More fun flying The Predator.

[Vance]

Vance:

I made a small PPT switch for Tyger for use in the back seat. I can make another.

Thank you Bobby,

I have a push to talk on the rear cyclic.

With the new radio the push to talk ground is common so when I push to talk in the front it activates the rear microphone.

It won’t be hard to add a relay that isolates the front push to talk button and isolates the rear microphone when it grounds the common push to talk.

I am a little weary of wiring and adding relays and I have some instructing to do.

I feel the mush mouth is good short term solution.

Thank you for your offer.

 

[GyroChuck]

Vance, where did you purchase your mush mouth from?

 

[Sv.grainne]

Thank you Bobby,

I have a push to talk on the rear cyclic.

With the new radio the push to talk ground is common so when I push to talk in the front it activates the rear microphone.

It won’t be hard to add a relay that isolates the front push to talk button and isolates the rear microphone when it grounds the common push to talk.

I am a little weary of wiring and adding relays and I have some instructing to do.

I feel the mush mouth is good short term solution.

Thank you for your offer.

Vance:

The switch that I added just activates the microphone on the intercom side when VOX is activated. No relays or other wiring required. Primarily for use when a joy rider in the back seat, can talk on the intercom if they press the button that is inserted in the mice circuit inline with the GA audio cord.

 

[Vance]

Vance, where did you purchase your mush mouth from?

I purchased the mush mouth from https://www.aviationsurvival.com/Acousticom-Corporation_bymfg_49-0-1.html

I tried to order a second one and it never shipped.

It appears to no longer be in their catalog.

The elastic it came with didn’t work very well and what you see is plan B.

It works very well now but it is annoying to some people and takes some adjusting.

I spent the day installing a double pole double throw relay that cuts the rear microphone off when using the push to talk on the front cyclic on the radio.

It seems to be working, I hope to test it properly tomorrow if I can find someone to go flying with.

I have a new client on Monday and I would like to have everything working and tested, the hanger cleaned up and a semblance of order.

I only get one chance to make a first impression.

 

[Vance]

Vance:

The switch that I added just activates the microphone on the intercom side when VOX is activated. No relays or other wiring required. Primarily for use when a joy rider in the back seat, can talk on the intercom if they press the button that is inserted in the mice circuit inline with the GA audio cord.

Thank you Bobby; that is essentially what I am doing with the relay.

Push to talk and the button grounds the relay energizing it, one side of the relay cuts off the rear microphone and the other side grounds the radio push to talk.

I took a picture of the mess inside the rotor tower, the other two relays are for my linier actuator for my trim.

They are all the same double pole, double throw relays so I only need one spare.

The yellow flags are identifying the wires so I have notes to my self. I find I am easily confused.

I need to be able to make radio calls from the back seat too.

I try to minimize the tasks a client has to perform so they can focus on learning to fly.

 

[Vance]

The new relay solved my radio problem. My client had trouble hearing me on the intercom because of wind noise when I pushed to talk on the intercom because it activated both microphones.

I felt I needed to add another relay so when I pushed to talk on the intercom the rear microphone was disconnected like it was on the radio. I procrastinated for most of a day.

I drew the circuit out and it looked too complicated to me.

As is often the case the answer came to me at 4:00 AM and I got up and used Microsoft Word to draw a better circuit using big zeros for the sixteen terminals with color codes and destinations written next to each terminal.

My cad program is not working with windows 11 on my new laptop.

I had no confidence in my ability to remember and was amazed that my drawing was correct. I tested everything extensively before I started cutting wires.

I had not liked the way things fit when I doubled up on connectors on the terminal screws on the relays and with the new scheme there were several that would have had three so I created some Ys splitting at the butt connectors making for a tidier installation.

The new scheme has the rear microphone cold until I push either the push to talk radio or the push to talk intercom buttons on the rear cyclic and that connects the rear microphone.

I spent a half day installing the extra relay and hooking everything up.

I was thrilled when it all worked the very first time.

Apparently I had learned something about managing and wiring the relays from my days of frustration.

Once I buttoned her up I had trouble finding someone to test the system with (no other way to properly test it) and my test flight went well.

My test client was able to hear me well and could talk to me and make radio calls from the back seat and I could make radio calls from the front seat.

I know this all reads very basic and fundamental and it is until some part of it does not work correctly.

We were listening to the communication on the video and I realized I was quieter than the tower so I had to study the manual to learn how to control the radio and intercom separately.

