www.PSFmagazine.com | December 2018 - January 2019 | 31 30 | December 2018 - January 2019 | Powered Sport Flying Check the Mailing Label on the Back Cover to See if Your Subscription is Running Out Gyroplane First Flight the moment after impact and push myself out of the seat to the ground and use the forward momentum, if any, to roll behind the tree and away from any fire...” and still Ron just flew on. Me, I have my hand on the seat belt buckle and I’m not yelling yippee for the first time in this ride. He does see the trees right? Ron flew on to 50 feet, twice our rotor blade length, to the tree line and pulled a right 75 degree banked climbing turn–and she handles like she is on rails! Wow, NO accelerated stall, none, what a ride. But it wasn’t over; no, up we went, starting with a climbing 70 degree bank and ending our climb about one and half rotor blade lengths above the ground. It seemed that just for fun Ron didn’t just turn away and level off flying at a 90 degree angle across the face of the tree line. As if to mock the trees and airplane aircraft he did a circle turn, holding a 60 degree bank from the trees, and simply flew right in front of them in a 50º degree turn by increasingly pulling the stick/cyclic back, loading the blades, and turning in a spiral, all while bleeding the 90 to 100 mile an hour excess airspeed off–pulling perhaps 2+ G’s, using my seat-of-the-pants-o-meter. Wow, it’s a roller coaster ride for which you make up a new track of rails each time. Never had I flown or ridden in any aircraft like this. I was hooked for life, and learned that rotor blades do not stall, like fixed-wings. That is the greatest difference and it goes through turbulence like it’s nothing. I can fly gyroplanes in most winds when we’ve been grounded in all other ultralights I’ve flown. It really handles nothing like any fixed-wing; I would have pushed right into the trees! “wow I’ve got to get me one of these…” Me, I’m still yelling “yippee,” and “do that again!” So we went through the maze and he did it again! It cannot get any better than this!! Then Ron headed off over a brush line where he spotted a running deer with her fawn, so it’s off to inspect them for ticks… that’s how close they were to us and they were trying to ditch us by zigzagging. No luck, Ron is so skilled he just followed every move, amazing… Bummer! All too soon Ron was heading back to the airport and I’m looking back at all the places I’d like to explore with him on this new flying roller coaster. We are making a slightly higher than normal pattern and I’m sad it’s ending (really) when all of a sudden at the end of the runway on our downwind leg he just stopped (almost zero airspeed) and hung in the air for the second time, only much longer! Now this is just not right to an airplane pilot, and it’s a big surprise. I asked Ron “are we hovering?” “No, John, look down.” I did, and we were in a very slow vertical decent. Wow, an airplane cannot do that without spinning, and then he pointed the nose almost straight down about 70 degrees and hard right rudder, and we were doing a 70 degree bank too in a maneuver he named the “twist and shout” (he renamed it from the Death Spiral). It’s sort of a horizontal barrel roll, and at about 150 feet above the ground Ron straightened out of the tight turn, aligning just to the right of the runway, and entered a steep (to any fixed-wing pilot) descent, finally truly gaining airspeed in a hurry and loading the blades. He landed on the grass next to the beginning edge of the runway and stopped with zero roll. Unbelievable: the rotor-blades are like a parachute brake and with practice the nose wheel just drops and you’re stopped. I’ve only done that in a Cessna 150 when the wind was straight down the runway with wind speeds equal to flying speed. Wow, wow, wow it got better all the way through and I learned the flight envelope of a two-place Dominator on my very first ride! Once the gyroplane is flying there are more similarities to flying a fixed-wing than I had imaged, but I can’t fly sideways or backwards without worrying about bending my tail feathers and with nowhere near the control. The only way I can do a vertical decent in a fixed-wing is in a spin, and they make you dizzy. I got me two of those. A single-seat, and a two-place Aviomania for pra 31’s trainer. Coming soon and even in training I’m having the best time of my life!! Currently I drive my Piper fixed-wing to take friends places, but when I fly gyroplanes it’s a maneuverability religious experience and I become the bird. Thank you Ron Awad for the best time I’ve had flying anything in my life!• John Rountree, back on the ground!
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