What is a Gyroplane?

"Gyroplane" is an official term designated by the Federal Aviation Administration

(FAA) describing an aircraft that gets lift from a freely turning rotary wing, or rotor
blades, and which derives its thrust from an engine-driven propeller. Historically, this
type of aircraft has been known as the autogiro and the gyrocopter. These early
names and their variants were filed as trademarks.

Gyroplanes derive lift from freely turning rotor blades tilted back to catch the air. The
rushing air spins the rotor as the aircraft is thrust forward by an engine-driven
propeller. Early gyroplanes were powered by engines in a tractor (pulling)
configuration and were relatively heavy. Modern gyroplanes use a pusher propeller
and are light and maneuverable. With the engine in the rear, the gyroplane has
unobstructed visibility.

Gyroplane - Helicopter Comparison

The Gyroplane

• Thrust is produced by an engine-driven propeller

• The unpowered, freely turning rotor is tilted back as the gyroplane moves
forward
• Oncoming airflow through the rotor causes it to spin, producing lift. This is
called autorotation.
• Always operates in autorotation, thus:
• Cannot stall like fixed wing aircraft
• Flies safely at low altitudes and low speeds, but cannot hover
• No need for heavy main rotor transmission nor a tail rotor
The Helicopter

• The powered rotor produces both lift and thrust, and is tilted forward
• Can hover, but a powered rotor requires:
• Adequate forward speed and/or altitude to maintain flight in case of power
failure
• A heavy main transmission
• Tail rotor to counteract the torque imposed on the aircraft

A Gyroplane can fly more slowly than airplanes and will not stall. They can fly faster
than helicopters but cannot hover. Since the rotor blades on the gyroplane are
powered only by the air (autorotation), much like a windmill, there is no need for a
tail rotor for anti-torque. The gyroplane is a stable flying platform. This is not so with
helicopters, which pull the air down through engine-powered rotor blades making it
possible to hover, but also making the aircraft very complicated and expensive to fly.
Due to their inherent simplicity, gyroplanes are easier to operate and less expensive
to maintain than helicopters.

Design Simplicity

The simplicity of a gyroplane's design translates directly into safety, higher

performance, higher mission readiness, lower maintenance, and more economical
operation for its operator.
Gyroplanes in flight are always in autorotation. If power fails in a gyroplane the
autorotation continues, and the aircraft settles softly to the ground from any altitude.
The procedure to land after a power failure is nearly the same procedure as a normal
landing, which requires no landing roll. Thus the gyroplane is a safer aircraft for low
and slow flight, as compared with both helicopters and airplanes. The ability of
gyroplanes to fly faster than helicopters and slower than airplanes makes it
something of a hybrid, having the good qualities of the other two types of aircraft
with little of the bad.

The single attraction of helicopters over gyroplanes is their ability to hover, which is
necessary in some situations such as rescue or in sling load work. In air surveillance
and point-to-point flying, not being able to hover is not a disadvantage because
many gyroplanes, such as the Groen Brothers Hawks, take off and land vertically
without having to hover. Helicopters at low altitude out of ground effect avoid
hovering whenever possible. It is too dangerous. To fix surveillance on one spot,
proper procedure for all rotorcraft is to circle in a slow orbit.

History of Gyroplanes

Excerpt From

Autogiro to Gyroplane: 1923 - 2003

Dr. Bruce H. Charnov Ph.D. J.D.

Hofstra University

Juan de la Cierva was born in Murcia, Spain on September 21, 1895, and by 1908-9,
had decided to make aviation his career. In 1911 he enrolled at the Civil Engineering
College of Madrid (Caminos, Canales y Puertos) and in 1912 with his friends "Pepe"
Barcala and Pablo Diaz constructed the first Spanish airplane, the BCD-I, known as
"EI Cangrejo" - the "Red Crab", becoming the "Father of Spanish Aviation."

In 1919 Cierva produced a large three-engine bomber that, piloted by Captain Julio
Rios Argiieso, crashed in its initial flight when the aircraft stalled. Pondering the
crash, Cierva's brilliant insight was to see the wing differently ---aircraft stalled when
the air passing over the wing failed to generate enough lift at slow speed - he
reasoned that stall could be effectively eliminated if the wing itself moved
independently of the aircraft. The rotor, a moving, stall-proof wing, was placed on
top of a fuselage. He patented the name" Autogiro" and it flew by autorotation, "the
process of producing lift with freely-rotating aerofoils by means of the aerodynamic
forces resulting from an upward flow of air." As long as the Autogiro was propelled
forward, air coming up through the rotor would generate lift, and should the
Autogiro's motor fail, it would gently descend while air flow upward through the rotor
blades.

