Gyro-glider & rotor handling – Spinning on the Wind

In this excerpt from Short Hops, we enjoyed the most exceptional day at St. Merryn, playing with a pair of gyro-gliders in a wind so powerful that we were pulling the tow cars instead of the other way around. I’ve never known anything like it.

It was a cracking autumnal day of October 1995; an ice-white sun glaring in the pale sky and a howling wind from the south west that snatched the breath from our lungs. Perfect kiting weather for gyro-gliders! Normally the glider needs to be towed forward to gain lift, but with a wind speed like that it could be tethered and flown from a stationary point. No one would dream of flying in such conditions in the fixed-wing world, and as a newly qualified convert in the art of autorotation, I have to admit that I would’ve thought twice had our veterans, Chris Julian and Tony Philpotts not been with us.

There were five of us eager to play, so we dusted off Tony’s old gyro-glider as well to blow the cobwebs out. Chris Shilling settled into the seat as we hitched up to the car, and Tony pulled them out to the start of the Gyro runway, directly into wind. With Old Faithful tied onto my car and Derek installed at the wheel, I hopped onboard clutching my video camera and strapped in alongside Chris, as Derek began to drag us out into the teeth of the gale. Away from the shelter of the hangar it was difficult to move upwind, and even more difficult to stop going downwind – I was almost taken off my feet! Chris-S was already in position with his glider at the threshold, the car parked a tow rope’s length away with Tony wisely sheltering inside. Our ears were blasted by a seething tide of air, plucking the speech from our mouths and scattering words like paper in the wind: we had to shout to be heard.

Derek went to help Chris-S spin up, while I hung onto the stick ready for the difficult task of trying to coax the rotor blades into life as Chris began to push them round. It wasn’t easy. Chris and Derek were pushing like crazy, striving to give the blades enough rotation to cope with all that oncoming airspeed, while Chris-S and me grimly nursed the bucking control sticks, trying to stabilise the rotors long enough to form a disc in the relentless 35-40 mph wind. Perseverance eventually paid off, Chris-S being the first to lift with his lighter weight. Chris had joined me on the seat to help hold us down until the rotors had settled, and now I gingerly slid off and fought my way over to the centreline to do some filming, as Chris fastened himself into the middle of the seat. When he was ready he let the stick come back and freed the furiously spinning blades to the wind. The glider immediately sat back on the tailwheel, straining against the rope until Chris closed the disc a fraction to kill off the drag, and rose rapidly into the air. Synchronised kiting – you don’t see that every day!

The wind was shoving me in the back, threatening to bowl me over like a tumbleweed as I struggled to hold the camera steady and keep a pair of delighted Chrisses inside the viewfinder as they bobbed gleefully on the roaring torrent of air. Derek scrambled onboard with Chris-S when a brief lull settled the machines gently back to earth, but the extra weight proved too much and they couldn’t rise more than 5 feet, while Chris on Old Faithful waved mockingly from above, casually swinging his hands and feet. He yelled at me to come back, and planted the glider firmly on the deck for me to climb on. Our machine had longer rotors than Tony’s, so although our combined weight probably wasn’t far from that of Derek and Chris-S, the extra bit of rotor disc made all the difference and we rose easily.

Once into clean air, freed from the restraining influence of the ground, the glider went up like a lift as the wind blew even stronger – awesome!!! Chris let it climb to the full extent of the tow rope then handed over to me. The stick bucked in my hand and the airframe pulsed as the rotors fought against the constraint of the tow rope, and looking down its length to my little car some 50 feet below, I sincerely hoped Derek had put the handbrake on properly! Chris made a game of testing me, seeing how accurately I could position the glider where he wanted, being careful not to jerk the rope with visions of my car coming up to meet us, so powerful was the pull of the rotor disc above our heads. What terrific fun! Chris-S was happily floating alongside, so I gave control back to Chris and picked up my camcorder to do some air to air shots as Derek and Tony began to tow us very slowly down the runway, adding to the entertainment.

