Tricky conditions

For various reasons there's been a bit of a gap since my last training. How much will I remember?

It's a Friday and considering it's still only late March, a very nice day - surprisingly warm for the time of year. At Rissington  Airfield, it's almost always cold and windy but today it's really quite warm; so warm that after getting G-BYJA out I decide to take the doors off so that Tony and I don't get cooked in the Perspex bubble canopy. Before we set off, we're told that a visiting aircraft may arrive at some stage.

Another unusual feature of the weather is the lack of wind. With no wind direction we could use any runway but Tony picks zero-four, probably because it's very long and is better surfaced. I taxi us to the threshold, turn onto the centreline, stop and check all the instruments.

Pulling in the pre-rotator clutch lever I bring the rotor up to 100 rpm, soon after, 140 rpm shows on the meter so I let go of the wheel brakes, give the engine a bit more power and pull back on the stick to get the rotor up to flying speed using our forward motion. Today though the rotor seems very sluggish and despite adding more power and going quite a lot faster, it takes much more of the runway to get the rotor up to the necessary speed to take off.

But we do eventually take off and after building up sufficient airspeed, climb to 150 ft or so, throttle back a bit  and level off. We seem to be almost at the end of the runway but Tony seems unconcerned and suggests that we can now descend for landing. Down we go at the usual steep angle; ease off the power but keep the airspeed up. The hard tarmac comes towards us fast and we level off as we near the ground. Touching down, we're still travelling fast but pulling back on the stick allows the rotor to act as a big airbrake and we come to a halt before we run out of runway!

We go around for another take-off/landing which is slightly better, but still not tidy. As we taxi back we receive a radio call from the incoming aircraft asking which circuit/runway to use. Tony gives him instructions as I pull over to the side of the runway at the threshold to wait for him to land. A minute or two later I spot him coming in from the east and he's soon drifting down over us to land out of our sight over the brow of the runway. Once we hear that he's turned and is on his way to the hangar, we try another takeoff and fly over him.

For the last take-off of the session, Tony suggests a circuit. This will be a right-hand circuit, the opposite of my previous one. We take off and once up at a few hundred feet do a sharp right turn to take us over the karting circuit (not in operation so no problem) and then right again to fly back parallel to the runway a few hundred metres to the east of it.

Some way below/in front of us there's a white van where someone's working on some aerials, so Tony warns me that we shouldn't directly overfly him. A little wiggle soon fixes that and we stay legal and safe. Two turns later (or maybe one big one) and we're lined up for the runway and descending for another fast landing. This circuit was a bit neater than my previous one, but given the light winds, I had no excuse for it being untidy. Here's a plot of it superimposed over the Google satellite view of the airfield:

Taxiing back to the hangar, we reflect on the lack of wind and the difficulty of learning in such conditions. It's a great deal easier when there's a 5-10 mph headwind as it gives more time to react and a lower groundspeed.

At the hangar we find the lovely little plane that we saw landing earlier:

Enough for today; next time we'll aim for a day with a better windspeed.

Huns, ostriches (??) and a great view.

We did have another day on the 4th of March so that's about six hours of training so far. That day was sunny again and we had a bit of interesting company from some other aircraft:

One pilot threatened to shoot us down if we got in his way:

After a bit of a break, Tony and I meet up again for a bit more practice. It's now the 11th of March and I hope I can remember what to do after a week's break from training.

I pull my machine out from its resting place at the back of the dark hangar and check it over. It all looks good so I find Tony and after while we get in and taxi out for a first session of take-offs and landings as before.

This time though, the wind has changed direction by 180° so we use the same runway but in the opposite direction, i.e. runway-two-two. It makes a nice change to see the runway from a different direction when landing. Tony is careful to point out though that there's a farm (The Yellow Hat Tribe) directly in line with this end of the runway and not too far away, so we don't go right to the end of the runway, as we might otherwise have done, to minimise any noise nuisance to their more sensitive inhabitants.

We have a good day doing a fair few more take-offs and landings. Tony's happy that I'm now getting quite consistent with the take-offs and judging the airspeed better before gaining height. By the end of the day he lets me do a little circuit for fun:

After we turn left from the take-off direction, it's obvious from the smoke drifting across the fields from a bonfire just outside the airfield that the wind is now quite strong across our desired path. I should have taken this into account but do a neat 90° turn allowing the wind to take us significantly off the preferred 90° track.

