my little wooden gyrocopter

[XXavier]

This looks like an amazing project.

Congratulations on your meeting the various challenges in simple but innovative ways, wishing you every success.

Very struck by the look of your rotor blades. I am guessing wooden skinned.

J.C. gave a description of his blades, in another post:

 

[Jean Claude]

A member of the French gyroplane forum kindly changed the format of my video.
It's here,

Enter the password : JCD04

 

[skyguynca]

A member of the French gyroplane forum kindly changed the format of my video.
It's here,

Enter the password : JCD04

very nice video, especially showing the head movement, great job on the design

 

[XXavier]

very nice video, especially showing the head movement, great job on the design

And –so far as I know– that 'tilting plate' is, in what regards rotor control, absolutely original... I hope that the flight tests do confirm the good results that we all wish...

 

[Jean Claude]

Chuck,
For the reverse installation of the ROTAX 503, I have relied on other successful examples from other hobby builders, without any disadvantages other than faster soiling of the spark plugs.

Regarding the stick to ceiling, I guess I will have to be patient to recondition my reflexes.
I have already been confronted with an analog situation, during the tests of my plane with rudder control by the stick.
The pilots to whom I entrusted the stick in flight, could not refrain from correcting the inclination, instead of the heading, and invariably obtained a divergent sinuosity

 

[C. Beaty]

We humans are adaptable creatures JC but that ability is maximum at age ~18 and diminishes thereafter.

The Wright Brothers, being bicycle mechanics, crossed their rudder cables so that the rudder bar on their airplanes moved in the same direction as the handlebars of a bicycle.

But along comes Glen Curtiss, another US aviation pioneer, who did not bother to cross his rudder cables and taught himself to fly with “reversed “ redder control and that’s the way it’s been ever since.

I considered crossing the rudder cables on my first gyro when learning to fly via the Bensen flight training syllabus.

But please keep in mind that you’re no longer 18 years old and cyclic pitch on rotorcraft is much more critical than the rudder on a FW airplane.

I have also operated Rotax 2 stroke engines spark plugs down but not long enough to have formed an opinion about effect on durability.

In any case, Good Luck and please don’t smash your lovely little wooden gyro.

 

[wolfy]

Possibly some time in a trike (powered hang glider) could help get your mind around the reversed controls. Not the same but similar.

wolfy

 

[Jazzenjohn]

I would echo Wolfy comment on some trike time, I'd add driving with your hands at the bottom of the steering wheel, spending a lot of time taxiing around paying particular attention to tilting the blades into the wind, and possibly adding a small airplane model on the stick that you could focus on as you move the stick to have it follow your intended movements. I learned to fly with an overhead stick by having 2 sets of controls on the gyro and I still think that's the best way.
Did you ever weigh those beautiful rotorblades you built? I have always wondered how much they weigh compared to metal blades.

 

[Brian Jackson]

Hi JC.

What a beautiful ship. I am curious about the head dynamics: at all-up weight when suspended from the teeter, does the stick have any tendency to lunge forward? In other words, the way the head is suspended and allowed to articulate, is the geometry (at full suspension weight) balanced so the stick doesn't require constant arm force in one direction? I love the design. Thank you for sharing it with us.

 

[Jean Claude]

Did you ever weigh those beautiful rotorblades you built? I have always wondered how much they weigh compared to metal blades.

Our twobladed rotors require a low conicity to avoid excessive vibration. This conditions the choice of the blade mass.
So, my wooden blades weighted with a steel strip to keep 18 lbs eaches (ie about 2.5 degrees of coning)

 

[C. Beaty]

The ideal rotor would be weightless with 6 lb tip weights = all mass located at teeter bolt height.

Oops! That wouldn’t eliminate vibration; there would still be an oscillating aerodynamic moment about the teeter bolt.

 

[XXavier]

A sketch by J.C. published in 2011 in the French gyro forum:

Translation: with these kinematics, radial loads are not transmitted to the stick, but only to the masts.

 

[C. Beaty]

Javier, I traveled the length of Spain from Algeceras to the French border during the Franco era when socialist Europe regarded fascist Spain as Europe’s bad guy. I was transferred from a US airbase in Morocco to the US military advisory group in Denmark.

The Mediterranean coastal route to Barcelona consisted of 2,000 miles of unpaved road with 2 members of the Guardia Civil in their celluloid hats posted every 10 miles or so.

