MT 05 Accident Witbank

[jacester]

I am reading this conversation with great interest. The one question in my mind is I am not so sure that Gyro's are fitted with the correct rotors. It seems to me that the flavour of the month is to have the rotor as short as possible. When I am buying my next Gyro I would certainly look at the longest rotor possible to fit. I use to fly a Sycamore with the 33 feet alluminium rotor on. All this talk above is something that I cannot even picture and to me it is a lot of theoretical nonsense and I never once experienced any problem even making me slightly uncomfortble. It just cannot happen with a proper rotor and I flew in weather that my fellow aviators were just shaking their heads. Also the heavy beast of a gyro cruising at 75 miles per hour burning 17l per hour at 4750 rpm an me wieghing ofer 110 kg. Imagine what the performance would be like on the new modern and lighter gyros?
Just wondering

[mak]

Jacester

I don't think the issue here is the rotors, but rather rotor management. I think everyone need to understand their rotor system ie rotor length, weight, inertia, pre-rotator etc (not to mention the external factors ie wind effect, etc) and manage their rotor accordingly. Even with your 33 feet rotor you can not expect to only pre-rotate to 100RPM and then apply full power and storm down the runway, or don't pull your stick back, or take off down wind and think just because you have a long rotor that you will be safe. All the different factors and limitations of each rotor and rotor systems must be considered and managed accordingly.

[jacester]

True, and I am obviously not expert enough to start getting in an argument here. It just seems to me that the bigger rotor is far more forgiving than the short rotors, but obviously that can only be verified by switching rotors which is not something anyone will do on their aircraft, it would have been an interesting test for me to see and possibly experience first hand especially here on the high veld.