Helicopters or Gyros..?

Helicopter Ed...

Helicopter Ed...

I have read a bunch of your posts, specifically the one on how a gyro should look or which ones are ugly, and after seeing your picture you posted all I can say is "DAMMMNNNN!"
Dude does that thing have a deep pyle orange shag rug in it?
How about some curb feelers?
It kinda reminds me of a fat scummy co-worker looking in a Playboy going "oh man she ain't hot, I wouldn't mess with that!"
That really put your earlier posts in perspective for me,Thanks
Ben S
(feel free to flame me for this one guys!)
 
However, gyros are faster then helis in the same size and engine class.
How fast does a Twinstarr cruise?

An R22 using the same basic engine that's derated quite a bit, that also weighs a bit more will cruise at ~95 kts with two people using ~90 hp.

If you compare a modern enclosed gyro to a Bell 47, Hiller 12, H-300, Brantley B2 - yeah, the helicopters lose. But those are all 1940's-1950's designs...
 
The Helicycle can go 110 mph all day on 90 horses. Of course its a single seat and should be compared to a single seat gyro. I don't know of many gyros that can fly that fast on only 90 horses, except I believe Carl Schneiders Carlinator design will go this fast on less horsepower, I am not sure. But, I have never heard major emphasis placed on a helicopter being able to fly fast, but rather its unique ability to fly as slow as you can go- ZERO. I have a lot of ZERO airtime, and I have never enjoyed going somewheres fast as I have going nowhere at ZERO! Stan
 
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How fast does a Twinstarr cruise?

An R22 using the same basic engine that's derated quite a bit, that also weighs a bit more will cruise at ~95 kts with two people using ~90 hp.

If you compare a modern enclosed gyro to a Bell 47, Hiller 12, H-300, Brantley B2 - yeah, the helicopters lose. But those are all 1940's-1950's designs...

My TS will match a 22 but I don't have FI and I am not pitched for speed. A RAF will smoke an R-22 and it uses less fuel to do it.

As far as "modern" goes gyros have had ZERO research and design $$ so you can't really say the gyros are using modern tech, heli's are the ones benefiting from new engineering and it is remarkable how well the gyros still hold up. Carter will change all that but for now Carter's tech is still only in Carters machines.

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Factory RAF2000 brochure says 80 mph cruise, 120 mph Vne - that's 70 & 104 kts respectively.

I don't see RAF drivers saying they regularly cruise at 110 mph like the R22 does - most say 80-85 mph.

Yes, the R22 burns more fuel - 8-9 gph is pretty common - and it'll cost a lot more to purchase & operate for sure!

I just don't see where a gyro is really any faster than a helicopter for a given size/weight/power - look at the Groen Hawk, it's pretty similar to helicopters in the same class.

The big gyro advantage is in mechanical complexity, simpler makes it cheaper to build, operate, and maintain.
 
Tim- Just trying to keep apples to apples here...but an R22 is derated at 124 horsepower.....the RAF's with the 2.5's are cooking along with 165 horse minimum and I know some are at 200 horses. Lets put a 2.2 in an RAF at 130 horse and compare it to an R22. The R22 would smoke it. But again,,,top speed is seldom the allure for a helicopter...its the 0 speed that is.


Mine will keep up with an R22 with only 90 horse...but thats not a fair comparison from my part as I only can haul one person doing that.

Stan
 
Turbo- I loved that video....thanks for posting it.


Stan
 
I just remembered that the pylon races that are held at Mentone have had Sparrowhawks, RAFs', Dominators, Bensens, Sportcopter, and several other gyros. But the only year a helicopter entered the race... John Snider in his Mosquito, resulted in him winning hands down and still has the fastest 2 lap times for the figure 8 course. I think he had a 582 in it , or something equivalent, but nothing more powerful than the others, and much less power than the bigger ones. I have always been told that helicopters are faster at the same horsepower considering you are comparing the same cabin profile.

Stan
 
The fastest a helicopter can go is about 250mph and this record (for a true heli) is still held by the Westland Lynx.

lynx-record.jpg


The X2 COMPOUND heli goes 259 mph.

In comparison, the rotodyne back in 1960 was going 220 and it was not rigged out to make records like the westland and X2.

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300px-In_conventional_flight_mode.jpg


NO helicopter had made Mu. Only the Carter Copter has.

Carter is a wee little company compared to the resources of the heli industry and Carter made this happen in only a few years of work.

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I just remembered that the pylon races that are held at Mentone have had Sparrowhawks, RAFs', Dominators, Bensens, Sportcopter, and several other gyros. But the only year a helicopter entered the race... John Snider in his Mosquito, resulted in him winning hands down and still has the fastest 2 lap times for the figure 8 course. I think he had a 582 in it , or something equivalent, but nothing more powerful than the others, and much less power than the bigger ones. I have always been told that helicopters are faster at the same horsepower considering you are comparing the same cabin profile.

Stan

That may very well be true.

Saying the R-22 is faster per /hp is fair because it is in the same size class as a 2-place gyro. Gyros are terribly draggy.

So I will concede to the R-22 example.

Still, the comparison between species of amateur built gyros and production heli's performance is notable.

Turbines are another animal entirely.

On the top speed range and efficiency rotodynes and compound helicopters simply can not be beat. period.

Rotorcraft top speed and efficiency records are held by the Carter convertaplane and the compound helis.
 
