine is like the brother I never had. I know quite a few got their first gyro ride in it. Steve McGowen being one of them. A moment of silence for a legend gone but not forgotten. Blunder Beast.
Mike,

What year was the Blunder Beast created and built?

Wayne
 
Well it was originally started in 1977. It was paused when my sister was born in 1978. He decided to stop flying when the apple of his eye was born (yes there is a little sibling jealousy). Then he and my Step Sucubus divorced when Amber was 2.

Once he and I were alone he turned his attention back to the project he began a few years earlier. He ended up with a new girlfriend we both loved. She was beautiful, I believe she was 1/2 Cherokee. Her name was Phyllis. She is to blame for my love of food. I was always under weight because my ex Step Witch couldn’t cook and every meal was some form of Ragu. The Beautiful Phyllis made heaven in the kitchen. She also enjoyed helping dad and I build Blunder Beast. We were at the finish line Dad was just about to test fly in in 1983

He told Phyllis that we were about to go test fly it. She decided right then that she had enough. After helping for over a year and half he needed to take a break from the gyro and spend time with her. She told him it was her or the gyro. As you can see he still has the gyro.

So the short answer is 1983. He flew it a lot. One Bensen Days he burned 90 gallons of gas in three days. It was built like a tank. The cheek plates and mast were made from three pieces of 2x2 and 1/4 in cheek plates that were bonded in house oven. This was very strong ended up being the biggest problem it had.

He was very ignorant about how rotor blades worked. He basically was just scaling up the Bensen’s he built and flew. Chuck Beaty gave him pointers by phone but was 3 1/2 hrs away. The rotorhead was a double bearing Pete Johnson head dad bought second hand. It however had Bensen Standard as he knew next to nothing about Under Sling. The stick shake was so bad that if you let go of the stick it would probably beat your thighs to death before you could catch it again.

Chuck would never ride it in after we moved to his place. We tried. He refused saying Dad flew too high and he might die of fright before they hit the ground. It had one of two accidents Dad ever had in gyros in more than 50 years of flying and we were asleep in the Motel when it happened. It was at our 4th of July fly-in at Lake Whales airport. We went to the motel and took a nap we were woke up by Davie telling us that Dad crashed his gyro. Turns out because we threw a tarp over the gyro it acted like a sail and blew that almost 7 hundred pound completely up on the rotorhead.

Once he built a side by side center line thrust machine with a tall tail using a 532 he quit flying Blunder Beast regularly. The last time I remember him flying it was around 1989. It just sat in our lean too and was supposed to get a new rotorhead to see if it got rid of the shake. Dad admitted he was kinda worried about all that shaking causing fatigue and the corrosion also worried him. So it was retired and now dead and gone. RIP brother.
 
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