Between 1920 - 23 Cierva progressively developed autorotation in the C.1, C.2 and
C.3, but it would be his forth model that would finally conqueror the air. Cierva
stated that the first flight of his CA Autogiro was on January 9, 1923 at Getafe
airfield outside Madrid when ( Calvary) Lieutenant Alejandro G6mez Spencer guided
the craft in taxi tests during which the craft became airborne. But most historians
 maintain that the first observed (and filmed) flight of C.4 took
place on January 17, 1923 when G6mez Spencer flew 600 ft
at a steady height of 13 ft across the field. Transferring
operations to England in 1925 and forming Cierva Autogiro
Ltd. on March 24,1926 with prominent Scottish industrialist
James G. Weir, his brother Viscount William Weir of Eastwood
and Sir Robert M. Kindersley, Cierva continued to improve the
Autogiro and in early 1929 licensed the technology and rights
to his patents to Harold Frederick Pitcairn of Bryn Athyn, P A.

The youngest son of John Pitcairn, co-founder of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company,
Harold was born in 1897 and took an early interest in aviation. Inspired by the first
flight of the Wright brothers in 1903, he began flight training as an air cadet in the
last days of WWI, and would eventually earn a pilot's license signed by Orville
Wright. Pitcairn and Agnew Larsen, who he had met in pilot training, produced the
classic Mailwing airmail series, but it was the Autogiro that fired their passion. In
1928 Pitcairn ordered a Cierva C.8W (the W was for the American Wright Whirlwind
engine), which arrived at Pitcairn Field, Willow Grove, PA and on December 18, 1928
made the first rotary-wing flight in America piloted by Cierva pilot H. C. A. "Dizzy"
Rawson, followed the next day by Pitcairn.

In early 1929, Cierva and Pitcairn negotiators agreed that the Pitcairn-Cierva
Autogiro Company (PCA) would be formed in America with the rights to license
Cierva's patents. Pitcairn threw himself into the development and promotion of the
Autogiro - and the results of the next 16 months would
earnhim and his associates the Collier Trophy for the
greatest aviation achievement for 1930. Pitcairn had refined
Autogiro development, first learning from the C8W (which
was presented to the Smithsonian on July 22, 1931), then
with a series of developmental aircraft, the PCA-I, 1A and lB.
(The PCA-1A is currently exhibited at the American
Helicopter Museum & Education Center at the Brandywine
Airport, West Chester, PA on loan from the Smithsonian). But
it was the next aircraft, the PCA-2, that captivated America. An original design the
PCA-2 was seen over major American cities in late 1930-early 1931 in its certification
flights to much publicity and acclaim. It innovated with a clutched gearbox that
briefly transmitted power to prerotate the rotor to greatly shorten the takeoff run. It
would prove a crucial contribution to Autogiro development.

Cierva developed progressively more sophisticated designs with a means to tilt the
rotor head and altering the pitch (angle) of each individual rotor blade, called
collective and cyclic control, and, making use of Pitcairn's prerotator, achieved a
"jump takeoff" capacity with the C19MkIV in
1931-32 The rotor would be spun up at zero
pitch and then "snapped" into a positive angle,
causing the aircraft to "jump" into air, an
ability developed by Pitcairn the next year in
the developmental PA-22 Autogiro. But both
inventors realized that this was only a partial
step in realizing the Autogiro's potential, for a
significant problem remained. Even though the
Autogiro could takeoff and land vertically, the
wing-based control surfaces lost effectiveness at slow landing speeds. Cierva's C30
series and Pitcairn's PA-22 and Luscombe-built aluminum body PA-36, and the KD-1
series constructed by Kellett Autogiro Company of Philadelphia were engineering
marvels capable of jump take-offs and direct-control without wings. But this came
too late to save the Autogiro, for the world's attention was riveted on the stunning
indoor demonstrations of the Focke-Achgelis Fa-61 helicopter by Hanna Reitsch in
1938.

