Straight from Oskosh 2011
Germany’s AutoGyro enters U.S. marketStory and photo by MARINO BORIC
AutoGyro’s Cavalon makes its U.S. debut.
Just weeks after the unveiling of the AutoGyro’s two-seater at AERO 2011, the Cavalon debuted in the United States at Oshkosh this year. The German company has one of the most complete autogyro portfolios on the market, ranging from the classic open-tandem, two-seat MTOsport to the elegant and fully enclosed tandem Calidus, and now the fully enclosed, side-by-side Cavalon. Autogyro as a category is braving the general economic downturn and not only holding market share but also growing in popularity.
AutoGyro was established in 1999 and has already delivered more than 1,000 gyroplanes, manufactured at a rate of 10 per week in Hildesheim, Germany. According to Guido Scheidt and Tim Adelmann, CEO AutoGyro U.S., it is impossible to stall and spin the autogyro, and they report the machines have spectacular takeoff distances (10 to 70 yards) and can land almost like a helicopter. The ability to fly at extremely low speeds, easy ground handling and storage, plus low operational costs make these desirable recreational vehicles.
Currently, there is a strong interest worldwide in autogyros, especially from military operations and public safety departments. Since 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice has been operating an aviation technology program to evaluate low-cost aviation assets for law enforcement, and after initial interest in powered parachutes and fixed-wing airplanes, it’s now examining autogyros. The MTOsport has been in field evaluation since 2010.
AutoGyro manufactures and delivers ready-to-fly aircraft all over the world, but the U.S. market will be served initially with a kit version. Currently, ASTM standards for light-sport aircraft do not allow for ready-to-fly autogyros, but discussions between FAA and the LSA standards committee are ongoing.
Light Flight is good for Longevity!
Only recently did we hear of the passing of AutoGyro pioneer Johnny Miller aged over 100, Wing Commander Ken Wallis is still flying gyros at 93 and even the flexwing inventor made 97. Now tell me again why we can’t get insurance!
A pilot who was almost as old as powered aviation itself has died. John M. Miller was 102.
Miller, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died of natural causes on June 23. Miller was born on Dec. 15, 1905, and witnessed some of aviation’s most pivotal events such as when Charles A. Lindbergh took off for Paris on his historic Atlantic crossing. Miller counted Amelia Earhart as one of his acquaintances.
He uttered his last words to his nephew. “I guess my flying days are over,” reported the Poughkeepsie Journal.
Miller started flying when he was 18 and continued until he was 101. He was known as the oldest active pilot in the United States. Miller flew for the airlines, served as a test pilot for Kellett Autogiro Company, and was the founding director of the American Bonanza Society.
One of his most interesting jobs was flying the airmail off the roof of the downtown Philadelphia post office in an autogiro. Three of the airplanes Miller flew are on exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum.
Besides aviation, Miller was known for his healthy lifestyle. He never smoked or drank alcohol and maintained the same weight and blood pressure as when he was 18. For exercise, he took brisk walks up and down hills.
The Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register has posted a detailed biography of Miller’s life along with videos of the autogiro.
“He was a researcher at what is now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who dreamed of coming up with an affordable way for people to fly,” his daughter said.
At first, the agency was not interested in the idea, so Rogallo developed the lightweight wing at his Virginia home with his wife, Gertrude, a former schoolteacher and expert seamstress. They cut the first prototype from their old kitchen curtains and later tested models in makeshift wind tunnels in their basement.
By 1951, they had patented a flexible wing with fabric that spread into a fan shape with help from wind pressure. “Such a flexible wing does not exist in nature,” Rogallo told Invention & Technology magazine in 1998. “Even birds’ wings have bones and a rigid shape.”
With further development by others, the Rogallo wing transformed personal flight, beginning in the 1960s. “People were building their own wings from pictures in magazines. They were teaching themselves to fly,” said Mike Meier, president of the Hang Glider Manufacturers’ Assn. and a principal at Wills Wing Inc., a hang glider manufacturer in Orange. “Suddenly, here was this idea that people had dreamed about for thousands of years — to be able to fly like a bird with a personal set of wings,” Meier said. “All of a sudden, with a very simple apparatus, this was possible. It was rofound.”
