What is a Gyroplane?

Question

What is a Gyroplane?

Answer 1

it is somwwhat similar to helicopter, but>

the axis of the rotor is tilted backwards

and more importantely, the rotor is not proppeled by engine.

this means. the gyro needs another propeller to provide the forward speed to start the rotor turning and producing lift.

Surprisingly the concept is quite old, even before the helicoptersthemself and the gyros are frequently distributed in US /not so much in Europe./

I personally hate that flapping sound they make as they approach the final turn of my base... I am helicopter pilot myself and I am a bit oversensitive to low RPM sounds, and this is precisely what that gyro produces.

in fact the gyros are autorotating all the time they fly, which disproves the fact that there is no such thing like a gliding helicopter.

so> they do use one more propeller, to move them forwards..

they do not use the propeller to counter the torque of the main rotor because there is no torque where there is no power...

they are flapping like those ugly two bladed hueys from Vietnam movies... swish.. pause.. swish... pause etc.

Answer 2

basically a helicopter without a powererd rotor.

Its was an early safety design built into fixed wing aircraft, becasue of the unreliablity of the early engines. It had a large rotor on top of the aircraft, so if the engine did quit, it would slow the rate of descent and be able to perform an auto-rotation.

Answer 3

It is an entry in any dictionary or encyclopedia.

For lots of pictures and other useful information, try an internet search on "gyroplane."  That is what most people would do,

Have fun!

Answer 4

A gyroplane or autogiro is an aircraft which derives its lift. but not it's thrust,  from a free-spinning (i.e. unpowered) rotating wing or rotor.

At first sight they have a lot to commend them. They can fly very slowly, they have a very low (virtually zero) landing speed so they can be landed in a confined space - but they cannot take-off from it, so that is not really as useful as it sounds.

They cannot hover nor are they capable of vertical take-off (well actually that's not exactly true in the late 1920s and 1930s a man called Jaun De La Cierva experimented with a mechanism for 'spinning-up' the rotor to enable the autogiro to leap into the air but it was never really successful).

So, in operation they have none of the advantages of a helicopter and few, if any, advantages over a fixed wing aircraft - they turned out to be a 'solution looking for a problem' a sort technological dead end.

The James Bond film, "You only Live Twice" , featured a Wallis Autogiro in some spectacular but not exactly realistic   (What, James Bond not real? SHOCK HORROR!) air-to-air combat with a bunch of bad guys in, if I recall correctly, Bell 47s. Naturally James Bond won, but with rockets, sidewinders, machine guns, flame throwers and parachute mines he did 'out-gun' the opposition by a tad.

There are films of autogiros in action on "You Tube".

Answer 5

An invitation to crash a party - your own...