Cierva died in the crash of a KLM DC-2 bound

for Amsterdam from the airport at Croydon
Aerodrome, London on December 9, 1936.
Stripped of his passion, the Cierva Autogiro
Company, under the engineering leadership of
Dr. J.A.J. Bennett, would shift the focus of its
efforts towards developing a helicopter; and
even though Cierva-licensed Autogiros would be
used by the British, French, Russian and
Japanese forces, the Autogiro would all but
disappear by the end of WWII. Few would know
or remember that it was the English Cierva Rota C.30A Autogiros that would daily
calibrate the coastal radars that enabled the RAF to defeat the German Luftwaffe and
win the Battle of Britain. The Japanese Kellett-licensed Kayaba Ka-1A Autogiro series
had virtually no impact on the war and the Russian TsAGI A7 Autogyro (not built
under a Cierva license, hence not an Augtogiro), the first such aircraft specifically
constructed for combat operations, faded before the might of the German onslaught
as did the French aircraft built by Liore-et-Oliver and SNCASE.

Almost no one remembers the obscure British Armed Forces Experimental

Establishment Malcolm Rotaplane or Rotabuggy, a modified Willys 1/4 ton "four-by-
four" military truck with a seesaw "teetering" rotor and attached aircraft control
surfaces. Perhaps the most ungainly flying craft ever, it was towed successfully to
1,700 ft. And even less well-known was "Project Skywards", a parallel wartime
attempt in Australia to develop a flying jeep ("Fleep").

The most familiar of the WWII autorotational

developments were, paradoxically, the most
insubstantial, the English and German rotary kites.
The Focke-Achgelis FA-330, launched from German
submarines at the end of a 400 ft tether to increase
target observation, is found in more museums than
any other comparable craft only because the Allies
captured the factory, but few of the 1943 English
Rotachutes designed by Raoul Hafner survive, a one-
person giro-glider designed to insert secret agents
into occupied Europe from airplanes with a precision
gained from use of a two-bladed teetering rotorhead that could be controlled by
means of a hanging-stick control.

And so by the end of WWII the Autogiro had effectively disappeared. Pitcairn had
surrendered his airfield to the military for wartime use and had the prototype PA-36
aluminum bodies cut up for scrape to aid the war effort. Kellett had renamed itself
the Kellett Aircraft Company and what was left of Pitcairn's manufacturing company,
becoming briefly the Firestone Glider & Autogiro Company, was effectively out of the
business. The other American licensee, the Buhl Aircraft Company, had developed a
single model but failed to survive the Depression. And the attempts by Philadelphia’s
E. Burke Wilford, making use of patents of Germans Walter Rieseler and Walter
Kreiser (rigid rotors with control achieved by means of cyclic pitch variation) had not
gained engineering acceptance. And perhaps the most intriguing autorotational
experiments, the pioneering convertiplane combination of a gyroplane and fixed-wing
aircraft of Gerard P. Herrick ended in 1942, but not before successful mid-air
conversions by test pilot George Townson in 1937 (that aircraft, the Herrick HV-2A is
stored at the Paul Garber Center, Silver Hill, MD). In 1945 Dick Haymes may have
crooned to Helen Forrest in I'll Buy That Dream that "we can honeymoon in Cairo in
our brand new Autogiro" but there were no new Autogiros - it seemed certain that
Cierva's vision would merely be a minor footnote to helicopter development, but it
did survive -- it came down to a single Rotachute and a Russian immigrant - Igor
Bensen. Although Harris Woods would design and fly a giro-glider in 1945, a
development unknown to Bensen and forgotten by history, the popular future of
autorotation lay with the charismatic, passionate Russian!

Igor Bensen, born in 1917, was the son of a Russian agricultural scientist, Basil
Mitrophan and Alexandra P. Bensen. His father was posted to Czechoslovakia in 1917
at the beginning of the Russian Revolution while the rest of the family remained
behind. The Russian civil war lead to harsh times, and the Bensen family was soon
reunited in Prague, far from the turmoil. At 17 Bensen was sent to the University of
Louvain in Belgium, from which he received a B.S. degree.

Bensen accepted a scholarship from the Stevens Institute in New Jersey in 1937 to
study mechanical engineering, graduating with honors in 1940. As an alien Bensen
had been forced to turn down a job offer to work for Igor Sikorsky, and his first job
was as an engineer with General Electric at the age of 23. General Electric executives
took notice of Bensen's interest and assigned the young engineer to the company's
helicopter development efforts.

While working on the project, Bensen flew a salvaged Kellett XR-3 in 1943, and
eventually gained almost exclusive use of the surplus Autogiro. Bensen became a
highly skilled Autogiro pilot, and gained a deep understanding of the dynamics and
theory of autorotational flight. The USAAF had received some of the recovered FA-
330 rotary kites and were experimenting with pilot George Townson, as well as a
Hafner Rotachute and Bensen asked his boss to acquire the Rotachute for evaluation.
The military agreed to loan the Rotachute providing that General Electric agreed not
to fly it.

