Support Our Advertisers So what is it like to design, build and fly something so unique? First there is the motivation. Dick gets an idea and then is driven to bring it to life. After he begins, the motivation becomes flying the project he is working on to Mentone to show to the rest of the gyroplane community. Test flying this design was a little bit of a white-knuckle experience. There were actually three separate iterations. The second iteration was a good craft, but it had a mishap. It used a pulley and belt drive system instead of gears and shafts. The first time he took that model up, he didn’t think he would get it on the ground ‘properly.’ In fact he almost didn’t make it to the end of the runway. Things were happening fast and he had to make a four-second decision. He needed to set it down before he ran out of runway instead of trying to take it around the pattern. Taking a hard-to-control experimental aircraft around the pattern just didn’t seem like the winning idea. That particular landing required two weeks to check out the aircraft thoroughly and then two additional weeks to get the nerve up to fly it again. Because as Dick points out, “On a first flight, you never know what will work or work as intended.” The main thing that was wrong was that he needed to reverse the props. Bottom inward to push up on the tail. Rotorwash pushes down on the tail. The design is so new that Dick still didn’t want to take any passengers up at Mentone. It was just a precaution. Carol gets special privileges because she sees the work that he puts into the aircraft and encourages him. Carol flew in with him to Mentone. So how much trust does she have in his designs? Well, Dick never asks her to go with him. She is the one who asks to fly with him! In fact, Carol talks to him about the designs as they come together. If there is a stumbling point, those conversations may not result in the solution, but they often trigger a thought process that helps solve the problem. And the characteristic green color of the Rhinos was Carol’s idea. She likes the green. Dick likes it, too, but he likes it because it stands out in the sky and other pilots can see it. The top speed has not been determined yet since the one-off design is still being tested. However, it has already been flown at 120 knots. In fact the testing is involving some ‘tweaking’ of the design. So much is new there with three configurations for this model over 5-6 years. The props are at the ends of two stubby wings. A lot of thought went into even the little wings themselves. For example, the wide portion of the cord is at the prop with the narrow portion of the cord near the fuselage. It looks a little strange, but this way the propeller can be mounted closer to the wing without the propeller tips flexing forward to hit the wing near where it attaches to the aircraft. In turn, that provides cleaner air to the wing and makes the system quieter. Another benefit is that it eliminates drag at the root of the wing. The power from the Subaru is divided with a planetary differential. Wing props have two sets of bevel gears for each prop. The drive shaft is made out of 4130 steel. One part that Dick purchased was sprag clutches for the rotor and each prop. Those make the aircraft run smoother. But bottom line, Dick designs all of it. All of the transmissions, five of them in this case! He even makes many of the gears in the transmissions himself. Spur gears, the planetary system, the cases, the shafts, the splines connecting the gears and the shafts are all designed and cut by Dick. He uses a gear shaper to cut the gears. The gear shaper is a cutting tool that itself looks like gear, except that it has sharp teeth at the end of the gear teeth. He does not do the heat-treating since he has a friend who does that. The powered rotorhead is Dick’s design, too. He designed it so that the rotor angle of attack is zero. That reduces drag, making for an efficient cruise. There is even an inflight adjustment for the three fully-articulated blades. Design, making the parts, assembling, and test flying is all done by Dick. He doesn’t use a cnc machine for any of the milling although he now uses computer-aided design. His first Rhino design was hand-drawn. cad makes life a lot easier for him when it is time to move things on a drawing. “It is heartbreaking to take a huge eraser to the drawing and then redraw the same object to another place on the drawing.” Moving things in cad makes things more accurate and easier at the same time.
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