Getting back to Shawns original intent of this thread....he made a point of having the opportunity to fly both helis and gyros..... Both are fantastic for their function, and I would have to still say that gyros best fill the needs of most rotorcraft people on this forum. If I could afford a nice gyro sharing my hanger, I would have to decline as it would not be fair to my wife hogging more money for another toy. Its her turn again.

Stan
 
I hope someday we will be able to talk about if we want a heli, gyro or rotodyne!

If Carter is successful, both gyros and helis well be the tech of the past.

Someday we may have production LSA rotorcraft that can vary power to the blades in flight from zero to enough to hover yet still be affordable to build and own.

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True if your passenger is the photographer.

Not so if the pilot is the photographer.

Gyros can be flown low and slow in safe simulated near hover with one hand free (but quickly available). They do not 'settle with power' / vortex ring, they do not have rotorwash, less attention to RRPM/Man press.

This is not true of heli's.

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Tim, You're absolutely right. You can go fly your gyro and take some pictures of some pretty cool people, places and or things... from 500ft. You can go lower in unpopulated areas if you want to take pictures of corn fields, trees, or your shadow, but unless you want to start breaking regs, you'd better invest in a nice telephoto lens. As for myself, I'll just bring a friend along and let him worry about the photo's while I worry about the helicopter. Besides, it's much easier to explain to the feds after you've done an emergency landing in a high-school football field what went wrong and what you did when you don't have to start your sentence with, "So first I put down my camera..."
 
Tim, You're absolutely right. You can go fly your gyro and take some pictures of some pretty cool people, places and or things... from 500ft. You can go lower in unpopulated areas if you want to take pictures of corn fields, trees, or your shadow, but unless you want to start breaking regs, you'd better invest in a nice telephoto lens. As for myself, I'll just bring a friend along and let him worry about the photo's while I worry about the helicopter. Besides, it's much easier to explain to the feds after you've done an emergency landing in a high-school football field what went wrong and what you did when you don't have to start your sentence with, "So first I put down my camera..."

If you need to get closer than 500ft to people at an event I don't know if a gyro or heli is the best bet.

A heli that close is pretty annoying and one of the reason I get requests over helis.

I don't know why you would waste time with a dime store camera.

If you need to get that close, ditch the rotorcraft and get a PPC.

Unless of course your intent is to get photos of trees blowing in the wind, people in shock running for cover and trying to get the sand out of there eyes as you disrupt the event.

PPCs are nice slow platforms that don't shake, pleasing to look and and won't create the disturbance of a heli at a couple of hundred feet.

Now, if you are shooting a production MOVIE of actors that are pretending the heli does not exist that would be another story.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Sec. 91.119 — Minimum safe altitudes: General.

Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a) Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.

(b) Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.

(c) Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.

(d) Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface—

(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and

(2) A powered parachute or weight-shift-control aircraft may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section.

[Docket No. 18334, 54 FR 34294, Aug. 18, 1989, as amended by Amdt. 91–311, 75 FR 5223, Feb. 1, 2010]

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Memorial Day Parade Goes Awry in Jersey

http://www.totalinjury.com/memorial-day-parade-goes-awry.aspx

A falling branch struck a five-year-old girl and cut open her head at the 23rd annual Memorial Day parade in Morris Plains, N.J., according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

The little girl was hospitalized because of the branch injury, which occurred because of a low-flying Coast Guard helicopter that was part of the parade. It hit part of a tree and caused two eight-foot branches to break and fall – one striking the girl.

Another branch hit a 38-year-old woman who was protecting her son from the branch, giving her scratches and a gash on her face, though she was not sent to the hospital for her injuries. Her eight-year-old son also sustained scratches on his face. Paramedics at the scene were able to handle the situation.
 
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<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WdaQtYvFJjI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Yup, those PPC's look like a great option for taking pictures. Everybody acting naturally, no little girls getting bumped in the noggin by branches in this video, you hardly know the thing's there!

Okay, the video didn't imbed, but just check the link.
YouTube - Powered parachute flies into crowd of kids
 
Yup, those PPC's look like a great option for taking pictures. Everybody acting naturally, no little girls getting bumped in the noggin by branches in this video, you hardly know the thing's there!

Any aircraft can be flown into a crowd.

You are just adding another example of the fallacy of your scenario.

With your no telephoto scenario (85mm+) you are going to need to be ON TOP of the subject and certainly that would be better done at an event by something without the noise of a heli and the downwash.

Of course, again, that is silly because at the cost / burn of fuel for a heli why would you do photography with a dime store camera that can't do telephoto?

Once you get far enough from the crowd not to be a danger or disturbance, you are once again in the 500ft range and the advantages of non-heli platforms are obvious as you admitted.

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Tim, I think we're both getting off topic here. All I said in my first post was that every type of aircraft with their inherent abilities and listed some examples of each. I readily acknowledged that I think flying a gyro is a ton of fun and my favorite way to fly, but it seems like you've taken this post a little personally. Both helicopters and gyro's (and rotordynes) have limitations. Maybe you and I take pictures of different things. Maybe I can't afford a flashy camera and have to go with a (gulp) "dime store" camera, or have a professional photographer (who's usually the one footing the bill) ride along with me. The simple matter of the fact is that instead of defending gyro's to the death, maybe we can agree that both crafts have their advantages and disadvantages and go back to what this thread was originally about.
 
I agree completely Jon.

One heli advantage you missed though is the ability to fly a certified aircraft. When it comes to professional photography and making money that his a huge advantage. This is especially true in urban locations.

Until SLSA comes about, certified gyros are not only rare but are enclosed and poor platforms compared to open cockpit 'modern' designs.
 
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