As far as I am concerned the entire radio manual is written in gibberish. For example: a long press (>2S) on “MDE” key starts the user menu. A short press on “MDE” provides toggling between the pages (or a short press on the ROTARY ENCODER).

I waited fully a half hour for radio communication so I could adjust the volume in the intercom to match the radio volume and had the GoPro on to capture the sound level. Several of my friends passed by with me sitting in an office chair next to The Predator with my helmet on waiting for a communication to calibrate the intercom volume. No telling what airport gossip will come from that.

Once it came there were two landing and one taking off and based on the video I feel I have it working correctly.

I have a birthday present first gyroplane flight of a rusty fixed wing pilot on Tuesday all day and a fixed wing single engine land, instrument, glider and ultralight flight instructor Wednesday through Sunday.

I am looking forward to them both and am excited about improved communications in the air.

I prefer to talk my clients through their challenges without taking the controls and being understood on the intercom is an important part of that.

I try to use the same words to minimize confusion.

I will be cleaning up the hangar tomorrow and Monday so it has a more professional appearance.

I am moving my home library to the hangar so I have three boxes of books to shelve as well as some cleaning and organizing to do from my extended project.

I only get one chance to make a first impression and I have found a professional appearance reduces the natural fear of doing something new and dangerous so they have more brain power to learn with.

I truly enjoy working through the challenges and love making The Predator a better training aircraft.

 

[Vance]

An aviation birthday gift.

Donald decided for his eightieth birthday he would purchase a Nano ultralight gyroplane and learn to fly it so he gave me a call. I suggested he learn to fly before making the purchase because gyroplanes are not for everyone.

One of the things I love about being a gyroplane flight instructor is the interesting people I meet and befriend. Donald has had an incredible life with many diverse adventures. He simply looks like a pilot should. He is a Commercial Pilot, Single Engine land, Single Engine Sea and Glider. He is a glider flight instructor. Donald rode his bicycle eight thousand miles last year and seems to be holding up well despite his advanced years.

Donald drove 670 miles to Santa Maria and joined Ed and the family for dinner at Pappy’s restaurant Monday night.

Ed has an all day birthday introductory lesson Tuesday and also came a long way.

It turns out it does rain in California and I don’t fly in the rain putting the damper on Ed’s birthday flight. Ed is going to reschedule.

Because Donald was already in town we took advantage of the weather day to learn the specifics of preflight on a gyroplane and to get a better understanding of rotor aerodynamics. We spent a lot of time discussing the typical challenges faced by a fixed wing pilot learning to fly a gyroplane. Donald had flown so many different types of aircraft that some of the gyroplane specifics were like various aircraft he had flown

We were anticipating some ugly winds behind the storm Wednesday and they arrived as expected accompanied by temperatures in the thirties. We went up flying long enough for Donald to recognize the cold was sucking the fun out of the flying. Winds were just supposed to get worse and it was supposed to be warmer on Thursday so we broke for the day and at my suggestion Donald purchased a balaclava.

Thursday as we took off for the beach; I gave Donald the aircraft controls and as I expected he flew to commercial standards. It took a little while for him to become comfortable with the delay in the controls and he would occasionally stab at the cyclic. We headed inland and did some turns around a point over the Nipomo water tower and S turns over a road over North Thompson Ave to check his ability to manage where the aircraft is in relation to the ground. Donald was flying so well I was beginning to worry that there was nothing I could teach him.

On the way back to the airport Donald discovered how much harder it is to find the airport from 1,000 feet about the ground.

I demonstrated a couple of landings and then gave Donald just the cyclic while I managed the throttle and the pedals.

I talked him through his first landing and it was as nice as could be.

We flew a second mission and the wind was starting to come up so after an extensive debrief with video from the flight we called it a day.

We were supposed to finish up Saturday so Friday we went out to do slow fight and recognition and recovery from low airspeed and his rate of descent. Because a gyroplane won’t stall many pilots get careless about their air speed. A typical gyroplane requires minimum power to fly at around 45kts. Any faster or slower takes more power to maintain level flight. The controls also get mushy and it is important to manage things correctly so we do left and right turns and climb and descend at 30kts indicated air speed. Many gyroplane mishaps are caused when people lose focus and get slow. Pulling back on the cyclic (stick) just causes the rate of descent to increase so even though it is counter intuitive the recovery is to get the nose down and pick up air speed before adding power to regain the lost altitude. Donald did recognition and recovery from low air speed and a high rate of descent exactly as described. As we flew back to Santa Maria (SMX) I could feel him getting better and better with the controls. His approach and descent were flawless.