There's a nice view of the karting track as well, which I hadn't seen before. At ground level you don't get to see it at all.

The fourth leg is also fairly untidy; two 45° segments instead of a straight line. Ideally we'd have done a nice rectangular track but just doing turns without losing too much height or speed is a learning experience in itself.

I'm very happy though that at the end of day four with eight and a half hour's training so far, I've made good progress thanks to Tony's expertise.

More of the same ...

Wednesday the 2nd of March and the weather's looking a bit brighter. The wind's still cold but it's not 100% cloud cover. The wind is still a nice steady 12mph or so blowing along runway-zero-four, no nasty gusts to catch me out so it looks like another good day for training as Tony is still around.

I'm already feeling more confident about all aspects of flying and do the pre-flight checks on G-BYJA myself. When Tony's ready we strap in and motor off to the runways. Already I feel reasonably confident in the ground handling of my machine, and don't need to always check with Tony before doing anything. I know that if I did start to do something wrong, Tony would quickly correct me.

As we get to the active runway I make the necessary radio call, desperately trying to remember that it's runway-zero-four, not oh-four. At the threshold, I try to remember everything Tony has told me about how to balance the power, rotor speed, air speed, ground speed and keep the machine on three wheels while accelerating in a straight line up the runway.

After another hour of take-offs I think that I'm starting to get the hang of it and a bit of a feel for the aerodynamics. We go in for lunch.

After lunch it's quite sunny and although the wind's still cold, inside the gyro it's starting to get fairly warm as we taxi back into the sun and with the wind. It's quite a relief to get back to the threshold and turn round to face away from the sun and get the wind flowing through the vents again.

By the end of the afternoon I really feel that I'm starting to make some progress. My take-offs are now a bit safer but not maybe as consistent as Tony would like. Some are good but not enough of them for Tony to yet say that I've really mastered it yet.

Here's one of the better ones:

At the end of my second day's training I feel that we've accomplished a great deal more than I could have expected in such a short time, but Tony's quiet proficiency in demonstrating how to do things and encouraging me to take control have worked wonders. I can now get my machine off the ground and maintain some control in the air - just the landings to get more of a feel for.

Up, up and away.

On the 27th of February an email arrived from Viv saying that he and Tony would be at Little Rissington on Tuesday the 1st of March at least through to Thursday and possibly Friday as well, for training.

This would appear to be my first opportunity at last to get some real hands-on training in handling my gyro. I assume that to start with we'll be doing basic stuff like taxiing and getting the feel of just moving the machine around on the ground, and maybe a few fast runs up the runway to get the feel of how it handles with the rotors turning fast.

So, with a little trepidation I turn up at the hangar on Monday morning and get G-BYJA out and check what I can. Tony's a bit late because of a flat tyre (and he's got a much longer journey than me), but in due course he arrives and we check my machine over very thoroughly and then get in and buckle up.

To my surprise, Tony got in the passenger side, leaving me to get in the pilot's side. I had expected that Tony would be in control to start with, and I'd just be following what he did with the second joystick, but it seemed that I would have control over all the major functionality, in particular the pre-rotator for the main rotors.

After all the relevant cockpit checks I called loudly "CLEAR PROP" and after a pause, started the engine, making sure I had my foot firmly on the brake. With 2.2 litres of Subaru engine (and a big propellor) effectively attached to the back of our seats, the noise level in the cockpit is quite significant. We're wearing the quality headsets that Viv provided with the machine though, so communication through the intercom function of the radio is straightforward.

With the engine warm enough to be running smoothly, Tony said "Off we go then", so with a fair bit of nervousness I took my foot off the brake expecting us to leap forward. We didn't! A bit more throttle produces a lot more noise and we do move forward onto a slight downhill gradient; back off the throttle quickly as there's a 45° bend as we move onto the taxiway up to the runways. Safely round the bend, I'm just about getting the hang of steering with my feet when I discover that the uphill gradient we're now on needs a lot more throttle.

Moving up the gradient I stop at the top to spin the rotors up a bit. In my flights with Viv, he'd described how having the rotors turning at a moderate speed while taxiing over rough ground was very beneficial to the longevity of the rotor bearings as the weight of the rotor blades is largely removed from the bearings thanks to their aerodynamics.

