Bring Back the 80's!

I want a Gyrocopter.

I want a gyrocopter. To be deadly specific, I want the one that Bruce Spence got to fly in The Road Warrior. It was a two seater, that, and is on the market now for cheaper than your standard SUV.

Ok scratch that, after reading that link I just posted, I guess that real gyrocopter wasn't a two-seater. But I do know they make two-seaters and I want one :) I saw it on Oregon Field Guide. It is bigger and not an ultra-light class, so I'd probably need a pilot's license.. but I could do with one of those anyhow. And a real vert-lift / hover system would be nice to. They have those in ramjet and drive train varieties. I'd probably use a drive train and screw stable hovering, less messy that way.

Gyrocopters are wonders of aviation. A gyrocopter is kept aloft by it's main propellor, which spins above you like in a helicopter, except that the propeller is attached to nothing whatsoever. It's just there, it spins, and you stay aloft as a result.

What keeps it spinning is the air that passes across it. There is another, smaller prop that you use to acheive forward momentum. Your main prop is tilted back quite a bit, so moving forward causes wind to pass through your main prop. The wind spins the prop, which creates it's own downdraft. The downdraft generates lift, and you're airborne.. with significantly less runway than you would require with even the smallest airplanes.

So... in a gyro, moving makes you float. Not moving forward at ridiculous speeds like in an airplane (watch out for that mountain!), but moving in virtually any direction at any speed. Moving makes you float. So, what happens if for any reason (such as engine failure) you aren't moving? Well, from midair, you would begin to fall. But, falling is moving so you would also float. EG, so long as the main prop (unencumbered by complex drive trains) is capable of freely spinning around, it is virtually impossible for your craft to fall from the sky. You may drift gently from the sky, but that is a Good Thing.

Gyrocopters are capable of traveling at much slower velocities than airplanes of any size. Down to 15 mph without changing altitude. On a standard gyro there is no way to hover stock still as with a helicopter, but there are ram-jet and simple drive train add-ons that allow hovering for short times (and also perfect vertical take offs). A properly built/equipped gyrocopter can also travel much faster than a helicopter, given that a gyrocopter's ability to stay aloft and to travel forward are aerodynamicly compatable with one another, while a helicopter's ability to move laterally works against it's ability to stay afloat.

Helicopters use a drive train to power their main rotor. This obvious technique for making something spin has an inobvious consequence.. when the chopper applies torque to the rotor to rotate it in one direction, it is working against the rotor's inertia and motivating the chassis to rotate in the opposite direction. Therefor choppers employ a second prop on their tails, which allows them to control which direction they face in. This prop is usually working pretty hard to prevent the chassis from spinning counterwise of the main prop, which takes at least 30% of the chopper's energy output. Horribly inefficient! Choppers are gas guzzlers in comparison to gyros, but their aerobatic talents of hovering for hours at a time, tricky vertical takeoffs and landings, and cornering on a dime give it all the attention.

Gyro's are not able to turn on a dime, but they are much more maneuverable than airplanes.. and in many ways much safer. They are competitive with small airplanes in fuel efficiency, so they can be great for travel. "Can be" means that they lack market representation, so most models available are single-seater hobbykits, while the form factor is totally capable of all the luxury and stability of a lear-jet. They travel at lower speeds (up to 120 or 150 for most of the erecter set models) but cost spectacularily less to build, purchase, and/or maintain then a similar quality airplane, and have the same fuel efficiency.

I want one so that I can do some landscape photography while puttering around at a lazy 15mph from whatever vantage point I desire suspended in the sky. :) It would be great to print in the papers.. aerial photos of festivals, aerial photos of traffic snafus, sunsets and snow on bachelor, various photos in the vicinity of (but not actually very *near* :) wildfires in the summer, all on demand. Flying a plane around and taking photos costs much more, since it has to circle at hundreds of miles an hour or make strafing runs. Gyros meet planes' fuel efficiency at the miles per gallon level, but have to travel orders of magnitude fewer miles in order to do work like that.

Besides it all, my ability to proactively perceive my surroundings is very two dimentional. When I dream, I can't fly. I can't fly because my brain can't decide what my environment would look like any more: it has no frame of reference. So if/whenever it tries, everything looks fake and the dream comes apart. Sometimes I'll dream of flying and it all looks like a late generation console game. I'll "fly" around levels in quake or Mario 64.. but it's not the same. I want to train my brain about what familiar things look like when you are flying above them. What the clouds look like when you are flying among them. I've been in a commercial airplane about a dozen times, but I'd like to be able to answer a whim like "I wonder what that would look like if I went higher" by going higher and seeing. "I wonder what that thing would look like if it weren't so far away, from this other angle" so I go there and check it out. That and only that will reveal to me the three-dimentional nature of this kooky world we live in.

IwantitIwantitIwantitIwantitIwantitIwantit.

If I ever get a two seater I will freely offer any brave souls rides around to wherever, and to see and look at whatever. I will give photographer's rides so they can photograph things from aloft. I'll have to find photographers willing to fly A> in a gyrocopter, B> that I am piloting.. but something tells me that I will one day come across such a ridiculous daredevil. :)

Posted by jesse at June 14, 2004 10:30 PM