Item 1437

OTHER: Aircraft - Gyro/Heli - Overview

Conceptual Drawing of Complete (all stages included) Craft:

Notes re Drawing of Complete (all stages included) Craft:

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Partially Powered Rotor:

Tentative Stages of Gyro/Heli

Evolution:

The development and particularly the testing of a new helicopter by a series of progressive steps. This will be particularly important since the new craft incorporates a number of unique features.

At some point, the testing will consist of evaluating the rotor in the autorotative state. This might be initially done on the back of a truck, but it eventually the tests must be in free air. An ideal method for this should be the gyrocopter.

Regulations:

The US FAA is about to release the new Sport pilot / Light Sport Aircraft. Gyrocopters are to be included but "helicopters are too complex to be allowed under this first issue of SP/LSA". However, there is the provision for the inclusion of helicopters in the future. It should also be noted that the criteria of the SP/LSA are compatible with those of the European JAR-VLR and the British VLH for helicopters.

Method:

Establish the criteria for a future advanced Very Light Helicopter. Then, start with a gyrocopter and incrementally add the features in a series of steps toward this advanced helicopter.

The FAA would be asked to approve this revised craft into the SP/LSA at each step. In addition, at each step there is an improved rotorcraft, which can, in and of itself, be a commercial product.

Sequence:

    1. Produce gyrocopter with centerline thrust and horizontal stabilizer. Similar to OTHER: Aircraft - Gyrocopter - Basic (w/ mid prop), except that it has provisions for future enhancements.
    2. Add conventional helicopter flight-controls.
    3. Add a 3-blade offset teetering rotor.
    4. Add the constant velocity joint with hub spring rotor; as an alternative to the offset teetering rotor.
    5. Add full-time partial power to the rotor; constant speed propeller, constant speed control to the power-train, and a 2-position collective (-1 & +2) to the flight-controls.
    6. Add pilot controlled override to the 2-position collective. This will be used for; higher RRPM pre-rotation during take-off, and rotor inertia consumption during landing.
    7. Add the ability to provide the rotor with close to 100% of the available power. The large rotor torque will be opposed (hopefully) by the lateral cyclic of a reverse thrust propeller and a twin rudder.

Tentative Stages of UniCopter:

    1. Starting with some of the above components. Duplicate the rotor. Etc, etc .........

Very Miscellaneous Working Notes:

Seat count of gyrocopters from PRA web site's listing of manufacturers:

One seat craft = 21

Two seat craft = 14

Gross weight:

It looks like the average gross weight of the above single seat gyrocopters is 652 lbs.

Doubling this for a two rotor Unicopter is 2 x 652 = 1304 lbs which is very close to the VLR maximum of 1320 lbs.

The SynchroLite CVJ+HS rotor is designed for 550 / 2 = 275 lbs.

The multiplier to make it suit the 652 lbs is √3 (652 / 275) = 1.31

This is virtually the same as the 1.33 for the SynchroLite to UniCopter.

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Last Revised: January 6, 2005