Gyroplane vs Trike

[DavePA11]

Iî

Ah at your age if you don’t already fly trikes I would say don’t start. You would be getting up at 5:30 am just to enjoy flying while in a gyro you could do it at 10 am after training and a little experience.

I agree with Abid. If you have a nice airport like Crow Island in MA to hang around to wait for winds to die down to socialize than go for a trike, but if you want to actually enjoy flying and go some where during the day then go for gyro or fixed wing aircraft. Trikes are just like powered parachute flying where have to fly very early morning or just before sunset. I hate getting up at 5am to go flying so trikes aren’t for me… Also, I dont like getting a workout with the sail bar in the trike while flying and much rather just move a stick in a gyro or fixed wing aircraft. One other point, the controls are reversed in a trike which sucks and causes accidents when switching between trikes and gyros/fw.

 

[Vance]

Instruction availability is about the same as gyroplanes but I have to say, the instructors at this point are probably usually better overall than the state of instruction is for gyroplanes in the US still. I would say in instruction/instructors trikes are probably a dozen years ahead of gyroplanes.

I regularly answer questions about the Federal Aviation Regulations, airport operations, radio procedures and weather for weight shift pilots because they failed to learn it from their weight shift flight instructors.

I am not able to imagine what a gyroplane flight instructor would look like that is a dozen years behind weight shift flight instructors.

It is my observation that each flight instructor is doing their best to turn out safe pilots.

I continued to be impressed by the level of effort most flight instructors put into their work.

It doesn’t take long for the FAA to identify poor quality flight instructors.

I have flown with a few poor quality flight instructors over the years and everyone of them is no longer teaching.

Bottom line anyone above 55 years of age can fly trikes only in morning and calm evenings. It becomes a lot more physical any other time. They say real men fly trikes. There is some truth to that.

The Weight shift control pilots I know who are over fifty five regularly fly in strong gusting winds.

They tell me that it is only a physical fight in winds if you are fighting the aircraft and fighting the aircraft is not necessary part of flight in a weight shift control aircraft.

None of them are what I would call an athlete or in remarkable shape for their age.

 

[Gyrotriker]

Bottom line anyone above 55 years of age can fly trikes only in morning and calm evenings. It becomes a lot more physical any other time. They say real men fly trikes. There is some truth to that.

Totally agree. Enjoyed flying a trike during calm weather, but not in thermals ... sold it some 20 years ago and got a gyro. The guy who bought the trike had just got his license. He asked me to fly it down to southern Germany. I agreed, started in calm weather in the morning and fought my way through perfect thermal conditions. Arrived in the evening completely exhausted. Never forgot that flight ... I don't even enjoy bumpy flights in FW anymore, it's so much more relaxing to fly a gyro.

 

[Abid]

I regularly answer questions about the Federal Aviation Regulations, airport operations, radio procedures and weather for weight shift pilots because they failed to learn it from their weight shift flight instructors.

I am not able to imagine what a gyroplane flight instructor would look like that is a dozen years behind weight shift flight instructors.

It is my observation that each flight instructor is doing their best to turn out safe pilots.

I continued to be impressed by the level of effort most flight instructors put into their work.

It doesn’t take long for the FAA to identify poor quality flight instructors.

I have flown with a few poor quality flight instructors over the years and everyone of them is no longer teaching.

The Weight shift control pilots I know who are over fifty five regularly fly in strong gusting winds.

They tell me that it is only a physical fight in winds if you are fighting the aircraft and fighting the aircraft is not necessary part of flight in a weight shift control aircraft.

None of them are what I would call an athlete or in remarkable shape for their age.

Hi Vance:
I am not about to wring out another argument that flight instruction standards in gyroplanes are the biggest part in the general aviation public out there having the impression that gyroplanes must be unsafe. The signoffs for addons and SP-CFI addons in gyroplanes are handed out like candy in 10 to 20 hours. That was being done in trikes till there were a slew of fatal accidents including some involving CFIs and Examiners who themselves were some of the ones doing that and things changed after that. They worked to get PTS changed and require training for certain items that were not there before if things suspected in some of the fatal accidents. The largest slew of accidents in one of the years happened in Hawaii supposedly to CFIs with 20k hours of experience which basically meant he did 20k hours of the wrong things and had close calls and got away with it but finally the wrong things caught up to him. Cats have nine lives but not infinite.
When you are talking about FARs, Radio procedures and weather ... that is one thing. I am talking about pure stick and rudder basics. Without that you can know all the radio calls and FARs that you want and you can still crash and die. Basics have to be burned into muscle memory and that requires time and proper techniques and emphasis on certain actions. You can always look up FARs or learn to deal with the tower via the radio (no radio work is technically required to get a sport pilot license if operating at an uncontrolled airport).

Anyway, I can assure you flying trikes in gusty windy conditions or thermals is not fun no matter what anyone says. Can someone do it? Of course. I did it quite a lot including 2400 miles long cross-country flights in July 6 times. Was that fun? Absolutely not. I always wanted to go above the clouds in long cross countries, so I was at the cloud base altitude where it was smoother. That works to a point but not in July where vertical development is fast and isolated thunderstorm cells may pop up in 15 minutes from that innocent looking white puffy cloud.

 

[Abid]

Obviously, you're not a balloonist! Get up in the wee hours, launch at dawn; down, packed up, and sipping champagne by 9:00 (illegal to fly for the next 8 hours).

True. I am not. But I would like to take a ride in one sometime soon. Anything that goes up must be experienced.

 

[WaspAir]

We've got to get all you folks up in gliders, to make peace with bumpy thermal days, and view it as free altitude instead of a workout. In the right aircraft, it's a blessing!

Having recently mentioned balloons, I will admit that thermals are downright dangerous in the wrong aircraft.

 

[Abid]

We've got to get all you folks up in gliders, to make peace with bumpy thermal days, and view it as free altitude instead of a workout. In the right aircraft, it's a blessing!

Having recently mentioned balloons, I will admit that thermals are downright dangerous in the wrong aircraft.

I have been. Also flew a few hours in the long wing version of Pipestrel Sinus motorglider. Also have flown 220 pound soaring trike turning off the engine and remaining up there by catching thermals. It is not too bad in that trike because it is very slow but when you are going 75 to 90 mph in a cruiser trike it is a completely different ballgame.

 

[wolfy]

One other point, the controls are reversed in a trike which sucks and causes accidents when switching between trikes and gyros/fw.

I have to partly disagree with this, dont get me wrong it would be foolish to take this lightly but for me trikes and gyro's in there control method are so different that it's hard to get them mixed up I think. Like a car and a motorbike there just too different.

I was flying trikes for about ten years before flying gyros and flew them both for about another 7 years before stopping flying trikes.
I could go away for a mustering season in gyro for thousands of hours then stop on the way home and tow hangliders in trikes and fly gyros for fun in a day no problem at all. When flying a trike I don't think of it as moving the bar in the opposite way of a joystick but rather that my body (weightshift) moves the way I want to go, same as a joystick. Works for me.
This clip was as above when someone wanted to see a gyro fly while I was towing gliders, so I unloaded it and went for a quick fly.

wolfy

 

[Kevin_Richey]

Wolfy: When I first saw that youtube video several years back, I thought it was Birdy doing a gyro demo. I was amazed @ the way the gyro was handled!

How many hrs. did you have under your belt in order to wring that machine out like that?

 

[wolfy]

I had a few hrs by then, but not sure mate not really a counter.
To be honest that was not even close to wringing that machine out, I had just got in it after towing gliders so that was just warming it up, then I went further away out of sight for some fun.

wolfy