Microlighters

I would like to start a thread having all the limits as well as saving yourself in a Gyro explained by the experts:

Firstly, what are the limits on these Gyro's flying wise? Is there anything we as pilots should know that can go wrong at any stage when flying low and slow, steep banks, quick turns, etc. I do not want any surprises when I fly where something goes wrong aerodynamically and then it is unrecoverable. These machines are amazing, but must have dangerous behaviors too if not fully known by the pilot.

Secondly, what does the experts say regarding emergencies. When you fly low at round 70 mph and the engine goes what will be the best thing to do, as you will not be over a flat area at that stage (Murphy's law). Quick thinking I suppose and saving your life will be my first thought, but what actions to take is the main question here. I have read a lot about different accidents where skilled pilots have died and that scares me as they suppose to know what to do more than the not so skilled pilots.

Thirdly how do you safe yourself when flying in mountainous areas? When you flying in a mountain area or over a mountain and have to do a engine out landing what will be the best to safe yourself? My biggest concern here is what you will hit that will probably injure or kill you.

Lastly for now. Any advise on take off not gaining altitude and the runway is already behind you? Safest way to land and how and when to stop the Gyro's forward speed to land reasonably safe. (From what height can you drop a Gyro with zero airspeed saving yourself?).

When flying these amazing machines you like a feather in the sky. When something goes wrong this feather will not stay floating and will take you to the ground fast. Reality only kicks in when you hit the ground with a bang....or maybe not if you know exactly how to control the machine to feather your fall.............

Well you have asked about a handful and then some.

I am not going to answer in terms of any particular type of gyro as I believe that they are all basically the same in the RSA as far as safety goes. After all we are all gyro pilots and not type pilots.

Let's start with the emergency situation. Engine goes and you are about a 1000 feet off the ground. Result is that you have about 45 seconds before ground contact. A gyro will typically descend at about 1200 to 1500 ft/min. A smart pilot will fly at an altitude that will allow his safe glide to a landing spot, therefore if over a forest area, 10,000 feet may not be enough. I have found that guys DO NOT always practice their forced landings and emergency drill or plan their routs over safe areas at a reasonable height. Low and slow is also a bad combination as that extra 10 mph could just take you to a safe place. Low flying and wires seem to go hand in hand.

Dropping a gyro can safely be done from about a meter above the ground provided that the gyro remains upright. This will not shorten your spine. Above a meter, the chances of remaining upright could prove difficult as the gyro can bouce back up again, resulting in loss of control which is turn can result in extensive damage. Higher than 2 meters with a descent rate of 1000 ft/min, you might find yourself becoming a bit shorter due to the impact. It all depends on the vertical impact speed.

Dangerous practices are allowing yourself to end up behind the curve at too low an altitude to recover. This means that you are using all your power and your airspeed is decreasing (stick full back) and you ARE GOING DOWN!!!
Next dangerous practice is to do "shoot ups" where you actually start feeling weightless in a gyro. This results in the blade loosing RPM, thus becoming unloaded and ........

Most modern gyros in the RSA do not really sucumb to PIO but this is not to say that it cannot happen. I have personally tried to put a Magni into PIO and found that it is pretty positively stable. A new student is inclined to either under control or over control. Over control can bring about PIO.

Aerobatics in a gyro are out - plain and simple - no loops, rolls etc. If you have a death wish, DO THEM!!!!!
Your question about mountains etc is actually quite simple - DO NOT FLY ANYTHING ABOVE YOUR OWN LIMITATION. This means that if you have just obtained your gyro licence, you are still learning to fly. Rather get your basics sorted first, then go to a competant instructor that HAS flown mountains and let him take you through it. I suggest that you have at least 100 hours solo before trying to fly mountains with your instructor. Talk to Len. He has a course going in exactly that.

Flying outside the gyro's scope or envelope (as well as your own) is another danger area and this applies to all aircraft. This includes flying in Hot, High and Humid conditions, overloading, short horrible runways etc. Simple rule of thumb - NOT SURE? DON'T!!!

