Prospective Cavalon Owner and Career Helicopter Pilot Needs Advice on Buying/Options
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Abid
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With respect side by side offers the observer a better pilot interaction than any tandem .. go Google some of my demonstrations I have done for law enforcement recently with side by side, they would never consider a tandem let alone a open tandem, while I respect it’s not your market or offering I’m comparing it to a heli head on and yes in case your interested I have 1500 + Pic hours in open tandem ...so I’m not making a one sided biased comment ...when doing aerial search the AG 915 or xenon offers a through the feet view no tandem can offer ... I say this cos I have flown every single one except yours or the Pal Vbut we can agree to disagree ... I will never purchase an open tandem again ever having also owned one of the best if not the best Tandem gyros ever built the M16
in SA right now we have a few very interested government agencies looking at gyro and the tandem is not even a consideration
Yes tandems are not considered and guess why? Because they are all airplane or at best helicopter pilots. Their primacy is side by side. Its not a technical fact. I know the through the feet view. Even with that the visibility is not as good as a tandem. You can use the enclosed tandem if you don't like open. I like open flying. As a factual matter its not too hard to realize or show that visibility for observation is better in a tandem specially if the observer is set in the front and pilot in the back.
ventana7
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Thanks.
I've attached a video of the Xenon for comparison. Your stick is certainly not moving much at all which is nice and when you do touch the stick it seems you are using only a light touch. Looking at the top of your cowling it seems to be moving quite a bit in relation to the horizon but then it comes back to where it was previously. In the Xenon film you will notice essentially zero movement of the cabin in relation to the horizon. I'm jealous of all that panel space you have --- but I'm not sure I would give up my floor windows to get it.
Inquiring Mind
Active Member
Thanks! Xenon is a beautiful machine!
Abid
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All of this means nothing for the design/model. All it says is that particular machine by luck or effort is setup nicely for track and balance and for adequate control system friction. That's it. Its not Xenon, nor Magni, nor AR-1 nor AutoGyro issue
ventana7
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Certainly you are correct as to track and balance. As I noted my previous Xenon was better balanced than my current Xenon. In my RAF/Sparrowhawk mod I could take my hands off the stick for minutes at a time and it was steady.
Im not an engineer so I may be incorrect but I think control friction is a different issue and the design plays a huge effect. All the Xenons I’ve flown needed very light finger pressure to fly, while all the Autogyro I’ve flown needed significant stick pressure.
Rob
Abid
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Magni is the one that requires traditionally largest control forces. AutoGyro it depends. MTO Sport has light force whereas MTO 2017 has more control force requirement (on purpose). AR-1 is somewhere in the middle and I can set the friction as I desire to a point. For certification and to meet compliance one of things they have to do is to create a very defined neutral and when the aircraft takes an excursion from that neutral it has to tend to return back to it (in general). So the fact that your Xenon did not have to meet that certification, they may not have cared about that quite as much. For an experienced pilot that really isn't needed. A soft neutral works and actually feels better but for new pilots its more important. Magni M16 stick force was definitely heavy though as far as gyroplanes go but there are Magni fans who like it that way and swear by them. Magni control force may be a result of a nose heavy rotor blade. AutoGyro 2017 is due to geometry and control friction they introduce I think.
Tyger
Super Member
I don't get much stick shake in my Magni – less than one inch. Six inches sounds just crazy to me! Last year when I noticed it getting a bit worse, I tightened down the control friction a bit and that's all it really took to fix it.
Tyger
Super Member
I promise you that "hoonigan" is not a word we use in America (nor "hoon"). "Hooligan", yes, but that doesn't have much to do with cars – it just means a violent troublemaker.Google Hoonigan it’s an American word .... but it’s for us big time petrol heads who go through a set of 305/ 20/’s in an afternoon ...we don’t find to many old bullets who drive prius or muck about with how far they can go on a gallon in our pub... until you have drifted a 500+ Hp car we don’t expect you to understand
god I can’t wait for my C8 vette to arrive
Gyro Revolution
Newbie
Several hundred million YouTube views of "hooning" high horsepower maneuverable custom built track cars says otherwise. Hooning can be fun in a controlled environment with the proper precautions but is best left being a spectator event.
Tyger
Super Member
What does the number of views of a video tell you about who is viewing the video, or who might actually be using a word associated with said video? Not much.
Wikipedia says the word "hoon" comes from Australia:
Linguist Sid Baker in his book The Australian Language suggested that hoon (meaning "a fool") was a contraction of Houyhnhnm, a fictional race of intelligent horses which appears in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Hoon, when used in relation to people in motor vehicles (or associated with car culture), may be onomatopoeia. One may speak of a car, or its driver, or its occupants in general as "hooning down the road".
The term hoon has obtained a semi-official use in Australia, with police and Governments referring to legislation targeting anti-social driving activity as "anti-hoon laws".
It seems pretty obvious that Ken Block took the Aussie word "hoon" and combined it with with "hooligan" to come up with the clever-sounding combo word for his company/site.
Wikipedia says the word "hoon" comes from Australia:
Linguist Sid Baker in his book The Australian Language suggested that hoon (meaning "a fool") was a contraction of Houyhnhnm, a fictional race of intelligent horses which appears in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift.
Hoon, when used in relation to people in motor vehicles (or associated with car culture), may be onomatopoeia. One may speak of a car, or its driver, or its occupants in general as "hooning down the road".
The term hoon has obtained a semi-official use in Australia, with police and Governments referring to legislation targeting anti-social driving activity as "anti-hoon laws".
It seems pretty obvious that Ken Block took the Aussie word "hoon" and combined it with with "hooligan" to come up with the clever-sounding combo word for his company/site.
Rob - thanks for sharing information on the Xenon. Used might be the way to go, but the new ones are out of my price range. I like the idea yours can fly around the rocky's since I'm out here too. I'll have to keep an eye out for a used with 914...
Vertical Tango
Junior Member
So in the end, as I don't understand too well the regulations in the US affecting gyros being manufactured from a kit by the owner or by a recognized "manufacturer" who receives kits and builds them for his clients, can a US resident import a used gyro (complete and already built) that has been manufactured from a kit overseas by the original owner ?
WaspAir
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The FAA doesn't look kindly on professional kit builders and registering the product can be difficult. EAB rules are supposed to be for personal education, not to support a cottage industry for unlicensed constructors. Factory assist is legally very different from contracted-out assembly.
As to importing complete gyros, almost anything can be imported and registered as Experimental, Exhibition / Racing, but there are some limits on use that go with it.
EAB qualifications would require a bit of research before I would confidently answer. Somebody else here might have already done that research.