Rogallo’s kite-like apparatus led not only to hang gliding, but to paragliding, ultralight flight and kite boarding, amongst other pursuits, according to the Rogallo Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 1992. “Without his invention, we may not have had personal flight for several more generations,” said John Harris, president of the foundation. “It made inexpensive flight possible for many, many people.”
Francis Melvin Rogallo, the second of four sons of Mathieu and Marie Rogallo, was born 27 January 1912, in Sanger, then a frontier town near Fresno. His Polish immigrant father ran a hotel there, but died when Francis was about 12. Rogallo had been captivated by flight since he was seven and saw his first plane, a barnstormer, fly over his town. Years later, he tried to join the military to become a pilot, but was rejected because he had lost part of a foot in a childhood accident. Instead, he attended Stanford University and studied mechanical engineering and aeronautics, graduating in 1935. A year later, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Virginia, the precursor to NASA. He oversaw aerodynamic research and airplane development and managed research for a low-speed air tunnel.
Rogallo also held patents on about 25 devices, which included wing controls, airfoils and target kites. For nearly a decade, Rogallo tried to interest the government and military aircraft builders in his wing design “but no one would seriously consider it as a man-carrying aircraft,” he told the Washington Post in 1978. A diminutive version of the wing made it to market in the 1950s in the form of a kite manufactured by a Connecticut company. After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the space race was on and NASA became interested in the Rogallo wing as a potential tool for bringing satellites back to Earth.
The Rogallos released their patent to the U.S. government so that it could be used for public good, according to the foundation and never profited from the wing’s future uses. NASA began a series of experiments and by 1960 made the first test flights of the ‘Fleep,’ conceived as a flying Jeep, powered by a small engine and the Rogallo wing for lift.
In a 1965 test, a Gemini capsule landed softly using the flexible wing, but NASA abandoned the approach in favour of standard parachutes and ocean recoveries.
Pioneers on at least two continents had seen pictures of the Rogallo wing and started putting together hang gliders despite admonitions, such as one in a 1961 issue of Popular Mechanics that warned: “Do not try to design or build one yourself.”
Rogallo retired in 1970 and chose to move near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where the Wright brothers pioneered powered, manned flight. He had once met Orville Wright, in 1939. About once a month, until his 80th birthday, Rogallo would drive five miles to Jockey’s Ridge State Park and fly his red-and-white hang glider. The only time he was ever hurt hang gliding, he later recalled, was when someone else crashed into him.
Aviation pioneer Johnny Miller dies at 102
By Nathan A. FergusonA pilot who was almost as old as powered aviation itself has died. John M. Miller was 102.
Miller, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., died of natural causes on June 23. Miller was born on Dec. 15, 1905, and witnessed some of aviation’s most pivotal events such as when Charles A. Lindbergh took off for Paris on his historic Atlantic crossing. Miller counted Amelia Earhart as one of his acquaintances.
He uttered his last words to his nephew. “I guess my flying days are over,” reported the Poughkeepsie Journal.
Miller started flying when he was 18 and continued until he was 101. He was known as the oldest active pilot in the United States. Miller flew for the airlines, served as a test pilot for Kellett Autogiro Company, and was the founding director of the American Bonanza Society.
One of his most interesting jobs was flying the airmail off the roof of the downtown Philadelphia post office in an autogiro. Three of the airplanes Miller flew are on exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum.
Besides aviation, Miller was known for his healthy lifestyle. He never smoked or drank alcohol and maintained the same weight and blood pressure as when he was 18. For exercise, he took brisk walks up and down hills.
The Davis-Monthan Aviation Field Register has posted a detailed biography of Miller’s life along with videos of the autogiro.