I gently pull in the pre-rotator clutch lever on my joystick to divert a little of the engine's power from turning the prop to turning the rotors. With the 30' (9.14m) diameter rotors fairly whizzing round just above our heads, it's safe to move onto the rough grass taxiway across to the main runways. Soon enough, we get off the rough and onto the smoother, but by no means flat, runway-three-two aiming for runway-zero-four (not oh-four as I keep wrongly referring to it).

Just before the runway junction, Tony suggests that I use the radio to let other fliers know of our imminent presence on the active runway for today, i.e. the one with the wind blowing along it. "Rissington Traffic. Golf Bravo Yankee Juliet Alpha entering and backtracking runway-oh-four" I wrongly announce to anyone who's listening, which fortunately is probably nobody.

I turn us gently onto runway-zero-four, all 150' (45m) width of it and with a following wind, we gently motor over the crest and down to the threshold. Tony shows me how to brake and steer, which is a very necessary skill on this gentle slope with a following wind trying to take us through the fence and onto the road beyond if I don't maintain control. Steering and braking is quite tricky as three different pedals are involved, and with only two feet, there's something of a little dance going on - all this of course while my left hand is controlling the throttle, and my right hand ensuring that the rotor is properly angled to prevent us getting blown over.

If I'm feeling that things are busy just taxiing, what is a takeoff or landing going to be like? To my surprise, I was just about to find out. We turn and line up with the centreline of the runway and firmly push on the brake pedal. Tony shows me how gently build up the rotor speed to nearly 150rpm. We (Tony) apply more power and pull the stick back as we move forwards. I do my best to steer us centrally up the runway, but it's rather a long way from a straight line.

As we accelerate, our forward motion into the wind helps to spin the rotors ever faster and I can release the pre-rotator. From now on, our forward motion is the only thing keeping the rotors turning. As we move faster the rotors spin faster and we start to find the nosewheel lifting off so Tony increases the power and lowers the rotor angle to keep all three wheels on the ground. By now we're moving quite fast, or so it seems to my inexperienced brain, and then Tony pushes the throttle even further down; the engine/propellor roars heartily and we go even faster. Before I'm really aware of what's happening, Tony pulls gently back on the stick and we climb smoothly away from terra firma.

Seconds later we seem to be hundreds of feet (100m or so) above the runway with Tony suggesting that I try to steer using the stick and rudder to keep us over the centreline of the runway. In fact it was probably only about 100' (30m) up, but it felt high enough to me, especially when Tony reduced the power and pointed us down at quite a steep angle towards the rapidly diminishing length of runway. Very hard looking tarmac comes rushing towards us at about 60mph (96.5kph) airspeed. In one smooth movement, Tony pulls gently back on the stick and closes down the throttle and we land beautifully gently, with no forward speed, on the two main wheels, then pushes the stick forward to bring the nosewheel gently down.

There's something really magical about this aspect of gyros. I'd experienced it briefly in the flights with Viv, and Tony had just demonstrated that in the right hands, my machine could do the same as well. From flying at an airspeed of 50-60mph just a few feet off the ground, the gyro can land with no landing run at all (i.e. almost like a helicopter) and yet it doesn't feel as though you're stopping suddenly. It's all very gentle.

We turn around and head back to the start of the runway for another go. This time Tony encourages me to help with various aspects of the flying. After a few repeats, I hadn't realised but I was doing the take-offs on my own. Here's a typical one:

You can tell that it's me flying because as soon as we take off, the torque from the fast spinning prop takes us sideways and I'm very slow to correct it so we drift over to the left edge of the runway. In correcting it, I appear to be aiming straight for Maurizio (single seater gyro) and Viv (car) who are heading back up the wide runway. They don't panic though as they know that Tony won't let me crash, and in fact I control us well enough and aim reasonably accurately for the centre line as instructed, landing well beyond Maurizio.

After an hour of take-offs and landings we go in for a break. It's really hard work holding the stick fully forward in these windy conditions, though Tony I suspect has been doing a lot of the work for me.

After lunch, we go out for another hour's worth of the same thing. Slowly I'm getting the hang of the take-offs, but the landings are still something of a mystery as to how to steer with one hand & both feet, control the engine speed with my left hand, look where we're going and monitor the airspeed, all at the same time. Undoubtedly it will come in time but at the moment it feels very busy during the last few seconds of a landing.

After about six more take-offs we call it a day and taxi back to the hangar. A tiring day but we accomplished a great deal more than I could possibly have expected in my first day's training.