Autogiros to replace airplanes (1931)
The March, 1931 issues of Popular Science asked the critical question, "Will Autogiro Banish Present Plane?" A provocative notion -- I guess the jury's still out on it.
Link
I HAVE just had the biggest thrill of my twenty years of flying. I have piloted an autogiro. And I have seen this amazing windmill plane “do the impossible.”It is, I am positive, the flying craft of the future. At Pitcairn Field, fourteen miles from Philadelphia, Pa., James Ray, chief test pilot for the Pitcairn-Cierva Company, explained the design of the strange machine and took me for a passenger hop. We landed at the far side of the field. The spinning windmill over our heads slowed down. Its four yellow vanes, long and slender like blades of grass, drooped to a standstill above the bright green fuselage. Ray climbed from the rear cockpit.
the latest
latest episodes
The American Helicopter Museum in West Chester Pa. is a GREAT place to visit if you like Helicopters and Autogyros or want to learn more about them.
They have LOTS of autogyros, and even a prototype Osprey you can walk around in!
It's a fantastic day trip and it's even down the road from the studios of one of the home shopping channels for if you're traveling with mundanes.
http://www.helicoptermuseum.org/
(Be sure to ask about the chocolate helicopters!)
Using computer design the autogyro has been recently re-engineered and is appearing again on the civil aviation horizon...check it out:
http://www.magnigyro.com.au/welcome.asp
There actually are some strong advantages to autogyros over airplanes for many civilian applications. I don't think that we'll ever see the autogyro replace the jet plane, but if we ever get personal commuter aircraft, the autogyro would be a much better choice than the airplane. It's easier for novice to pilot and land, much less likely to crash land, can safely operate at lower speeds in more congested areas, and doesn't need as much space for take-off and landing. Although there are vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft, they aren't very fuel efficient since they necessarily have to be jets. Having an autogyro do VTOL has only a very small impact on its fuel efficiency.
About ten or twelve years ago, Popular Science (or was it Popular Mechanics?) has a nice article on the new wave of autogyros, highlighting the CarterCopter, which can actually operate as a helicopter for brief periods (long enough to take off straight up). That article too had an optimistic "OMG, This will change general aviation!!!" tone to it. But hey, it could happen. I want this egg-shaped one.
Autogyros, the second coolest flying machine ever. Right after Zeppelins.
And yes, I'm being serious - I'm a complete lunatic for the 1903s.
1930s, of course. Keyboard dyslexia is a terrible thing.
Count Cagliostro had an autogyro (or at least some kind of weird hybrid autogyro/helicopter with a rocket-propelled top rotor) in Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro, which was (nominally) set in the late 1960s. (Watch the movie with my Castle of Cagliostro commentary track for more details.)
This book must be out of date. I don't see Prussia, Siam or Autogyro.
An autogiro killed a classmate of mine.
He was building his own, and was completing a test fly before getting it officially registered/anointed by the FAA. The bolt holding the strut with the oil cooler had managed to loosen up, promptly smashing into his prop then reducing the whole thing to wreckage that promptly acted like a rock.
Chances are he didn't even know what happened.
excellent!
A homebuilt autogyro killed your classmate. Every time you fly an experimental aircraft (which homebuilts are) you're a test pilot. Test pilots have very dangerous jobs.
Even on a non-homebuilt aircraft, a failure of a crucial part can cause massive problems. How do you think large jets crash - it isn't always human error entirely.
I saw one crash on takeoff once. At an autogyro fly-in at Paso Robles Airport, in the early nineties. In a second, the crowd divided into pilots and civilians, as every pilot dropped what he was doing and raced toward the gyro.
The pilot was okay. He tried to bring the wing up to speed too quickly, and it went unstable, and flipped the gyro.
Shortly after, I got to take a flight in one!
Maintenance issues (parts coming loose, etc) usually wind up being human factors issues too, in aircraft accidents. Things rarely "just break".
That aside - autogyros! Very cool! Despite being a fixed-wing pilot, I have to agree with #5 on the two coolest aircraft types.
A flying friend is starting to build a replica Pitcairn autogyro. That's one homebuilt I might actually want to take a ride in!
documentation of the first time we were promised a flying car?