J-2 Update

[KenSandyEggo]

My gyro's been gone for awhile and I'm going nuts not having one to fly or out at the airport to work on. I could clean the hangar........NAH! Later.

I spoke with Mark, the prez of the Rotary Museum at Ramona Airport. They happen to be hauling a helicopter to New York state and have an empty rotorcraft trailer heading back. As the plans are now, they will pick up the J-2 in Little Rock around the first of October, give or take a day or 2 and haul it back to San Diego just for the cost of fuel for the truck. We both make out. They have the gas paid for a big chunk of their dead-heading trip and I get a haul-job fairly inexpensively. They have a diesel truck that gets around 10 m.p.g. with a load. It's roughly 1680 road miles, so that would be about 168 gallons of diesel fuel. Even at current prices, it would be less than $500. I think that's a pretty good deal.

I leave for Little Rock on Thursday, August 25 (Hey! That's my ex-wife's birthday!) via Southwest Airlines. I have a rental car reserved at the airport and will drive to Ron's place. We'll do familiarization flying on Friday. Then the plan is for us to remove the blades and the wing gas-tanks and pack them up to have ready for the pick-up. I return Saturday afternoon.

Once here, I need a new radio, a transponder and encoder and a new intercom installed. Then the big decision comes up. I mentioned flying her from San Diego to Charlotte to my step-son David, and he almost wet his pants from excitement. He wants to do it and come along. I'll see how I feel and what the weather looks like after our condo sells here and we're ready to move to Charlotte. It's about 2,000 road miles. I could also wait for the museum to head out east and get it hauled for 200 gallons of diesel fuel. It'll just depend on how adventurous I'm feeling when the time comes.

I have a J-2 ferry-tank on the way that I'm borrowing. Don't know how many gallons it holds yet. My gross is 1650 and the empty weight is 1,000. With about 400 pounds of lard in the seats (we're both starting on diets...probably tomorrow or.....whenever), say 35 gallons of fuel with the extra tank at about 200 pounds, that leaves us 50 pounds for oil and baggage....and we would be travelling extremely light. How much does a case of Bud Light weigh?.......Just kidding.

The only glitch I see is if the condo suddenly sells before the gyro gets here. Then I may have to rethink my plans.

I have a 2nd Class flight physical scheduled for Tuesday in anticipation of getting my commercial ticket so I can take paying customers for rides to help pay for the upkeep and gas and be able to take a tax-deduction as a business expense. So anyway, those are my plans, such as they are.

 

[gyroplanes]

Hey Ken, Contact me. I think we can help with their expenses. We might need a J-2 moved from New Jersey to Chicago soon.

 

[KenSandyEggo]

O.K., Tom. I'll see if I can coordinate something. They'd have to be taking something to the east coast. Wait! Maybe they could drop their load in N.Y., pick the J-2 up in Jersey, drop it off in Chicago and then pick mine up in Little Rock and bring her to San Diego. Does your time frame fit late September? I'll E-mail you shortly about details.

Do you know how much fuel the ferry-tank holds?

 

[KenSandyEggo]

Yeah!! Passed my Class 2 physical today. All I need now is to get a commercial ticket to start barnstorming.

 

[Canadian Rhino]

Can you sit down yet?

 

[KenSandyEggo]

Not yet. He checked my prostate while he was at it. That's good too.

 

[KenSandyEggo]

I leave Thursday at 7:15 a.m. to Little Rock to inspect my new baby and get some flight time in. I'll take plenty of photos. I received the ferry-tank. Not very useful. It holds 8 gallons and only 7 are usable. That's not going to get anyone much further in a 180 horse gyro. I'll be back Saturday.

 

[jdalexa]

Boo Yah!!! Dude... I want to see it. I'll make a weekend drive on down. Keep us all up on how it goes.

 

[ventana7]

Ken,

I would encourage you to fly her cross country if possible. I am having such a blast flying to the 48 states. I had high expectations of my trip and every day is even better than I expected. It would be a spectacular trip from So Cal to Charlotte.
Go for it!!

Rob

 

[PW_Plack]

Ken,

Ken Brock flew from Long Beach to Kitty Hawk, making 44 stops along the way, in a KB-2. Are you a man, or what!

Don't forget your camera!

 

[KenSandyEggo]

Hey! I'm thinking about it. My step-son is pushing me to do it and take him. That will cut the useful load down a bit, but heck, an extra set of underwear, sandals so no socks are needed, a couple T-shirts and some deoderant and toothpaste...what more would we need? Oh yeah....I forgot....plenty of cash at around 10 gallons per hour. It would be a lot cheaper to have her trailed back by the museum, about 200 gallons of diesel fuel, but sure would be more fun to fly her. I'm thinking hard.

 

[PW_Plack]

Ken, gyros weren't designed for a lot of ground miles, or to ride on trailers. A trip from San Diego to Charlotte, especially on some roads back east, would be the equivalent of 20,000 bad landings. After witnessing the effects of trailering Todd's Dominator to El Mirage, and a SparrowHawk from Seattle to Fond du Lac and back, I'll be thinking twice about taking my gyro on any long road trips.

If you wound up with more than a few loose bolts on a certificated aircraft like a J-2, any fuel savings could disappear quick.

