The April Chapter 5 meeting was held on the 25th at the Nut Tree Airport near Vacaville. Most of the usual attenders were there and we had one visitor.
Troy and Joe had their gyroplanes on display at the Sports Expo at the Yuba City Mall as briefly mentioned last month. As we suspected, this did generate a lot of looks, questions and interest from the crowd. 300 brochures were made up and they were all taken. It seems our gyros generate a lot of attention everywhere they go.
One area of interest is in aerial spraying. Rotary Air Force has demonstrated that the gyroplane is a practical platform for aerial spraying. The aircraft's flight characteristics and short landing capabilities are ideal for this low and slow application. The machine can be operated for a fraction of the cost of an airplane. We have heard of local interest in this here in the agricultural valley of Northern California. Since most gyros are in the experimental category, this could not yet be done for hire. But it could make an ideal affordable platform for spraying of privately owned orchards and farms in the area. Other applications we discussed included inspecting irrigation systems from the air and searching for possible places to locate bee hives. The gyroplane has a lot of potential uses in these areas and it would be nice to see our machines "at work" as well as at play.
Spring is here and the busy fly-in and air show season is upon us. The Woodland fly-in was the week after our meeting and the Nut Tree fly-in is May 15th. And of course the Air Expo '99 is just around the corner; only one more meeting before the big event. Everything is all set; just show up Friday morning to help us set up. Whatever you do, don't miss the show on Saturday June 26th. We are really looking forward to this, and to the Annual club picnic the day after.
Our Gyro-CFI Gary Brewer took the chapter members' suggestions to the ASK FIRST Society meeting in Florida. The group there adopted a beginning syllabus for more standardized training, based on one from Dofin Fritts. This is an excellent start. The next Society meeting will be at Mentone where they will continue work on the training syllabus.
Club projects are still moving along well. Bob Aspegren has some of his wiring finished and is now working on the panel of the Bandit Pro. Mark has the cabling complete along with brakes and oil cooler plumbing. Carl is looking into a new mag for the Mac, and George is working on his radio installation.
Bob Lewis has finished his engine rebuild after a lot of time and extra dollars. This project demonstrated that just because an aircraft engine is signed off by an A&P, doesn't mean it meets the specs. This engine was full of surprises! But now it is correctly rebuilt and good to go.
Gary's "Brewer Special" is complete except for a few final details. His RAF has now been taken off-line for the cabin upgrade and color change. This is scheduled to be complete and flying again by May 27th; a quick project! A surprise here was that he won't have to fly off more test time. Gary notified the FAA of the planned change and after they received more information and details, it was not considered a significant enough change to require restricted test flight time. Something like an engine upgrade would be another story, but it saved a lot of time in this case.
Tim's RAF 2000 was painted in only 2 days since all the paint prep, priming and final sanding had already been completed. The cabin now has the door seals, interior and back window installed and is mounted on the frame. It finally looks like a gyroplane!
The HKS powered Ultra Bandit now has 5.5 hours of time on it. It doesn't climb quite as well as with Rotax power, but performance is great and it burns an incredible 2 (two!) gallons of fuel per hour! Joe and Jim Vanek experimented with different propellers and found the 2 bladed Culver to work the best. This provides 300 pounds of static thrust. Jim flew the machine through the ringer and loved it. This is going to be a great little flying machine, especially for those needing an ultralight gyro.
Georgi will be continuing his training with Gary as soon as the RAF is back on-line. And Troy continues to fly every chance he gets. He flew to the meeting from Marysville with a 30 MPH ground speed and 60 indicated. I'm sure that wind made the trip back home just a little quicker!
The PRA Chapter 5 patches are in and look great. Just show up at a club meeting or the Air Expo or annual picnic to claim your patch!