Donald has enough experience to know that he may back slide and neither of us were surprised he reverted to his fixed wing habits and flared too high and held her nose high and I took the controls. What could have been a challenge in some fixed wing aircraft was a non event in The Predator and it gave Donald a chance to see what to do when things aren’t going well with a gyroplane landing. It also helped me to feel like a flight instructor.

As we watched the flights on the video; it was fun having two flight instructors critiquing his performance and I feel it enhanced the learning process.

The predicted afternoon wind was three zero zero degrees at ten knots.

After lunch we went up for some pattern work and I added takeoffs. Donald was doing well as we built up to engine at idle accurate landings. He was greasing most of his landings with only three hours of flight time when the tower gave us a wind check and it as three zero zero degrees at seventeen knots gusting to twenty three knots. The winds socks were twitching through around thirty degrees. This is over my wind limit for both winds and gust spread for instructing because it is hard to separate control inputs from environmental inputs to our flight path. We decided to call it a day. I was on high alert for the windy landing for no reason because it was perhaps Donald’s best landing so far as he caressed the runway. In the Debrief he felt like he had a break through.

As I filled The Predator up Donald discovered that he had somehow lost his balaclava that was contained by his helmet. We looked for it everywhere and I decided it must have been one of the local poltergeists.

It was thirty two degrees F (0 C) when I checked the weather Saturday morning so we took some extra time on the morning briefing waiting for it to warm up. We discussed typical problems that fixed wing pilots have when converting to gyroplanes.

Donald’s takeoffs were much improved and his landings were constantly good so we continued to work toward engine at idle landings.

We went up for one more short mission and Donald was doing everything well. I felt it was a little early to have him do an engine out on takeoff so I demonstrated it from 150 feet about the ground.

We debriefed for a couple of hours, downloaded his flight videos and talked at length about the transition process.

We agreed that with only 6.6 hours of dual it would probably be best if after digesting what he had learned that he come back for some more training before he transitioned into his Nano ultralight gyroplane.

I am sure if he decided to get his Sport Pilot, Gyroplane add on he could pass the test.

The photos are all outtakes from his Videos.

 

[WaspAir]

Always glad to hear about a glider guy doing well !

P.S. Saturday it was 20 degrees on the ground when I went up with a CFI candidate to 12,000 feet for spin certification (required for glider CFIs). Brrrr!

 

[Vance]

I had another birthday flight today with Richard.

This was a one hour flight with an hour of ground. Richard is an airline transport pilot with some helicopter training. He is 26 years old today and his sweetheart bought him a birthday present of an introductory flight lesson in a gyroplane. She is a keeper and a private pilot.

An introductory lesson in a gyroplane includes ground instruction, some air work and if they haven’t scared me too badly I talk them through a landing with only the cyclic and then a careful debrief.

Before we can start I have to confirm that they are not a terrorist. I am required to cover the experimental nature of the aircraft, how to work the safety equipment and emergency procedures. I was trying to fit everything into 45 minutes so we would have some time to debrief after the flight. I included some does and don’ts and we were off.

I took off and flew the pattern getting her trimmed out on downwind setting up to demonstrate a landing. After landing I demonstrated another takeoff to fly straight out with a slight right and gave Richard the controls at 400 feet mean sea level. From the first moment he had the controls he was very smooth and progressive on the cyclic and managed the power well. We leveled off at 1,300 feet msl over the Santa Maria Valley. He was flying to commercial standards, straight, level and on course.

Richard regularly flies out of Santa Maria so navigation was not a challenge for him as he was familiar with the local landmarks.

I demonstrated turns around a point (around the water tower) and gave him the controls. It would be accurate to say he flew as well as I did. I had him reverse direction and he did just as well. We flew across the California 101 and used Thompson to demonstrate our S turns over a road. I gave Richard the controls and after some brief altitude excursions in the building winds he managed control of the aircraft well.

I am not used to this; we were only 20 minutes into the flight.

Back to the airport and I was going to demonstrate another landing. Richard’s approach was so nice I just talked him through the landing instead of taking the controls. I then took the controls and did the takeoff and gave them back asking if he felt ready to takeoff and he answered in the affirmative.

As with nearly everyone he got the nose up a little high and lifted off early as she waddled into the air in a series of slight s turns.

He made several more nice takeoffs and landings and only one where I got on the controls and demonstrated what to do if you run out of airspeed before running out of altitude (add power).

