Someone is watching too much Mad Max and the Road Warrior

While the idea of getting your own AutoGyro is nice.  Most of them are only for one person.  The pilot.  And they are not as easy to fly as you might thing.  To get an AutoGyro for more than 1 person, you need a much more powerful engine and larger rotor blades.  In fact in the movie, the AutoGyro they used was only able to carry one person.  the shot they show of Max being taken back to the refinery was actually done in a helicopter, NOT the AutoGyro.

Dreams of Flight

Wouldn't it be great if you could leave work go up on the roof pull your personal craft out of it's storage locker, unfold it, start up it's motor and then take off and fly home?

Here is the military's version of that dream.

The Hiller Rotocycle

The initial thoughts were this could be dropped to downed pilots, put together without tools using pushpins, then start it up, hop in and fly up to 50 miles home at about 50-60 miles per hour.






To read a bit more about the trials and tribulations of the Hiller Rotocycle click over to An Engineer's Aspect.

Personally the fact that flying even an ordinary helicopter requires both feet and both hands in proper synchronicity, would make me leery of it.  It's very cool though.

Me personally.  I'd want a GyroCopter a.k.a. an Autogyro.

In a helicopter if the engine quits the rotors which provide your lift, stop.  In an Autogyro if the engine stops the rotors keep spinning.  You just start to lose altitude.  I posted a video of various factory types of Autogyros before but now I'm going to post some vids of other types of Autogyros.








How's this for short take off?











Now this one is very cool





Now it's not all smiles and sunshine.  This next video shows some crashes of Autogyros.



What say you?

Wouldn't you love to be able to fly anytime you want?