Jordan
No, we tracked the rotor using the PB3 in flight with different shims to change the blade pitch.
you can see the PB3 cables running down from the top of the mast, and my tablet strapped to my left leg, that's me holding my wig on.
Then we checked the tracking using the owners method (that scared me sh...less). He tapes a Stanley cutter type blade to each blade and coats each one with a different coloured nail varnish.
We couldn't use the tip LEDs because the AutoGyro blades don't have any threaded holes at the tip.
He then pre rotates and a second guy approaches the blade tip path with a cardboard "flag".
You can hear when the two meet. Then you look at the flag and see two razor slashes of different colours giving you the distance between the two blade tip paths.
We did this the first time with my tracking set up and that showed a 1 cm difference and then returned the rotor to his optically correct setup (ie the two razor cuts were on top of each other). I flew the balance runs with the PB3 and again with the original optically correct setup and as I say in the previous post I felt the difference was there but it really wasn't that obvious because of the dominating 2/rev vibration.
Rick E
Don't tempt me I love your country, was there many years ago and regret leaving.
Peter
I've seen that link before it's really impressive what they do. I think there's a big difference between balancing our typical gyro rotors and the problems those guys and you face with commercial helicopters.
Your rotors are much heavier, there are more adjustment possibilities and you're looking for a degree of interchangeability that we don't really expect with a gyro and you have different rotor responses for hover and flight. Also helicopter hours are so expensive that it probably pays to spend time statically tracking and balancing rotors on the ground. With a bit of practice you can do a balance run in a gyro within a short low level circuit, 5 minutes tops.
The other thing I've noticed is that rotors supplied by the major European manufacturers (Magni, ELA, AutoGyro, Averso, Trendal etc) are surprisingly well matched out of the box. Of all the rotors from these manufacturers that I've balanced none were really bad and most were below 0.5 IPS before I started. The worse was my ELA when I bought it second hand because we repaired the leading edges and repainted the blades so they were badly mismatched and I balanced them without even a static balance.
There is an interesting comment in the link about water in the blades, one of the owners I worked with suggested that with his aluminium extruded blades he thought that on humid days in the morning water condensed inside the blades and was centrifuged out slowly during the first flight because he noted that vibration on the first flight of the day was often bad and got better on the second flight. I could never establish if it was true but it's worth considering if you ever have a similar problem.
There is an Aviomania in France with one of Ernie's rotors (I think) that I want to balance when the weather improves. I really want to see the difference with the typical Eurogyro.
Mike G