Chris-S crossed our path with some enthusiastic wide turns and steep banks as I tried to keep him in camera range from my own soaring perch that throbbed with the beat of the rotor blades. They were a rough fibreglass set of doubtful integrity that bounced enthusiatically at the best of times, and now they were spinning furiously. The cars crept down the runway in first gear, straining against the enormous drag of the rotor discs. When at last they reached the end of the line, instead of turning around to take us back to the start as with a normal gyro-glider run, Derek and Tony switched off their engines and surrendered to the forces of nature. It was brilliant! We opened the rotors to the wind and flew the gliders backwards through the air, pulling our cars along with us, how good was that! We played our new game for hours: kiting, then creeping forwards, kiting again before reversing back up the runway to kite once more, I remember it like yesterday – it was such brilliant fun!

I swapped over after a while to fly with Chris-S and take some film of Chris from Tony’s machine. That one had a shorter tow boom and tended to fly tipped back on its tail, so we had to hold the stick forward all the time. It also wore a rough set of home-made plastic blades, which unfortunately didn’t improve the precious recording of a memorable day – but at least it captured the spirit. The autumn chill began to make its presence known after several hours of riotous autorotation, creeping inside collars and cuffs through gaps in flight suits, numbing cold feet and fingers until we reluctantly called a halt and returned to the hangar, tired and stiff and absolutely elated. That was without doubt, the best gyro-gliding day ever!

In 1993, my transformation from fixed-wing driver to gyronaut began with an old Bensen gyro-glider. For 19 wonderful years we were based at St. Merryn, a beautiful old wartime airfield on the North Cornish coast with 8 tarmac runways to play with – perfect for glider training. This is where I and many others learned about free-spinning rotor flight, courtesy of Chris Julian and Tony Philpotts. It was so much fun! Such painful irony that Chris, along with our friend Bob should’ve been killed flying another glider up-country, thanks to the stupidity of one particular individual who has never had the guts to say sorry.

Gyro-gliding should be mandatory for new gyronauts. Nothing else can match it for pure unadulterated rotor flight: no engine or instruments to worry about, all unnecessary distractions are removed – it’s just you and the rotor blades. Fly a gyro-glider and it will open your eyes to the sheer power of autorotation. You’ll learn to understand the rotors and their behaviour, how to read them without the need for instruments and discover the very heart of gyroplane flying. In the old days before the onset of two-seat machines, nearly every gyronaut began their training on a glider. Sadly, now that two-seat training is readily available, the glider has been largely forgotten by the ‘establishment.’ Considered an out-of-date-has-been by those with no clue, it still gives the best insight into rotor handling that no two-seater can match.

It’s a long time since I wrote the following piece, but what we did that day remains just as relevant to gyroplane training, and rotor handling in particular. In fact it’s even more relevant these days when newly qualified gyro pilots are so reliant on widgets and gizmos to tell them what they should really know by the seat of their pants.

The 2nd of September 2007 was quite a special day for a young lad who first flew the glider with me when he was only 12 years old. Now aged 15 and tall enough to reach the steering bar, Ed Weaver returned to St. Merryn to have another go. We had a good strong wind for him, blowing about 15 knots just a few degrees off the nose of the main north/south runway. To recap on what we’d done all that time ago, I parked the glider into wind and after going through the preflight inspection together, Ed started the rotors by himself and spent half an hour practicing feeding the wind into them, using the stick to regulate their speed by opening or closing the rotor disc to the airflow. The old RotorHawk blades were relatively tame and docile, but with quite a feisty wind coming in off the sea, Ed had his hands full to settle them down as random gusts blustered through, upsetting the blades and triggering flapping. He did very well and corrected the first kick of blade sail without any prompt from me – instantly shoving the stick fully forward to kill off the wind (a manoeuvre never to be performed in the air, by the way), letting the rotors stabilise before gently bringing the stick back, inch by inch to let them accelerate once more. Excellent handling practice.

