Titanium Gyro down AUS

[greg vos]

This is a real tragic accident Father and son, both qualified Gyro Pilots.


6th February 2019 - Busselton, Capel, Western Australia, Australia - TAG Titanium Explorer - G-565 - FATAL - The gyrocopter crashed into the shoreline waves near Capel south of Perth. Local news report a police spokesman as stating ""We've just had a witness say they observed the gyroplane was about 200 metres up into the air and it crashed into the water. That's all we've got so far." - the pilot and passenger were killed in the accident.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-06/ ... 9Ex2BzYAWY

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-07/ ... n/10788974

Its concerning that witness reports a metallic sound....could the head bearing have started to come apart?

Late last year a Titanium Explorer suffered mast separation, Niel who is the owner of the Factory and the man behind Titanium Gyro said in his mail when asked about what happened that the aircraft and mast were separated at the cheek plates as that particular model had the folding mast for easy storage.
Apparently the student Pilot and the instructor were killed when the thing went negative? I am unsure how a gyro going negative then loading could pull that much force to enable the mast to break at cheek plates, Magni have a very similar design and I have flown them with some heavy Pax and pulled it so hard I thought we would pass out with no adverse effects on the mast construction. Let me qualify that I pulled it so hard we saw around 525Rrpm at sea level to put that comment into perspective. For the non gyro guys an average Rrpm at coast depending on weight is around 380 Rrpm


https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/sto ... ter-crash/

See the mail from Neil below.
Hi ,

Yes that was very sad news about the fatal with one of my gyros involved however it has been established that the pilot went negative in flight , High Speed Rotor Flap .

Going negative puts massive load on the mast , way beyond the flight structure of the frame .

We ran the 5 G load test again on the folding mast a few weeks ago and no problems , we even bounced it on the crane and still no problem , so this shows the plates are not a problem .

Next time someone wants to do something stupid I wish they would do it in someone else’s gyro .

Regards

Neil

Fly safe guys and please do a very thorough Preflight!

[gyropilot]

tragic accident!

I think his last comment is a bit unwarranted!

[greg vos]

I have been informed that all Titanium Gyro with the folding mast configuration have been grounded by the authority in Australia until further notice.
This is really bad for a new brand to have this type of negative media at such a time when it really just needs positive reviews.