Progress Reports, in latest first (backwards) order:

2002/06/17

But seriously, until I can afford to fly, this page will not be updated much. I really miss flying my gyro, and dream of returning to the air one day. In the meantime, I'm also dreaming of building a portable hangar. But I can't afford to do that yet either. Ah well. Check back in a year or so, maybe I'll be flying again or building the hangar or something.

2001/11/10

After getting the fuel level set, I did a runway flight behind the power curve. Couldn't get my full 5400 RPM out of the engine, only 5100. Did another and same thing. Oh well, 5100 is plenty to climb with, so the third time I went around the pattern, staying close just in case. Ran great, but not knowing why the top-end RPM was down, I didn't go anywhere. Instead, I landed, packed it up in a trailer and hauled it home to my garage. Here I will do the annual/100 hour inspection. It will be several months before I fly again...

2001/10/27

2001/10/13

Saturday, October 13 2001, the plan was to fly north from Vacaville to Marysville California for the annual air show. The main highlight for me would be the performance by Jim Vanek, including the world's only loop and roll demonstration in a gyroplane. Then I would spend the night there and fly around the next day at the annual PRA Chapter 5 gyro gathering and picnic. I took off just before 9am.

N199TW was purring like a kitten.

After leveling off at 1,000 feet I noticed my airspeed was 70 MPH while my ground speed on the GPS was 35. Wow I thought, there's more headwind up here then I expected from the weather briefing. I ducked down a few hundred feet to see if I could get to slower wind and began calculating how long it was going to take to get to my destination. I have over 2.5 hours of fuel, but the airport closes at 11am for the air show. No problem, I can still make it with time to spare.

Enjoy the view for a few minutes when suddenly I hear and see my engine RPM dropping quickly. 4000, 3900, 3800... Hmmm, that's odd, I'm pretty sure I didn't reduce throttle. I'm in the center of a huge plowed field at 600 feet but making good progress towards the edge of the field. Scan the guages: all looks good. Fiddle with throttle: no change, 2000, 1800, sputter, shake, sputter, shake, silence.

Probably 5 seconds has passed since first indication something out of the ordinary might be happening. All the time I'm evaluating my landing options: dirt road straight ahead but over power lines. Yes! I think I will be able to clear them...

Fly the airplane! Airspeed had quickly bled off below 50 as the thrust stopped. Stick slowly forward, get that airspeed back up! Glide slope looks good to clear the power lines no problem. Airspeed now good. Key off. Master off. Power lines cleared and behind me. Lined up with dirt road, begin flare, gradually slowing down, follow through normal power off (for real this time!) landing as practiced dozens of times on the runway, touchdown and stop! Whooo Hoo! One of my smoothest landings! Later, the GPS log would reveal that less than a minute elapsed from engine shutdown to touchdown.

Back to the original plan for the day: fellow Chapter 5 members were preparing for takeoff when I departed less than 10 minutes ago. They were flying fixed-wing airplanes much faster than mine. So we had made arrangements to communicate along the way, they would pass me in the air, and we'd all meet at the show in Marysville.

Blades still spinning, still strapped in my seat. Master on. Key on. Radio on. Our conversation went something like this:

"Gyro Niner Tango Whisky: Gary, Bob, you on frequency yet?"

	(I recognize Gary's voice) "switching to in-flight freqency now."

"Switching frequency"
"Niner Tango Whiskey: Gary, can you hear me?"
"Gyro Niner Tango Whiskey just had engine out landing on a dirt road
5.76 miles from Nut Tree; I am OK." (Yes, 5.76.  I just love my GPS!)

	"Tim, what's your altitude?"

(me thinks: huh?  Good one!  Very funny!)  "ground: I'm on the ground!"

	"Say again, you're radio is cutting out."

"Engine quit: I landed on the ground."

	"Tim, we're only getting the first word of your transmissions."

"engine"
"out"
"landing"

	"Gyro is on the ground!  Tim are you OK: yes or no?"

"Yes"

	"North or South of Winters?"

"South"

	"East or West of Highway 505?"

"East"

Blades spun down by now I got out, waved to the farmer on the tractor passing right by, and looked the machine over briefly. Everything appears just fine. Fuel pressure is good from both pumps and the gas looks/smells good. Everything seems to be connected. I did not try to start the engine.

