old photos of Dick DeGraw's helicopter, 'Hummingbird'

It's amazing no one took up his offer of design rights for building his jump gyro's, they are amazing machines.

wolfy
 
It's amazing no one took up his offer of design rights for building his jump gyro's, they are amazing machines.

wolfy
There have been some companies that have but they never did anything of note with them.
 
A really nice and very talented person.

He and Carol make quite a team. Good people.
 
The youtube video with the color photos of Dick's twin rotor are my creation. I flew in the twin rotor on one occasion in the 80s. Dick is such an amazing person and was always generous with his time. While I worked for him at the motorcycle shop in the late 70s/80s he was always inventing and creating. At one point he created a hydraulic drive motorcycle, Harley Davidson came to the shop to see the creation. At the shop we stored motorcycles on a 2nd story mezzanine, we used a complete elevator system that Dick designed and built 🙂. On the twin rotor helicopter, one of the VW engines runs in the opposite direction from normal so that both flywheels are turning in the same direction (they are positioned flywheel to flywheel). Dick changed the one engine from OEM gear to gear on cam to crank drive to a chain drive so that it could run in the opposite direction from normal. This was no small task and I recall many tasks like this along his journey for the twin rotor. Its been a long time since I've seen Dick, and enjoy seeing the stories and posts regarding his fascinating work. I'm sure anyone that has been around Dick quickly realizes he is a truly special person. Mike
 
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