We were already overtime so I asked if there was anything he wanted to do before we finished up. Richard wanted to do an engine at idle landing so I demonstrated one and then talked him through the decent and landing. Compared to a power on landing an engine at idle landing has a much steeper descent and things happen more quickly as touchdown nears. The landing did not go as planed and as I began to say my aircraft and started to put the power in I felt him on the throttle and let him turn the engine at idle landing into a very nice power on landing. He did not have a tachometer in back and somehow he managed 1,600 rpm; exactly what I had been using for the power on landings.

I could not get him to ask questions in the debrief so I struggled along in a blow by blow monolog, made an entry in his log book, gave them a receipt and bid them good day so they didn’t have to wait for the video to down load I mailed it to them..

I wish I could take credit for Richard’s precision; I cannot. He is simply a great natural pilot.

My best clients get this far with all day and two and a half hours flying. I feel I could get Richard to practical test standards in a day with perhaps another three hours of dual and six hours of ground.

We would do engine at idle accurate landings, steep turns, slow flight and recognition and recovery from low airspeed and high rate of descent.

He would then go to another CFI and if he flew to practical test standards he would earn his Sport Pilot, Gyroplane certificate.

Richard was a delight to teach and I hope he returns. It was evening before I calmed back down. Each time I recall the flight I marvel at how well Richard did.

 

[Vance]

No 2022 Bensen Days for me.

For the last 17 years we have been living in a lovely house on the Nipomo Mesa on 1.1 acres.

Even though I can see the beacon of the airport from the house; it is about 25 minutes each way to the Santa Maria Public airport where I teach people to fly gyroplanes.

I love the peace and serenity of our home.

The local real estate market is active with rising prices.

Eight months ago Ed and I decided it was time to down size.

I am 72 in and no longer have a desire to generate the income to support our extravagant home and lifestyle.

We were running the Software Company (Counterman) out of the house.

Ralph is the head of support at Counterman and lives in Orcutt about a half hour from the house.

After some experimenting Ralph found he liked working from home.

The house was built in 1987 and still had the original carpet and linoleum.

We felt to get enough money to bring my fantasy to fruition we needed to do some work on the house.

I contacted a Realtor and he recommended someone to do the work.

They painted the house inside and out and scraped the cottage cheese (sound proofing) off the ceiling. They even cleaned up the yard.

They replaced the carpet with fake wood flooring and replaced the kitchen and bathroom counters with some plastic that looks like marble with sparkles in it and redid the tile in a more modern style. They estimated it would take a month and gave me a quote which they promptly exceeded.

I put in new toilets (3) and new low flow everything. I spent every dollar I had and maxed out my credit cards. We filled several dumpsters with memories and I donated many books to the Santa Maria Museum of flight.

I had work to do on The Predator but the crew seemed to be more productive if I stayed at home and kept them from painting over the switch plates.

The work on the Predator stretched out to almost four months in part because of the distractions.

Not flying and spending a lot of money on The Predator put a dent in my cash flow.

We moved most of our things we didn’t discard into the garage and spent more than a week sleeping in the garage to keep out of the way of the work team.

After four months the Realtor felt were finally ready to sell.

We had an open house and only the neighbors came.

After two months on the market we got a verbal offer for 70% of what we were asking. I had a six month contract with the realtor and shortened it to three. He felt the price was too high and it was the price he had come up with. Three days from the end of his contract he presented a written offer for 80% of what I was asking from people who could not borrow enough money to pay full price.

I hired a different realtor and he is a go getter. He staged the house and cleaned up the yard some more and painted the dirt green.

He worked at marketing the house. Forty five people showed up for the open house and in two days we had two competing offers with one over the asking price all cash.

The last two days I have been out looking at houses with money I don’t even have yet.

I made an offer on a house in Orcutt less than five minutes from my hangar at SMX today.

It needs some of the same work we just did to our home. It is priced accordingly.

This will likely be the last house I purchase and my head is filled with both joyful anticipation and fear of making a mistake that will haunt me till the end.

This has been keeping me busy and I feel it is not a good time to be gone for a couple of weeks so Bensen days is out for me.

I will miss seeing my friends and making new ones.

A good friend wants me to give him the three hours of instruction in preparation for his Private Pilot, Rotorcraft-Gyroplane practical test so I will still be having gyroplane joy when I would have been driving across Texas.

 

[Vance]

Blast from the past.

Before I became a flight instructor it was not unusual for me to give rides in my gyroplane (The Predator) and one of the people I gave a ride to was Randy; a particularly nice, Cal Poly trained mechanical engineer, local machine shop owner and a rusty fixed wing pilot.