Bensen ignored the military's requirements and personally flew the Rotchute in tow,
and launched it from the bomb rack of the XR-3. Those tests

lead to the Bensen B-1, an amateur-built 120 Ib giro-glider capable of carrying a 300
Ib load, differing from thee Rotachute with the addition of nose and tail wheels, a
semi-rigid rotor in place of the Rotachute's individual flapping rotor blades, and a
control stick 'reverser' to allow more effective direct-control of the rotor. The crash of
the B-1 led directly to the B-2 which was of an all-metal construction. The B-2 lead
to the G-E Gyro-Glider in November, 1946 but little came of the G-E model. And
subsequently in Schenectady, the Helicraft Equipment Company developed a 60 Ib
variant of the Rotachute called the Heli-glider in 1949. An extremely simple design
that flew with a 14 ft rotor that achieved 550 rpm, the lack of weight made it difficult
to fly with an overhead stick control, and the project was soon abandoned.

Benson, now firmly committed to rotary flight development, joined Kaman Aircraft in
1951 where he organized and directed the research department and flew Air Force
and Navy helicopters. After two years, borrowing money from his brother, Bensen
left to found his own company in Raleigh, NC.

In 1953 Bensen Aircraft Corporation introduced the B-5 Gyro-Glider, a single-seat

rotary--kite towed in back of a vehicle and deriving its lift from an unpowered rotor.
It featured a light tubular aluminum frame resembling a cross with two pieces, a
longer keel crossed by a shorter perpendicular section. A lightweight aluminum-
frame web set was attached to both the keel and a reinforced metal mast extending
upward from the keel. Control was initially achieved with a hanging stick control
attached directly to the rotor hub that was positioned on top of the mast with a two-
blade rotor. A nose wheel was attached directly to the front of the keel while landing
wheels were affixed to each end of the perpendicular crosspiece. The keel, in back of
he seat and mast, carried a plywood fin and rudder much as had the Rotachute. It
flew well when towed by even a small automobile and did not require any license,
and was relatively safe. It was also
distinguished by ease of construction and
the builder could either purchase a kit or
build from plans. The materials were readily
obtained and fabrication could be completed
by the moderately skilled in 3-4 weeks. It
would become the home-built B-6, and the
prototype was accepted into the
Smithsonian's NASM on July 22, 1965.

Bensen subsequently developed a Reynolds

aluminum prototype, the B-7 Gyro-gilder which flew on June 17, 1955. From B-7
.came the B-7M (for motorized) which first flew on December 6,1955 with Bensen as
pilot and Charles "Charlie" Elrod and Tim Johnson as ground crew. It weighed 188 lb.
as the airframe was made of rounded aluminum tubing and had a wooden propeller
attached to a 42 hp Nelson two-stroke engine, with the wooden rotor attached to a
spindle type tilting head cyclic pitch rotor with a hanging control stick. Bensen called
his Rotachute-derived creation a Gyrocopter, a term he subsequently trademarked.
After three days of successful flight testing the B-7M crashed as its pressurized fuel
tank failed. Bensen, a highly experienced Autogiro pilot, set the aircraft down in
woods adjacent to his NC factory. He later ascribed the safe landing to "much luck
and the good Lord's will." The B-7M, rebuilt in three days, was flying by December
17, 1955, a particularly moving experience for Benson as that was the 52nd
anniversary of the Wright brothers first powered flight.. Ever aeronautical engineer
and pragmatic scientist, Bensen relentlessly analyzed the flight performance of the
B-7M, particularly those factors that had led to the accident, and the result was an
improved control linkage to the rotor head.
The subsequent B-8M model, incorporating the improvements developed and tested
in the B-7M, powered by a more powerful 72 hp McCulloch two-stroke piston engine
that had been used on drones for the military, was placed into production in 1957
and became the most produced and copied
aircraft design in history and provided, in kit
form and plan-built, the most popular way to
fly. The "Spirit of Kitty Hawk", a B-8M
Gyrocopter in which Bensen had personally
duplicated the Wright brothers historic first
flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1966,
and with which he had set twelve world and
national Gyrocopter speed, distance and
altitude records between May 1967 and June
1968, was accepted into the Smithsonian
Institution aviation collection on May 14,
1969. The Bensen, and its variants and local
adaptation was to dominate the American
Gyrocopter movement for almost twenty-five
years.

In Europe, however, it was a different story. England's Wing Commander Kenneth H.