Later we hitched up the 115 foot tow line and took the glider out to play on the main runway. The wind was slightly from the right, but no real problem. Ed brought the rotors up to speed, then followed through on the stick as we took off and flew down the runway about 10 feet high, settling down nicely at a respectful distance from the giant dung heap sprawled across the end. I showed him how to use the energy in the rotor disc to reverse the glider back and do a three point turn, as the tow car took up the slack in the line. Being towed back downwind is the worst part, bumping over ragged tufts of vegetation at 15 mph with no suspension on the glider – ouch! By the third take off, Ed was handling the stick on his own with only a few minor corrections from me, and 90% of the landings by the end of the first hour. For the second hour I was little more than animated ballast and if the wind had been more on the nose and not so gusty, Ed could have soloed if he wanted.

15 Year old Ed flying the gyro-glider – cool as you like!

As it was we had to wait for the following Sunday, as the wind had gone to the other extreme with Saturday being flat calm. It was also westerly, which meant the shortest runway with more lumps and bumps of foliage breaking through the aged tarmac. The wind was about 8 knots maximum but a steady mild breath this time, so Ed could open the rotors up relatively quickly without setting them flapping. We did another short static session with the glider to recap again, but he’d mastered the starting bit easily, so I set him up with my gyroplane to show him the contrasting behaviour of different blade profiles.

My bird wears Dragon Wing rotor blades which are much lighter in weight and have a more streamlined, efficient aerofoil section than the RotorHawks – and they’re absolute pigs to spin up by hand! With Ed in the seat controlling the stick, I pushed the rotors round as hard as I could to see if he could get them to catch the wind and accelerate. There’s no way I’d even bother attempting it normally, but the wind was docile and steady enough not to seriously upset them, so I thought it’d be a good demonstration – and it was. Try as we might, despite hurling my entire 8 stone bulk behind them, and with Ed’s careful coaxing on the stick – we could not get those rotor blades to show any interest in picking up at all – whereas the tame old RotorHawks had settled easily on the light breeze with little effort. You only get to know a true feeling for the rotors by learning to start them by hand: a machine relying on mechanical drive and tacho’s can’t give you the same insight. It’s like trying to ride a horse without an empathic understanding of the feel of its mouth against the reins.

With another lesson under his belt, we hitched up and took the glider out for Ed to try some tamer conditions. Light winds mean towing at a faster ground speed to compensate the lack of airspeed, which I don’t like doing as we’re forcing the machine to fly. Luckily both Ed and myself are lightweights so we didn’t have to drag the glider along at an excessively fast pace to keep it airborne – which was a good thing as we didn’t have much runway to work with in a westerly direction. With two of us onboard we were lifting off just before the intersection with the main runway (a particularly rough patch to accelerate over), and the car had to begin slowing almost immediately, being some 80 feet ahead of us. Ed flew well, doing everything himself except the three point turn at the end, and after several runs he felt happy enough to attempt it solo.

I strapped him into the middle of the seat and positioned the glider on the threshold, aiming for the smoothest possible take off path between the weeds. I explained what was going to happen and questioned Ed as to exactly what he was going to do, making sure we both understood who was doing what, and no one was going to scare the pants off the other. All he had to do was repeat what he’d been doing all morning (which he’d now find much easier sitting in the middle of the seat) and remember to ‘plant’ the machine firmly on the deck as soon as the main wheels touched down. I gave him the traditional St. Merryn salute, pretending to bite my fist in mock terror (just as Chris had done to me all those years ago) getting a broad grin in return. Perched backwards over the passenger seat of the tow car, I could see the rotors were turning as fast as possible with the glider stationary, and we began the tow with a steady acceleration, increasing by 5 mph at a time. The nosewheel lifted nicely and my youngest student became airborne, flying sedately to the end of the runway and settling down to a text book landing. I ran back to join a relieved fledgling gyronaut on the seat, giving in to the obligatory high-5 (well, he’d earned it!) before reversing the glider round for the run back to the hangar. Ed’s beaming face told me all I needed to know.

What a great feeling it is when someone clicks with the machine like that – be it glider or powered gyroplane – and suddenly realises what it’s all about. Ed can be proud of himself: he has a skill that very few do these days. When new people come in to the sport, no matter what kind of gyro they choose to fly, they need and deserve to be taught the essential basics of rotor handling. And for that, you can’t beat a gyro-glider.

(Thanks to Ben Mullet for the photos)

Category: Gyro-glider & rotor handling

Grinning on the wind!

Old fashioned – Never!