Trying to climb with a gyro and runway already behind you is the result of either a downdraft, overload, sick engine, or trying to climb on the back of the curve. I have always taught my students that you land 15 degrees either side of the extended center line dead ahead of you. Turning back, in this case, may aggrevate the situation.
The gyro in general is a very safe aircraft. However it does have rules and if they are not obeyed, you pay the price, one way or another.

Never loose respect for your gyro or the weather. Gyros can handle serious stuff, but cloud dancing is out - there is very hard stuff hidden i clouds (called terrain) and that has killed many a pilot.
Hope that answers your questions.

veveritza - read the above post. print it out, frame it and hang it somewhere you can read it often. the advice being offered comes from one of (if not the THE) most experienced gyro pilot and instructor in SA. Wise words...

Thank you Gyrosa. Highly appreciated. I am not a low time pilot but just wanted to get clarity on a few pointers. So what I get from your advise on emergency landing is to glide her down to roughly a meter or 2 and then dead stick to break the forward speed before landing where ever you are (rough terrain for sure)? No one can really educate someone in a real emergency, but your pointers are golden, as I just want to make sure that I know the correct procedure before impact, rather than guessing!

veveritza wrote:Thank you Gyrosa. Highly appreciated. I am not a low time pilot but just wanted to get clarity on a few pointers. So what I get from your advise on emergency landing is to glide her down to roughly a meter or 2 and then dead stick to break the forward speed before landing where ever you are (rough terrain for sure)? No one can really educate someone in a real emergency, but your pointers are golden, as I just want to make sure that I know the correct procedure before impact, rather than guessing!

I don't think that is what he said, but I would rather have him explain it to you in more detail.

Whirly.

Hey veveritza, you have a very inquiring mind there, I would seriously suggest you get to an instructor and be taken for an intro flip.

Great post Eric...

Rgds
Jean.

Grumpy wrote:Hey veveritza, you have a very inquiring mind there, I would seriously suggest you get to an instructor and be taken for an intro flip.

It seems to me that vereritza has more than a few hour behind his belt, an into flip would be inappropriate.

whirly wrote:

veveritza wrote:Thank you Gyrosa. Highly appreciated. I am not a low time pilot but just wanted to get clarity on a few pointers. So what I get from your advise on emergency landing is to glide her down to roughly a meter or 2 and then dead stick to break the forward speed before landing where ever you are (rough terrain for sure)? No one can really educate someone in a real emergency, but your pointers are golden, as I just want to make sure that I know the correct procedure before impact, rather than guessing!

I don't think that is what he said, but I would rather have him explain it to you in more detail.

Whirly.

I think it is a bit more complicated to give a pilot the "correct" procedure in an emergency situation. Plain and simple the question will be - what to do when you flying low level over rough terrain and have to do an emergency landing. If your highest obstacle is round 1 to 2 meters do you dead stick and drop, or do you settle into the obstacles while your speed bleeds off? The only reason I put my reply like it is on top will be because it is a common question from gyro pilots regarding emergency landings. You are in trouble in any case when you have an engine out and no smooth area to land, so the best to do in my knowledge will be to safe yourself and not the Gyro....correct? Hope it clears my question up a bit. In choppers it will be different as you can try to cushion the fall with pitch, but in the Gyro I do not believe any pitch will cushion your fall as you can not change it. Crash and burn is not the end result here for me. Unfortunately this situation will not be able to be simulated so you as a skilled pilot should know exactly what and what not to do.

weedy wrote:

Grumpy wrote:Hey veveritza, you have a very inquiring mind there, I would seriously suggest you get to an instructor and be taken for an intro flip.

It seems to me that vereritza has more than a few hour behind his belt, an into flip would be inappropriate.

Thanks for the suggestion Grumpy but I do have a few hours behind me already like Weedy said. I do not know how many of you guys have been in any aviation accident but I have been and I have learned from it that a person can NEVER know too much about any emergency situation. What the book tells you and what happens in real life does not always correspond. The reason for my inquiring mind is just safety and educating other Gyro pilots that I fly with to make the best of a bad situation...

veveritza wrote:I think it is a bit more complicated to give a pilot the "correct" procedure in an emergency situation. Plain and simple the question will be - what to do when you flying low level over rough terrain and have to do an emergency landing. If your highest obstacle is round 1 to 2 meters do you dead stick and drop, or do you settle into the obstacles while your speed bleeds off? The only reason I put my reply like it is on top will be because it is a common question from gyro pilots regarding emergency landings. You are in trouble in any case when you have an engine out and no smooth area to land, so the best to do in my knowledge will be to safe yourself and not the Gyro....correct? Hope it clears my question up a bit. In choppers it will be different as you can try to cushion the fall with pitch, but in the Gyro I do not believe any pitch will cushion your fall as you can not change it. Crash and burn is not the end result here for me. Unfortunately this situation will not be able to be simulated so you as a skilled pilot should know exactly what and what not to do.