No gasoline for Spaniards, the few automobiles had charcoal gas generators hung on the rear end and railways had wood burning locomotives that stopped occasionally with crew and passengers out chopping wood. Plenty of gasoline for purchasers with foreign currency.

Thanks to Franco, Spain managed to avoid the devastation of WWII.

 

[XXavier]

Javier, I traveled the length of Spain from Algeceras to the French border during the Franco era when socialist Europe regarded fascist Spain as Europe’s bad guy. I was transferred from a US airbase in Morocco to the US military advisory group in Denmark.

The Mediterranean coastal route to Barcelona consisted of 2,000 miles of unpaved road with 2 members of the Guardia Civil in their celluloid hats posted every 10 miles or so.

No gasoline for Spaniards, the few automobiles had charcoal gas generators hung on the rear end and railways had wood burning locomotives that stopped occasionally with crew and passengers out chopping wood. Plenty of gasoline for purchasers with foreign currency.

Yes, thanks to Franco, Spain managed to avoid the devastation of WWII. The country suffered a hard post-war isolation, and Stalin insisted, in Potsdam, that Spain should be invaded and occupied, but Churchill stood against, and Truman supported him. I don't think that Spain, was, at the time, a truly fascist country. Franco was an authoritarian with no clear ideology, and the clergy had a lot of political influence; the semi-fascist Falange held some power for couple of decades, but in 1960, with the country on the verge of bankruptcy, Franco changed tack, abandoned the dreams of a fascist-socialist autarchy, and the country opened to tourism and foreign investment. The living conditions improved fast, and the wood-chip gas generators, 'gasógenos', were soon forgotten...

In spite of Franco having saved Spain from becoming a communist satellite of the USSR, and due to that 'pendular' character of history, not a few Spaniards are now too critical of the dictator, and too many people here are still talking about Franco. He has been dead for 45 years...

 

[C. Beaty]

The Spanish civil war was fought out in miniature on the streets of Ybor City, now a suburb of Tampa Florida. The cigar industry was located in Ybor City and was staffed with Cubans and Spaniards.

The cigar worker’s union supported the Republicans and the factory owners and management supported the Nationalists.

I grew up with Cubans, in fact, my grammar school best buddy was a blue eyed Cuban boy that was so pretty the little girls wanted to touch him. There are quite a number of blonde, blue eyed Cubans whose ancestors came from the Canary Islands.

The cigar industry is long gone and the few cigars still being made are machine rolled. Ybor City was named for its founder, Vicente Ybor* who first located his factories on scrub land east of Tampa and built housing for his workers.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente_Martinez_Ybor

 

[Resasi]

My son went to Police Academy at Ybor City when he joined the Hillsborough Sheriffs Office. Dropped him off and picked him up there lots.

Also was taken to Castro’s favourite cigar factory when I took and African Presidential Flight over there a few years before. He came bounding up the stairs and shook everyone by the hand...so I have shaken hands with Fidel??? Hmmm???

The thighs they were rolled on were certainly not virginal, but they smelled and tasted great.

The cigarillos, you bad minded lot. The ladies...well grandmothers, looked as though they had been doing it a while.

 

[XXavier]

This is a small world... As a young boy, I remember visiting the hand-made cigar factories in pre-revolutionary Havanna, 1958 or so... At the time, I think they were preserved as a tourist attraction, because the main production was probably mechanized (save, perhaps, for the top-quality brands) Another pleasure of the past, that of smoking a big, aromatic 'habano'...

 

[Resasi]

These were Cohibas. The smell in the factory was amazing, almost like a fine alcohol, and very heady.

Someone was reading to the women as they rolled the cigars and it did not very mechanised at all.

The hotel we stayed at was wonderful, old but immaculate and lots of shiny brass. The houses and buildings looked pretty trashed, the cars as well. This was in direct contrast to Montevideo where they also were poor and the cars were very old, but all looked in wonderful condition.

With apologies to Jean Claude.

 

[Seagasm]

Good morning Jean Claude, I am interested in your wooden blades and ask if you have run them up or better still, tested them on a glider. Have you fibre-glassed them and why did you nominate a 2.5 degree coning angle? Thank you.

 

[skyguynca]

I hope all is well with you and yours. All being healthy and happy thru these hard covid times.

I fell so enamored with your little gyro and those beautiful wooden rotor blades. Such a piece of art, the entire gyro is intriguing and beautiful.

Have you had a change to spin your blades up? Maybe a few short hops into the air? or maybe even flown?

It has been a while since you posted and I sure many are still wondering.

David