Rotorsport MT-03 Gyrocopter / Autogyro G-JBRE

This gyrocopter was displaying at the Rougham Air Display (Sunday 16th August) and did a great performance. I thought I would post these as I don't think any gyrocopters have been mentioned in the Transportation section. I didn't zoom in as much as I could have done, as I was worried about camera shake. The first few photos were taken at 1/100 to try and get some rotor blur as they don't look to be spinning very quickly - to be safe I took the last few at 1/200.

It's a two seater tandem, with a 100 or 115 bhp engine, can take a 250kg load and has a maximum speed of 120mph. The gyrocopter uses a rotor to develop lift, but the rotor of a gyrocopter is driven by aerodynamic forces in autorotation rather than by an engine. The commentator said that it can not hover stationary unless there is a strong breeze, but it was able to fly backwards.

Cool!

Awesome!

Motorcycle of the air.

How do you fly the thing, is it flown like a helicopter?

turboale wrote in post #8479916
How do you fly the thing, is it flown like a helicopter?

I'm not too sure myself, but I've read that it takes an average of about 40 hours flying lessons. There's a bit of information on wikipedia
There's also information available from Rotorsport's website

turboale wrote in post #8479916
How do you fly the thing, is it flown like a helicopter?

Basically, the "rotor" is a rotating wing which has a variable angle of attack. It provides lift but not motive power as is the case in a true helicoptor. That's supplied by the pusher prop at the rear.

IIRC, stearing is similar to a helo with "Cyclic" (left/right, forward/back) in conjunction with the rudder (instead of a tail rotor) for turns and "Semi-Collective" (blade pitch can change but unlike a helo which can climb straight up, in a Gyrocoptor, you need an increase in engine power [Ie more shove] in conjunction with a slightly coarser blade pitch to climb.)

Because the main rotor is not powered, it can not actually hover in calm air but it can acheive zero (or very near zero) groundspeed in a stiff headwind.

Don't have my FARs close at hand but pretty sure these are classified as "rotory wing" aircraft and are subject to similar rules regarding private pilot training as fixed wing aircraft.

Very nice, dont get to see too many of those!

#4 is pretty soft...the no-hands shots are hilarious.

mlav wrote in post #8484475
#4 is pretty soft...the no-hands shots are hilarious.

It's not a great photo, but I thought I'd include it as it rounded the number up to eight. I didn't manage to control the camera shake, and also had to crop this photo more than the others as the gyrocopter was a bit further away. The pilot was quite happily waving while slowly going forwards!

Thanks for the info Jay, sounds like fun!