Crane Fly Trainer Autogyro

[Tom Wright 2]

The video shows a rog of frozen snow in virtually nil wind and it was my partners first attempt to use a small sports cam,hence the near domestic at the beginning and end .

The blades used for this test were a very old set made from all balsa with a six inch length of mm piano wire let in mm back from the l/e and extending from the tip towards the root .The rear section is preformed balsa trailing edge section with a piece of 6 mm x 25 mm balsa added so the amount of profiling and sanding is reduced to a minimum .

The flight was fraught with distraction as my partner was convinced the cam had shut down and she could not see the model on the screen anyway , but the object of the exercise can be clearly seen as the model takes off in a short distance into very near calm wind, and despite the fact this one is no light weight very slow high alpha passes were possible.

Clearly if good blade stiffness can be achieved light blades correctly weighted do seem to spin up very readily.

Martin over on the ATOM thread has come up with another interesting variation on a similar blade construction but has added 1/4 square spruce at a point were little or no sanding is needed well worth a look for those interested in experimenting with home made blades.

Happy new year to all

Tom.

[ken anderson.]

happy new year to the king of the foodmixers dept....TW2 ....... clever stuff tom...on the video I was watching there was a black round thing in the sky time you were flying also .....we haven't had any white stuff up this end yet...

ken Anderson...ne...1 ..... TW2 Dept.

[Tom Wright 2]

Hi Ken

Ha the black round thing was the dark side alien ship keeping an eye on things .

Bet your disappointed you could not go snow balling on boxing day..

Best regards

Tom.

[Tom Wright 2]

Got fed up waiting for the wind to drop so it was off to the field today with my rudder controlled wing assisted Gyro. XC was showing 20 gusting 41 mph so this would be quite a challenge for a light gyro with no roll control on the head.Although these conditions could not not be recommended for newbies I was very pleasantly surprised by the way the model penetrated and how easy it was to control in the vicious wind, even managed to keep it on its feet on touch down .

[Tom Wright 2]

For anyone who might be interested the old blade set used on the model above has a depron core sheeted top and bottom with 1/16 balsa , with a wire leading edge covered with self adhesive glass tape, The stiffness and strength in bending is very good but this may also be due to the unusually thick section that has the normal 30% chord bolt location but the section max thickness is at 50% . The fast spin up and plentiful lift also returns very good low speed performance in calm conditions.

The model uses turned up tips on the wing and tail which results in a rock solid sit in roll and a nice flat turns , pitch is controlled by a simple pivot and single 9 gm mg servo . The model is often used as a test bed for various rotor sets and is very relaxing to fly as a winter hack ,despite the deviations from the norm.

Tom.

[mark etherington]

It is with deep sadness I have to tell you that Tom Wright passed away yesterday. Such a sad loss to all that knew him.

Mark

[BILL PETTIT]

This such sad news tom was so very delicated to this sport and so helpful to all around the world. RIP Tom, from Bill on the other side of the pond....