Fara, Yes there was a ton of accidents back before euro gyros took off like they have.
I think some of differences we see today verses then is...
Euro gyros aren't exactly a death trap. Yes they do have high thrustlines, which should make PPO Bunt overs very possible, and I do believe there has been more than a few deaths in euro gyros due to PPO, in general these machines all have reasonably large Horizontal Stabs and reasonably heavy stick forces and they are relatively stable to fly..... Also the people that are buying these have money, I mean the cheapest ones are still 60 plus grand and most are 100 grand or more. If you are well off enough financially to blow 100 grand on a toy, then you probably have the time and money to go get some training.
Before euro gyros became so popular, you have quite a number of very unstable gyros. You had the RAF2000 which not only had a high thrustline, but no H stab and very unstable flight characteristics. You also had many gyro designs out there that were home brewed, that had questionable construction methods and eyeball engineering and downright scary flight qualities. You did also have some designs like the Dominator, Little wing, and CLT aircommands etc.... that were good solid designs... there was also a crap load of stuff out there being flown that was downright scary to even look at much less fly.
And back then ( and I am sure still to this day ) ALOT of people who wanted to get into gyros, wanted to get into gyros because it was cheap. This is why you would see so many gyros with VW or Subaru engines... It was always a goal to get a machine built for the least amount of money possible. These were machines you could build with a drill, hacksaw, and some 2x2 square tubes and a old engine out of a junkyard subaru... So not only did this sometimes result in some very questionable machines being put into the air, you have to think that many of the people in these accidents did not get much or enough or any training at all.
I remember my training was 120$ a hour ( I bet that sounds cheap today, what does lessons cost in 2021??? ) and I would have had to go to Macon Georgia to get that training. For someone who might need 20-30 hours of training, that would have been 3600$ in lessons, plus travel expenses and hotel stays etc... and that could have easily pushed that number to 5-6 grand or more plus could take months if not years to complete. To spend that kind of money and time to get a Fixed Wing PPL seems about normal, but gyro people are different! They are cheap and want to do it on their own. A good number of people had minimal to no lessons at all. 5-6 grand on lessons.... Hell, they weren't trying to spend even that much on their whole gyro build.
Fast forward to today and I wonder what happened to the gyro sport that I remember from 2001-2011... I don't see much in the way of build threads, I don't see near the activity in the plans built / scratch built / kit built part of this sport that I used to see. I do see a lot of activity in with the Euro gyros, but these are different people, and a different KIND of people than the gyro people I remember. Thats not to say they are bad, its just different. I haven't made it to Mentone or Bensen days in several years, but from the reports I have gotten, its 90 percent Euro gyros now at these events and very little of the homebuilt stuff anymore.
Things are different today and maybe for the better as far as safety goes. I do still wonder if the training programs these days are different in a potentially bad way.