Obituary for Francis Rogallo
Francis Rogallo, an aeronautical engineer who was considered the father of modern hang gliding and other recreational sports for inventing a flexible wing in 1948, which revolutionised nonpowered flight, died at the age of 97 on 1 September of natural causes at his home in Southern Shores, North Carolina said Carol Sparks, his daughter.“He was a researcher at what is now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who dreamed of coming up with an affordable way for people to fly,” his daughter said.
At first, the agency was not interested in the idea, so Rogallo developed the lightweight wing at his Virginia home with his wife, Gertrude, a former schoolteacher and expert seamstress. They cut the first prototype from their old kitchen curtains and later tested models in makeshift wind tunnels in their basement.
By 1951, they had patented a flexible wing with fabric that spread into a fan shape with help from wind pressure. “Such a flexible wing does not exist in nature,” Rogallo told Invention & Technology magazine in 1998. “Even birds’ wings have bones and a rigid shape.”
With further development by others, the Rogallo wing transformed personal flight, beginning in the 1960s. “People were building their own wings from pictures in magazines. They were teaching themselves to fly,” said Mike Meier, president of the Hang Glider Manufacturers’ Assn. and a principal at Wills Wing Inc., a hang glider manufacturer in Orange. “Suddenly, here was this idea that people had dreamed about for thousands of years — to be able to fly like a bird with a personal set of wings,” Meier said. “All of a sudden, with a very simple apparatus, this was possible. It was rofound.”
Rogallo’s kite-like apparatus led not only to hang gliding, but to paragliding, ultralight flight and kite boarding, amongst other pursuits, according to the Rogallo Foundation, a non-profit organisation founded in 1992. “Without his invention, we may not have had personal flight for several more generations,” said John Harris, president of the foundation. “It made inexpensive flight possible for many, many people.”
Francis Melvin Rogallo, the second of four sons of Mathieu and Marie Rogallo, was born 27 January 1912, in Sanger, then a frontier town near Fresno. His Polish immigrant father ran a hotel there, but died when Francis was about 12. Rogallo had been captivated by flight since he was seven and saw his first plane, a barnstormer, fly over his town. Years later, he tried to join the military to become a pilot, but was rejected because he had lost part of a foot in a childhood accident. Instead, he attended Stanford University and studied mechanical engineering and aeronautics, graduating in 1935. A year later, he joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Virginia, the precursor to NASA. He oversaw aerodynamic research and airplane development and managed research for a low-speed air tunnel.
Rogallo also held patents on about 25 devices, which included wing controls, airfoils and target kites. For nearly a decade, Rogallo tried to interest the government and military aircraft builders in his wing design “but no one would seriously consider it as a man-carrying aircraft,” he told the Washington Post in 1978. A diminutive version of the wing made it to market in the 1950s in the form of a kite manufactured by a Connecticut company. After the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957, the space race was on and NASA became interested in the Rogallo wing as a potential tool for bringing satellites back to Earth.
The Rogallos released their patent to the U.S. government so that it could be used for public good, according to the foundation and never profited from the wing’s future uses. NASA began a series of experiments and by 1960 made the first test flights of the ‘Fleep,’ conceived as a flying Jeep, powered by a small engine and the Rogallo wing for lift.
In a 1965 test, a Gemini capsule landed softly using the flexible wing, but NASA abandoned the approach in favour of standard parachutes and ocean recoveries.
Pioneers on at least two continents had seen pictures of the Rogallo wing and started putting together hang gliders despite admonitions, such as one in a 1961 issue of Popular Mechanics that warned: “Do not try to design or build one yourself.”
Rogallo retired in 1970 and chose to move near Kitty Hawk, N.C., where the Wright brothers pioneered powered, manned flight. He had once met Orville Wright, in 1939. About once a month, until his 80th birthday, Rogallo would drive five miles to Jockey’s Ridge State Park and fly his red-and-white hang glider. The only time he was ever hurt hang gliding, he later recalled, was when someone else crashed into him.