He had been keeping track of me on social media and decided it was time to get some training so he gave me a call.

There is a lot of misinformation about gyroplanes so we started out with some good questions and ended with; “just give me a call when you are ready”.

I was pleased to hear from him a few days later and we agreed to meet at 9:00 at the Santa Maria Public Airport.

We established that Randy’s goal for the day was to find out if he could fly a gyroplane and prepare him for a gyroplane add on to his pilot’s certificate so we worked on preflight, flight principles and required briefings till almost noon

Randy was patient with my sometimes protracted explanations and asked good questions.

I did the first takeoff and demonstrated a landing and takeoff giving the controls to Randy at about 700 MSL (mean sea level)n with instructions to climb to 1,300 feet and turn south on California Highway one. My practice area to the north had a fire TFR (temporary flight restriction) nearby. From the beginning Randy was flying to practical test standards and I could feel his control inputs getting better as we made our way south very near our target altitude. I took the controls briefly when we reached the practice area and demonstrated steep turns, slow flight with pedal turns, a vertical descent and turns around a point.

I gave Randy back the controls and he did great going anticlockwise and smoothly transitioned into clock wise turns around a point managing the standards of plus or minus ten knots and a thousand feet of altitude.

I demonstrated S turns over a road and again Randy did well flying to practical test standards. I felt he was ready and gave him a choice and he wanted to do some more S turns over a road to get a better feel for a gyroplane. I could feel steady improvement.

I then demonstrated recovery from low air speed and a high rate of descent and Randy again did well.

On the flight back to the airport Randy managed the turbulence over the hills well.

A Cessna 172 was instructed by air traffic control (ATC) to make a straight in and was drifting toward us. ATC expressed their concern and Randy spotted him first and we were number two behind the Cessna; runway three zero clear to land.

We were at 1,300 feet MSL and I wanted to be at 800 feet just before the threshold for consistency where I would take the throttle and rudder pedals and Randy managed the decent well.

Randy’s approach looked great. The plan was for me to take the cyclic near the ground and do the first landing. I asked if Randy was ok with doing the landing and he responded yes. I talked him through the round out and flare and the landing lacked elegance but was completely satisfactory with no control input from me. I did the takeoff and Randy made two more landings. We drifted quite a way from the centerline on one and Randy said he was ready to land and debrief. We had flown for 1.2 hours and most all of it had been to the practical test standards.

We filled The Predator, updated my log book and spent around 40 minutes debriefing. I asked Randy if he was ready for more and he was so after a quick review we were ready to go.

I dialed in the frequency for ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information System) and instead got the automated surface observation system (ASOS). Undaunted I pulled up to taxiway Romeo and called ground twice with no response. I called the tower and no response. It was 4:05 and the tower finally got back to me saying that the SMX is notamed (notice to air mission) and the tower closed at 4:00 and SMX was now class G.

I asked Randy if he was ok with flying with the tower closed and self reporting and he was.

It took me a bit to adjust to reporting three to four times a lap compared to one and I upped my level of vigilance for conflicting traffic. Everyone in the pattern gave good radio and Randy continued to improve so I added takeoffs before we called it a day.

We shared closed traffic with a Cessna 172 and our spacing worked our great because of his longer pattern.

Randy had flown a total of two hours and the entries in his log book were extensive.

The debrief went well and the video was helpful.

I put the video on a USB drive so Randy could chair fly at home getting ready for our next flight.

I look forward to our next flight where we will work up to engine at idle accurate landings, steep turns, slow flight with turns, climbs descents.

I cannot find the words to express how much joy I find guiding people like Randy on their aviation adventure. I have empathy for their struggles and rejoice in their triumphs.

 

[Vance]

Gyroplane emotional rollercoaster.

During a preflight on The Predator I found the rear navigation light on the left side was not working.

I had a spare bulb so I removed the two screws and found the socket that holds the quarts light bulb was not working well. A small set back and perfectly acceptable considering The Predator first flew in 1999.

My client would be showing up shortly and the mission did not call for night flight so I ordered a new socket and a spare bulb from Aircraft Spruce that they had in stock with one day shipping. Things are going well.

The flight with my client went well and he flew very well. The video worked and the client was happy. Life treats me well.

The socket shows up the next day and I am excited to get The Predator air worthy and find the time to get the work done. I love it that I have a hangar with the tools to work on her and can make the time to get the work done.