Wallis, Scotland's Jim Montgomerie in and Finland's Jukka Tervamaki began with
Bensen kits or plans, but soon modified the design,
taking gyrocopter design into some very un-Bensen-
like directions. Wallis, who would achieve
international fame with "Little Nellie", a WA-116
autogyro, in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live
Twice, remains an honored pilot, world record holder
and designer, while Tervamaki did pioneering work
with composite materials (fuselage and rotor blades)
and was the most significant influence on Italy's
premier designer/ manufacturer Vittorio Magni.
 But all mid-century-on attempts to revive the
Autogiro failed - in 1959-60 Kellett attempted
bring its aircraft back for agricultural uses to no
avail, and the Pitcairn license of its 1936 AC-35
"Rotadable" Autogiro, capable of driving down
the highway at 25-30 mph (stored today at the
NASM Paul Garber facility) by Indiana's Skyway
Engineering got no further than a prototype in
the early 1960s. The most ambitious realization
of Cierva's vision, the Fairey Rotodye produced
under the initial
direction of Dr.
J.A.J. Bennett
and Captain A.
Graham Forsyth, flew between 1957 -1962 until
cancelled by the British government in its
"rationalization of the helicopter industry". The
Rotodyne, a
convertiplane
making use of four 50 ft steel jet-tipped rotors,
could take off and land as a helicopter and fly as a
gyroplane carrying 42 persons at 200 mph - in 1957
with a perfect safety record. In order to conceal the
amount of its funding, the only model was ordered
destroyed by the British government and all that
remains of this incredible aircraft are a few parts in
a museum, photographs and films - had it gone into
production and the USMC pursued its interest, the
military might have acquired an effective vertical/
fixed-wing combination that even now remains unrealized. And the Kamov Ka-22
(The "Russian Rotodyne"), known in the Soviet Union as the Vintokrulya (Vintokryl)
("Screw Wing"), and dubbed "Hoop" by NATO, also failed to gain government
acceptance after several crashes. And the Umbaugh (later Air & Space) 18A, Avian
2/180 and McCulloch J-2 2/3 place gyroplanes failed to achieve commercial
acceptance despite technical sophistication and the enthusiastic belief of their
backers that the world needed a gyroplane. In general, all that remained of Cierva
and Pitcairn's autorotational vision were the thousands of amateur-built Gyrocopters
and their variants.

Bensen and his associates would in 1962 found the Popular Rotorcraft Association
(PRA), which even today remains the world's preeminent Autogiro / auto gyro /
Gyrocopter / gyroplane organization. Bensen declared in 1970 somewhat unfairly
that Ken Brock had so modified the design that it could not no longer be called a
Gyrocopter - Brock then called his KB2 a "gyroplane." Under Brock's presidency of
the PRA (1972 -1987) gyroplane design flourished. The most notable of the new
designers was Californian Martin Hollmann. His major contributions include the
Sportster, the world's first successful two-seat amateur-built gyroplane trainer in
1972, and the first "ultralight" gyro plane, the "Bumble Bee", in 1983. Also
significant was Bill Parsons two-seat Trainer, a Bensen B-8M with a longer keel to
accommodate a second seat, dual controls and a rotor head attached by an upside-
down "u" shaped tandem double mast. But it was only at the start of a new century
that the Autogiro was to become the gyroplane.
Groen Brothers Aviation, headed by brothers David and Jay Groen, has developed a
family of larger Hawk 4 gyroplanes targeted to the agricultural, law enforcement,
package delivery and passenger shuttle service markets. Time magazine, in its
November 19, 2001 issue, named the Hawk 4 as one of the best "Inventions of the
Year."

The Utah Olympic Public Safety Command

(UOPSC) made use of a Hawk 4 during the 2002
Olympics with a FLIR Systems, Inc. day / night
observation system, a Spectrolab Inc. SX-5
search light, an Avalex Technologies flat panel
display, a Broadcast Microwave Services
realtime video downlink system and a law
enforcement communications radio stack. GBA
had succeeded in defining a reconnaissance
mission where Cierva, Pitcairn, Kellett, the
French, English, Germans, Russians, Japanese
and even Ken Wallis had failed. Given the
enthusiastic reception of the Hawk series of
gyroplanes, the business acumen of the Groen brothers and their associates, it is
likely that they will be successful and the Autogiro, in its newest gyroplane
configurations, will achieve an acceptance that has been elusive since the PCA-2 and
C.30A flew over American and European skies.

Groen Brothers Aviation extends their gratitude to

Dr. Bruce H. Charnov for permission to share

the proceeding excerpt from his informative

book “From Autogiro to Gyroplane.”