Instead, I began trying to figure out how to get from this private dirt road to the public paved road only a couple hundred feet away. There were water canals around the field and between the two. I stopped the farmer on his next pass and found that we would have to drive all the way to the other end of the field to get around and over the water. The guys arrived with the trailer, we loaded it up, slowly pulled it out of there, back to the airport and tucked it away in the hangar. Unfortunately, it was too late to get to the air show.

I still don't know what the root cause was as I won't have time to do a thorough check out for a week or more. Most likely suspicion is that the electronic ignition has failed. Perhaps it (or something) caused an electrical surge that has also fried my radio transmitter.

At least I got to fly and as always had a blast doing it! For some reason, I felt extreme happiness just after the landing. I feel like a more complete pilot now as this was my first engine out landing.

By the way when you learn to fly your instructor says "this is what you do when your engine quits." Note the correct operative word "when", not "if". Then you practice for this event over and over. I'm glad my first engine out landing went just as I had planned and has such a happy ending. I hope my next one goes just as well. :-)

2001/09/23

2001/09/03

2001/08/11

2001/07/21

2001/06/23

2001/06/16

2001/06/09

2001/04/28

2001/04/23

2001/04/14

2001/03/17

2001/03/03

2001/03/02

2001/01/28

2001/01/13

2001/01/01

2000/12/23

2000/12/02

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooooooooooooo! Man I needed that. How in the world do I survive not flying? Flying is just waaaaay too much fun to go for a couple months without doing it. Went up for nearly 2 hours; I just didn't want to come back down. Up and over and down and around a bunch of hills and valleys. Around some trees, spooked a couple deer and several rabbits, skimmed a plateau at a few feet at 80 mph and shot off the edge over a cliff to several hundred feet AGL. Hey, what's that black spec over there? Turn towards it. It's Bob! Another PRA Chapter 5 member flying his Bandit Pro. Waved and followed him back to the airport. Did a couple stop-n-goes before rolling back to the hangar. What a great day.

2000/10/13

2000/09/30

2000/09/23

2000/09/21

2000/09/16

2000/09/12

2000/09/07

2000/09/02

2000/08/28

2000/08/26

2000/08/23

2000/08/15

2000/07/23

2000/07/22

2000/07/19

2000/07/15

2000/07/12

2000/07/08

2000/07/04

2000/06/30

2000/06/25

2000/06/24

2000/06/19

1999/11/17

1999/11/14

1999/10/29

We first did a thorough check of the machine, using a rotorcraft inspection checklist. Then tied the tailwheel to my truck bumper and did the static runup. It topped out at 5180 RPM full throttle. Perfect, no prop adjustments were needed.

Then he spun up the blades and did a quick taxi down the taxiway, getting the feel for the ground handling with rotor spinning. Cleared for traffic and lifted off slower than normal, behind the power curve, and kept it just a few feet off the runway. And let it set down at the other end of the runway. Taxied back and we torqued the blades down tight.

Spun up the blades noting the black tip was higher than the yellow. Took off, this time at normal speed and higher. Noted rotor RPM was low and there was a slight one-per stick shake. Set back down at the far end again. Since rotor RPM was low, we need to reduce pitch to speed it up. The black blade was high, so we took out 40 thousandths of pitch from the black blade to lower it.

Another run and the shake was less but still there. Took another 40 thousandths pitch out of the black blade. Next run was close, but we went another 20 thousandths.

Finally, it was flying quite smooth. Took off and checked it out, this time away from the airport. All systems checked out and it flys great!

1999/10/25

Construction

Construction Log / Hours Summary

1999/07/09

1999/03/18

1999/01/04

1998/12/26

1998/12/23

1998/12/13

1998/12/10

So I get a call at work today: "what is your street name again, our truck driver can't find it."

I say "What? I thought we agreed to unload it tomorrow!"

But the driver was near and ready to drop it off. So I scrambled and found 5 other guys to borrow from work. You really do need at least 6 guys if you want to unload it w/out a lift. We got the engine uloaded without much problem. But that 560 lb. crate is huge! I happened to have ten 8ft 2x4s laying there so I duct-taped them all together to make a ramp which just happened to fit in a crack in the concrete so it couldn't slip away from the truck. We carefully slid it down the ramp. Worked pretty good. I don't know if we would have been able to lower it otherwise.

We couldn't resist and quickly opened one side of each crate just to see it. Looks like it's mostly there. Looks like a lot of work to do. The engine came with the crank driven ignition; I wasn't sure which I'd get. The anodized parts are beautiful. I found my custom panel and it looks just like what I drew up. Wow.

Man, how am I going to sleep tonight?

1998/10/29

1998/09/26