OK, so I am obsessed with flying now - Thats because I did it once in my own aircraft and survived. Now I have to do it over and over and over.............. My latest flight found me searching out my hangar partners houses and shops. The first house/shop flyover is Denis Shoemakers. He runs a sophisticated machine shop with some very modern equipment. The next house/shop flyover is of Jon Louis. he has a large shop with many tools and builds beautiful fireplaces. The most exciting part of the video, to me anyway, is the take-off and the landing. First the take-off; After starting the camera and buckling up, I roll out onto the runway and begin my pre-rotation of the rotors. Thats the red switch you can see me shutting off as I speed up. Once the rotors reach 150 rpm, the pre-rotator is not used anymore. I let the speed of the gyro going forward - speed the rotors up the rest of the way, by now I have the cyclic stick pulled all the way back to my stomach. When they reach about 300 rpms, the front wheel will lift off the runway. I gently allow the front wheel to drop back almost touching the runway by letting off the back pressure on the cyclic and push the throttle up to wide open. In moments we are off. I let the gyro stabilize somewhat then I adjust the cyclic so that my airspeed is 60 mph with the throttle still at wide open. I establish my climb at about 500 feet per minute. After about a minute, Im at 500 feet so I pull back the throttle to set the engine at 4,500 rpms and adjust my speed with the cyclic to cruise at 70, mph. The landing consists of three things, in general. First establish a good decent by pulling back the throttle to 4,000 rpms and establishing a 60 mph air speed by holding back on the cyclic. Second, line up with the centerline of the runway. Third, as I get closer to the runway, take advantage of the ground effect and slow the gyro down more by pulling back more on the cyclic and raising the nose of the gyro while easing off more of the engine rpms. Very small movements are required here because the controls get sluggish at slow speeds and any over control could be serious. As you can see, all went as planned and I had a very wonderful and safe flight. I wish I were flying again right now.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 20:46:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015