THE AIRWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 836, 3 December 1929, Page 14

THE AIRWAY

(By

THE ROC.?

Genesis of Autogyro Plane

AS yet the autogyro lias not been seen in flight in New Zealand. But this is the plane which has the ability to fly at a stalling speed, to land without a run and to take off in comparatively restricted space. With such advantages over the present-day conventional type of airplane and the rapid progress it is making, there is indeed a sound indication that it is the machine of the future for the private owner.

When a man spends a considerable amount ot money in purchasing an airplane only to see it crack-up through some unforeseen defect or through a misjudged landing, he naturally becomes much disgusted and would like to cast about for some other method or rising above the earth which will not mean death or disaster. it, was with this in view that Senor Juan de la Cierva. one of the more sporting members of the Parliament of Spain, built the first autogyro—the plane which has auxiliary windmill vanes which rotate in flight. It was in 1920 that Cierva conceived the giro principle and in 1923 he flew the first of his machines. It was simple and flimsy but made a success-

ful trial. Since then this tyj>e of plane has made much advancement. Its greatest feature is perhaps the biplane tail. There are two horizontal stabilisers; the upper one moveable as an elevator and the lower one fixed. A vertical stabiliser and rudder are at each end of the biplane. One of the difficulties of the past was to get the vanes of the rotor revolving, and for this it was necessary to taxi the plane up and down the Held, hut now it is only necessary for the pilot, to elevate the top tail plane and the propeller wash is deflected upward, turning the vanes. “I have only to sit still, with my foot on the landing gear brakes, until they are going fast enough. Then zoop?” said Cierva, in one of his lectures. PREDICTS BACK YARD USE "Soon, every man In the suburbs who has thirty square yards of land will be able to fly his own autogyro. You have seen me put it down on the earth wherever I want it. and you have observed that it remains there. When they are manufactured In large quantities they will cost no more than a moderate priced automobile and any man who can drive an automobile through city streets wil he able to learn to fly. In a giro one may fly as low as five feet with perfect safety, picking out the spot where he chooses to land,” continued Cierva. The latest two-seater gyro marketed is powered with a Genet-Mayor 100 h.p. engine. It was built at the A. V. Rose works in England. The fuselage of the giro is about fifteen feet long.

Tile tapered -wings turn up at tile ends for about two feet at an angle of 70 degrees. The ailerons run the length of the wings. The rotor, or windmill, is mounted in a four-legged spider over the fuselage. Its blades, on this machine, are of hardwood and are fifteen feet long. They are braced from an axis and kept at right angles to each other by cords of cable. These vanes make about 130 revolutions a minute at top speed. TOP SPEED SET AT 95 MILES The gyro has a maximum speed of ninety-five miles an hour, throttling down to a forward speed of nothing. Of course, when the forward speed is stopped downward motion begins.

The drop is at the rate of thirteen feet per second. In landing, the pilot elevates his tail when about to touch the ground. The nose of :he ship pulls up, the tail skid touches the earth and the wheels of the gear follow. There is no roll. The inventor says the man who has learned to fly a plane can run his machine after seven or eight hours’ instruction. PILOTLESS AIRPLANES SUCCESSFUL TESTS MADE In a fresh series of secret experiments with pilotless airplanes, the French air authorities are achieving astonishing results. It has become" known, on reliable authority, that a specially-designed bomb-carri'ing aircraft was sent up recently from a remotely-situated French airdrome, with no crew on board (writes the air correspondent of the London “Daily Chronicle”). The machine was guided through the air by wireless to a previously-indicated destination some distance away, and its load of bombs made to fall. The plane then turned, under the same seemingly magic agency, and flew back to its base. These experiments are the outcome of ten years’ research, and the automatic apparatus now installed in the plane is as efficient as a human pilot. The stability of the machine in the air is ensured by a gyroscopic mechanism, which controls the elevators and lateral balancing planes.