 

[KenSandyEggo]

Paul,

My J-2 is being trailered from Little Rock to San Diego at the end of September, BUT.......it's being trailered by the Rotorcraft Museum. Their rig is set up for hauling rotorcraft. They haul rotorcraft all over the country. They're picking mine up on the return trip of hauling a helicopter from San Diego to New York state. They should have their act together. I think Mark told me that when they tie it down, they actually tie the tires down somehow. I don't know, but they have the proper gear, vehicle and experience to do the job properly. Should be O.K.

 

[GyroRon]

Ken, did you get insurance for this gyro? Either way, will it be covered if damaged on the trailer? Trailering cross country.... I would be way more concerned about a road accident hurting the gyro than the potholes in the road. Most auto insurance polices don't cover the stuff on a trailer if your in a accident.

 

[TomCarlisle]

I have trailered my Dominator to El Mirage 4 times (1400 round trip), to Wachula 6 times (4500 round trip) and Mentone once (4000 round trip) with no significant damage. I stripped the threads out of the shimmy damper on one trip. $25 for a replacement and I could have drilled and tapped the old one if I had not been at Wachula and Ernie had one with him. If the trailer is set up properly and the tie downs are correct, there is no problem with hauling it.

 

[brett s]

When I was in the ag business we used to trailer a couple of helicopters about 3000 miles a year - no problems, but also using trailers designed for this specifically & having a lot of experience getting the things tied down properly. Bell 47's & Hiller 12's are pretty tough too, that didn't hurt. Always removed the blades & restrained the head from hitting the mast, same for the tail rotor...

The most dangerous part of the whole thing is loading & unloading (you flew on & off the trailer) - trailer width was only about 6" wider than the skid width to keep them road-legal without any special permits, always hated that part

 

[bartc150]

might check out Northern tool for these tie downs. I think I'm going to give em a try

 

[GyroRon]

I was thinking more along the lines of someone else in another vehicle running into your trailer and hurting the gyro that way. No way to predict that kind of stuff, not to mention YOU could be the one at fault... We have all had close calls and some of us have even crashed once or twice

 

[KenSandyEggo]

She's mine!

She's mine!

Those wheel tie-downs are what the Heli museum uses. Anyway, I'm back from Little Rock and the proud owner of an excellent J-2. Did a little flying in her and she's a little handful for the uninitiated......just because she's different from what I've flown. My main problem was the take-off roll steering. On my first take-off, I got her spun-up well to 400 rrpm after lining up on the runway, raised the collective to pitch the blades and turned the twist-grip to full power. Just before I ran off the right side of the runway, Ron grabbed it and saved the day. The throttle is different too. There is a normal push-pull one on the panel, but you have to use the twist-grip on the collective for take-off and it rolls opposite of a motorcycle. You roll it outwards for throttle. There's a pic of it below.

Even though we taxied around first a little, when I took off, I forgot that the steering has springs and it's not direct like on my old gyro. You use differential brake-steering to taxi. So when I applied just a little left rudder on the roll, it did nothing. You basically have to mash the pedal for the nose-wheel to do anything before you have enough speed for any rudder authority.

Once in the air, I survived. The lack of any stick-pressure is different, especially in the roll axis, but I managed to keep her fairly level and executed a bunch of turns in both directions. On the next landing, it was a T&G and I managed to keep her straight on the runway during the take-off roll. I think Ron was a little touchy for me to be flying her (especially since I hadn't written the check yet ), and not being a CFI, he grabbed the stick often on my take-offs and landings...not really grabbing it, but helping out. Guess I can't blame him since legally it was still his.

She flies extremely smooth. There is no stick movement whatsoever...except for me ham-fisting it a little at first. I loved the way she flew and it takes a little getting used to to fly smoothly. The tendency is to over-control initially because of the lack of stick-feel compared to the rotors most of us are used to flying. My old gyro had a fairly stiff stick-feel, especially laterally. You do have to use the rudder pedals on a J-2. That ball is not just for decoration. It's easier to get uncoordinated than a gyro with a huge tail.

The gyro is much cleaner than I expected. The dash and interior are in great shape. There are only 2 spots on the engine cowling that got paint-blisters because of the factory adding an exhaust system to the "Super" model. I'll see if I can find vinyl in a matching color and redo that section. Otherwise I'll see about getting a paint touch-up. Ron added an inside heat-shield to prevent it from happening again.

Attached are some photos of my gyro and 2 in-flight. Someone looked at our condo yesterday and seemed interested, so there's a chance she will never make it to San Diego and will be flown by me directly to Charlotte. Here's something against flying her 2,000 miles, even though it would be a great adventure. Currently there are some life-limited parts on the J-2, the main ones being the rotor-blades. With my C/S prop, it's less than 1,000 hours, and she already has 477. The same exact rotor-head and similar blades on the Hughes 269 got bumped up to around 5,000 hours I believe, after some time was put on them. Of course the J-2 never had those kind of hours put on them, so the time has stayed low. There are several ways to attack the problem, one by getting a time extension via convincing the FSDO to a conditional extension with a thorough inspection every 100 hours. Don't know if they'll buy that or anyone has gotten an extension on the blades. There is a rumor that someone has, but no one seems to know who or where.

Until that's done, it's silly to be burning up the blade hours just to get her from point A to B. That'd eat up a good 25 hours. That's about 25 days of local flying. So anyhow, I'm in limbo right now as to where she'll be going first. Wherever she goes, I'm hoping I can get Si to come over and spend a few hours at least with me to get a little sharper in my gyro skills as to the J-2.

 

[david holmes]

Ken,
You finally got a "keeper".
I envy you -- some.