The October meeting was held on the 24th in Marysville. After the meeting, we all had the privilege of watching Mark's first taxi tests with blades spinning. The new one-of-a-kind Predator is a large tandem machine with 30' RAF blades. Still without a prerotator, Mark stood in the back passenger's seat and started turning the blades by hand. Then he strapped into the front pilot seat while Joe took over as prerotator. Those huge blades are not ideal for hand starting and this proved to be quite a workout! But after several swings of the blades, Joe jumped out and Mark started taxiing.
Carefully and slowly he went, being patient to let the big blades come up to speed. Down the taxiway, turn around and come back, then out again, gradually increasing ground speed just enough to bring the rotors up to speed. By now the blades were spinning quite well and starting to cone. Mark turned once more and came back towards us spectators, this time on two wheels. He was balancing on the mains! Nose and tail wheel were in the air.
Predator gyro update.... It Flys!! The first flight was made on Nov 6 just three days after Donald Green completed the inspection and found nothing wrong!! Two flights were made down the runway that day and three flights were made on Nov 7. Some more adjustments were made and three more flights were made on Nov 13 with up to 120 lbs of weight added to the passenger seat. More pitch has been removed from the rotor blades (Solo RPM was only 284) and an adjustment was made to bring the control stick back to center in flight as well as a trim spring adjustment. No flights were made on the 20th or the 21st due to weather.
The day after the October meeting, Tim's new RAF 2000 passed inspection by Bill Janis of Sacramento FSDO. CFI and RAF expert Gary Brewer did the honors of the initial test flights that following Friday after a thorough inspection. Everything went as planned, with only slight adjustments made to get the blades in track.
Two more dual lessons, and a couple dozen takeoffs and landings later, Tim flew his first solo gyro flight in N199TW. This solo was caught on video and some clips are available on the Internet at: http://www.quiknet.com/~twitham/gyro/solo/. Enclosed are some pictures from the video and a report from one of our two newest gyroplane pilots!
We have one more meeting this year on November 28th at the Nut Tree airport in Vacaville. Then there will be no meeting in December due to the holidays. I hear there's a tradition of flying on New Year's Day, so let's plan that at the meeting. Until then,
PRA Chapter 5 meetings are regularly scheduled for the 4th Sunday of the month at 1pm unless they need to be rescheduled. Upcoming events include:
PRA Chapter 5 Newsletters are also available on-line at:
http://www.quiknet.com/~twitham/gyro/pra5/Timothy D. Witham <twitham@quiknet.com> Last modified: Mon Nov 22 01:08:12 PST 1999