It was my <mumble-mumble> birthday at the beginning of August, and my family (2 kids, 3 grandkids) decided to give me a special outing. Originally it was to be a session driving a Caterham on an airfield for a while, but I thought "Meh! I've done that" and traded it for a 60-minute gyrocopter flight (with their approval).

My, that was amazing fun! To start with it was a straightforward and steady flight over the QE2 bridge and on to the marshes to the east. We then flew well below 100 feet at around 65mph along the riverside, and along a farm track! Finished off with zigzagging along a small river for a while (again below 100 feet), then watched some seals on the bank of the Thames (not too low). Finally I took the stick for a while, until we were getting close to the airfield - at which point we saw a Lancaster bomber going towards the bridge about 300feet below us! All good fun - now I want a gyrocopter! (only kidding - I can't afford 50 or 60 lessons at £150 a pop).



One slight problem with the Lancaster - a light aircraft was setting himself up to land at the airfield when he got cut up by the bomber! He was not amused, and the language on the airwaves was - colourful!

Build Your Own Gyrocopter for £250

If it counts as a microlight, you may need only 25 hours ...

I asked the pilot/instructor - it's a minimum of 40 hours, but few pass with just that amount. It's classed as a light aircraft (rotary wing), or something like that.

15 years ago, my wife bought me 90 minutes (30 minutes video and talk, 60 minutes flight) in a helicopter. We took off from John Lennon Airport, rolling rapidly to the right to clear the runway for a 737 waiting to take off (so rapidly that all I could see out of the side window was the ground).

We flew down the Mersey, then out to the Anthony Gormley statues at Crosby, where we hovered about 10ft away from one. Then we headed inland and did a autorotation right down to the ground, ending up sliding along the grass for a short distance.

Next I took over one of the controls and we added one at a time until I had them all. We worked our way around, passing over Knowsley Safari Park, then followed the road back towards the airport.

Shortly before we got there, the pilot took over, approached the end of the runway at around 90° and rolled, low and hard to the right over the end of the runway, startling a number of plane spotters.

Absolutely great fun, but there's no way I could have afforded to take lessons to qualify.

Awesome

What an experience, sounds like you really enjoyed it!

That looks like a great experience!

I've done a Helicopter lesson and would love to try an Autogyro

When did you do this? I think me and my kids saw you!

I live in Dartford Heath and am familiar with the air traffic, we don't see many gyrocopters so it was worth calling the kids out to take a look.

Also, it dropped out of the sky pretty quickly over by the river and there are no landing areas I know off near us. This aligns with your experience.

Was that, by any chance with Owen out of Damyns Hall airstrip? If so I know him, used to have my shared Jabiru J400 hangered there. I'm surprised he was ok with going down to 100ft. I assume must be different rules for gyro, we're not allowed within 500ft of anything unless taking off or landing, one exception being a practiced forced landing

quote:

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Originally posted by bi22le
When did you do this? I think me and my kids saw you!

I live in Dartford Heath and am familiar with the air traffic, we don't see many gyrocopters so it was worth calling the kids out to take a look.

Also, it dropped out of the sky pretty quickly over by the river and there are no landing areas I know off near us. This aligns with your experience.

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quote:

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Originally posted by russbost
Was that, by any chance with Owen out of Damyns Hall airstrip? If so I know him, used to have my shared Jabiru J400 hangered there. I'm surprised he was ok with going down to 100ft. I assume must be different rules for gyro, we're not allowed within 500ft of anything unless taking off or landing, one exception being a practiced forced landing

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It was Owen! Where we went low was fairly desolate marshland - boggy ground with a network of streams in it. Only one house, and he kept far away from that. He also did an engine-off near-landing in this area, to show how safe the aircraft is when the engine fails.



He'd be able to claim that as a demonstrated forced landing I would imagine as an instructor, hence justifying the 100ft AGL. Sounds a great experience, I'd actually prefer a share in one of these to the existing plane, simply because they can get in & out of just about anywhere, even really short strips. Safety record used to be poor, but modern gyros are a whole different ball game, some of the enclosed cockpit ones are almost like a mini helicopter, still pricey compared to fixed wing, but waaaay cheaper than a chopper!

The only down-side for some would be its lowish speed - we cruised at around 65 mph, but apparently it's good for around 100 if required. I suspect that's not it's ideal speed though. In comparison, my brother had a part-share in a Jodel 2-seater, and that would cruise at around 70 knots, so really not that different.

Apparently, one of the reasons for needing over 40 hours - nearer 50 or so - is that there so many different manoeuvrers possible in a gyro, and so many different ways of landing! For example, he put it into the wind and just hovered for 30 seconds or so, and elsewhere he was able to slowly lose height vertically simply by balancing power and wind speed.

As an example of gyro price, he sold his first aircraft for £32k to a consortium of 6 flyers. He didn't say how much his 2 replacement gyros cost him...

I used to own and fly a flexwing microlight, very similar flying experience. If you want lowcost simple flying which a machine you can keep in your garage (like I did) and tow behind your car, might be worth looking into. Take off & land at 32mph, top out at about 70mph, did around 45mpg and carried two people. Foot throttle like a car. Mine was made by Pegasus and with one person onboard it took off at a 45deg angle!

Only downside was it is very cold up there, even on a sunny day. If you find a club they usually take passengers up for free, you can spend the whole day in the sky hopping from plane another totally for free , that's how I got into it.

David

That looked fun!

There used to be a cheaper way of learning to fly gyrocopters - start within a gyroglider towed behind a car.

You can build gyrocopters yourself from kits (and there used to be ones you could build from plans using a converted VW Beetle engine) such as the Campbell Cricket and the Montgomery gyros.

All these small gyropters are inspired by the Bensen gyropcopters. If you want to see larger ones, check out 1930s Cierva €and Westland auto gyros (and IIRC there were large Soviet bloc ones in the 1960s).

Useful info: https://www.britishrotorcraftassociation.org/

http://www.lightaircraftassociation.co.uk/pdf/Engineering/Website%20Accepted%20Aircraft%20List.pdf

Cheers
Mike


[Edited on 20/8/22 by Mike Wood]

It's amazing.
Thing that struck me most was take-off which is similar to being in a lift for rate of ascent.
Also the fact that you're literally hanging in the air - you look straight down hundreds of feet to the ground seemingly with nothing beside you.
We flew as close as the rules allowed to Reading Festival on my trip.
They did a lot out of Chiltern Airpark not far from Reading until the NIMBY's saw them off - gret pity.
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