The receptacle is in two pieces and is held together and in place with a small brass screw. I remove the screw and extract the old pieces, cut the wires and installed the new one. I was careful to not handle the bulb because the oil in my fingers can cause a premature failure. The bulb was not tight in the socket and it appeared to me the tightening up the brass screw was the fix. Without using much force the small brass slot head screw broke. Twenty minutes of effort to remove the screw by grabbing the stub with needle nose pliers failed. There was simply not enough to get hold of and the socket and bracket blocked access to the rest of the screw.

I sat down with my Aircraft Spruce Catalog and was dismayed to find a replacement was $735.

Efforts to find a used navigation light the next day failed and early afternoon the next day I made my way down to the airport and stopped by a friends hangar and showed him the problem. He pulled out his duck bill pliers and squeezing hard enough to cause him to shake he was able to get hold of the stub and remove what was left of the screw. We found corrosion on the threads and another friend had a tap we could chase the threads with. They even had a replacement screw. Yippee!

After leaving some doughnut money I went to my hangar and carefully put everything back together and hooked up the wires. Both the navigation and anti collision lights worked perfectly and I still had time to go for a maintenance flight.

Preflight went well and I worked my way through my check lists.

Checked the weather and the wind was 290 degrees at 12 knots with runway three zero in use.

There was a new air traffic controller in the tower and he was as nice as could be using gyroplane instead of experimental in his clearances.

Takeoff was magical as usual and my first landing was a greaser; I could barely feel her touchdown although I touched down without a target.

My next landing was not quite as smooth only about five feet past my target so I was emboldened and thought I would try a Mayfield landing: power off, zero roll and cyclic on the aft stop.

I ballooned up a little at first and did not quite reach the aft stop.

I could not feel the touchdown at zero roll and was giggling all the way to the hangar.

As I was sitting in the afterglow of my maintenance flight a car pulled up in front of a friends hangar about three hangers down and the driver got out being careful to get my attention.

He approached slowly and said he had seen me flying over his house but had never seen a gyroplane up close.

He has a Cessna 182 in a hangar a couple of rows down. He is an inventor, a builder, an underwater welder and an entrepreneur. He is a hundred hour pilot so we talked about his interactions with CFIs and his flying experience and goals.

I answered his questions about gyroplanes and what it was like to fly a gyroplane for a fixed wing pilot.

I have met a new friend and potential client; had a lovely flight and have an airworthy gyroplane in the hangar.

In two days I felt like I experienced a full range of emotions related to aviation, life and friends.

Life treats me well.

 

[Mayfield]

Vance,

When you wake up next to the woman you love, go to the airport, climb in your aircraft and commit aviation.............It is Priceless!

Life is very good!

Jim

 

[Vance]

I was not able to get the cyclic to the rear stop to do a proper Mayfield landing in The Predator.

I will practice until I can do a Mayfield landing consistently.

Terry taught me to do power on landings.

Life treats us well Jim.

 

[j4flyer]

Vance your writings makes me feel like I’m along side of you in your adventures. Thank you
Have you considered starting a YouTube channel ?

 

[Vance]

Vance your writings makes me feel like I’m along side of you in your adventures. Thank you
Have you considered starting a YouTube channel ?

Thank you for the kind words Bob.

I love it when I can find the words to express my feelings and reach a friend.

Editing is not something I want to learn to do so I am not inclined to start a U tube channel.

Perhaps if I was younger and hungry I would expand my challenging relationship with computers.

I am fortunate that I can get by on my income so I am not looking for a job.

I feel that I am living a dream and I love to share the fun.

 

[Kevin_Richey]

I was not able to get the cyclic to the rear stop to do a proper Mayfield landing in The Predator.

I will practice until I can do a Mayfield landing consistently.

Terry taught me to do power on landings.

Life treats us well Jim.

So, we now have the Mayfield landing to add to gyro flying lore? 😄

 

[Mayfield]

Wonderful. (He says resignedly)
I suspect the Vance Breese, Ron Awad, John Stark, Ben Suissa, add your favorite name here, landing would be as appropriate.

I'm just hoping that anyone reading this thread and the "Timing is everything" thread, think "maybe I've become a little complacent. I think I'll try to land as slow as possible."

Jim

 

[Vance]

When I try to do anything in a gyroplane to a higher standard I think of it as a Mayfield standard.

I have learned so much from you and feel you are a gyroplane icon.

You have so clearly described it in your "Timing is everything" thread.

I am disappointed that there has not been more discussion yet on that thread.

 

[Mayfield]

I so wish that those who do not routinely do zero groundspeed landings could experience how marvelous it feels to just stop as the wheels touch the ground.