Hi Veveritza
Going back to my earlier post, you will notice that I gave something of the rate of descent of a gyro ie 1200-1500 ft/min.
At a 1000 feet AGL you have about 45 seconds. At 500 feet you will have about 22 seconds, at 50 feet AGL, you have about 2 seconds. Flying low over "hostile terrain" is in itself not a good idea and even in PPL this fact is pointed out.This in itself should answer the question of low level flights and what I personally now think of them. Let me be quite honest with you - nobody flew lower than what I did on long trips. It took the death of a friend, (and ex student), to give me a wake up call after many years of low flying. You think you are bullet proof until something happens, and that is where the wheels pop off.

Why do pilots then do it? Because it produces a "rush of speed" and some sort of adrenalin rush, not forgetting that ego thing. Is it worth it? No!!!

Again I also come back to the properties of the aircraft itself - you are trying to push the limit on the aircraft. There is no way that you will gain much height when the engine goes. The engine will start "dying" on you and before you know it, you would have lost altitude anyway. It is very seldom that one will find the engine producing full power and then suddenly stop. My engine went, after putting a con rod through the block, milling 4 cylinder skirts to pieces, and producing millions of tiny particles that went all over the engine to really make matters worse. Yet that engine gradually lost power and only finally died when the wheels touched down on a safe landing. Even an out of fuel engine stop will give a warning. I often tell my students that a gyro has a glide ratio of a falling block of flats!!!

Going back to your question about collective control on a chopper as opposed to a gyro. You are right - there is no collective on a gyro. Go back to your gyro instructor and if he knows what he is doing, he will show you how to convert height into speed, using the extra speed at the right moment to convert this into rotor blade energy ie speed up the blade and thus produce more lift just before touch down and you should not have to drop more than half a meter, and thus a soft landing. Crash and burn is not the end result. Please do not try this on your own unless you are completely trained by a competant instructor, as judgement is everything in this case and I do not want people going out and bending gyros because they have read this. GET THE TRAINING!!!!!!

A gyro put down in this way, should have very little (if any) forward speed and the vertical speed is greatly reduced. This means that the area that is landed in, as long as it is reasonably flat, will be a safe area to land in and remain intact. How you get your gyro out of there is another issue.

As far as crash and burn is concerned. Helicopters and gyros have to hold their fuel somewhere in the fuselage, while fixed wing planes keep fuel in the wings. It is a given fact (and millions have been spent on this issue) that choppers and gyros, when toppled, do often spill fuel, which, when this fuel comes into contact with a hot exhaust, can cause combustion and start a fire. This again is a good reason to fly high, and, when the engine goes, will give the exhaust time to cool down and thus prevent a fire.

Regarding your idea of saving yourself and not the gyro is a pretty common statement among pilots and this is also drilled into them. I say that if the gyro completes a safe emergency landing, remaining intact, it will follow that the pilot (and pax) will be intact. However, if the gyro is toppled for any reason, then the chances are that the pilot (and pax) could get injured. Even in a chopper, you have a "dead man's" altitude, which means that if the engine goes and you are below that altitude, you are going to get hurt. The collective is not a means to save all.

Hope that answers your questions.

Wow! Thank you for that Gyrosa. I see that the bottom line here will be to fly with someone that knows exactly what to do rather than thinking that you know in these situations. I can not PM or send you a private mail. Will you please be so kind to send me a PM with your number so that I can get in touch with you to discuss more finer details I would not like to make public on the forum.

Highly appreciated!

Height Velocity demystified.

Some very useful information in this article by Greg Gremminger.

Fly safe

Len