Gyroplane Crash Review- Behind the Power Curve

Paul Salmon, CFII discusses the risk of a crash if you are "Behind the Power Curve" at low level. We cover what actions can lead to the accident and how to recover/avoid it. We specifically review the video of a crash caused from getting "Behind the Power Curve"

[@grant8124]

I'm not a Gryo pilot, though, I used to fly gliders. It's all about lift and the lift acts at 90 degrees to the vertical; in a Gyro's case, in line with the rotor shaft. If the angle of the bank steepens the lift decreases pretty much at the same rate. As the gentleman says in this video, roll level and hold until the lift is re-established. Gliders are a little more forgiving because of the size of the 'rotor'/wing. That's my two cents worth.

[@lorendjones]

Good stuff, Paul. Great review of one of the major gotchas in gyroplanes.

[@pnachtwey]

The weight of the aircraft doesn't change. It is the direction of lift that changes. The vector of true lift pointing up decreases during the turn.

[@cameronlapworth2284]

One of the problems these days is ironically these modern machines. Yes they are reliable and they have sufficient power with two people but the mast is so far off the ground that a pre-rotator is necessary. That's not a bad thing in itself - although they are not as advertised other factors like axle position are far more important to take off distance. Also the loss of the humble gyro glider and clubs. You learn in a gyro glider hand starting your rotors in very controlled circumstances you will occasionally have someone hit the gas in the car too quick and you can experience mild blade flap and recover. You learn this way however and you will know how to wind up blades CORRECTLY.
This modern flapping avoidance by spinning the rotors to speed beyond the airspeed the rotors can sustain at forces pilots to very quickly advance to full throttle. This uses up excess strip while you chew up strip getting to an airspeed at which your rotors can advance and then you reach a speed at which the nose will lift. Because many of these machines are tandem the weight on the nose is pretty high too so the nose lifts closer to take off speed than on a traditional Bensen derivative. Now you are really ripping along your blades now suddenly are producing enormous lift and because your stick is full back they nose easily rises quickly to a very high position.
My direct drive VW with 22ft blades, marginal power and no pre-rotator was often getting off quicker than machines with powerful pre-rotators mainly because wheel balance allowed the nose to rise at 15mph and gently. Your movements then are gradually adding power and forward stick gently balancing. It was never a mad wrestling match you too often see with the current way most people fly off these modern machines. Forget behind the power curve these guys are beyond the SKILL curve. This is down to largely poor instruction.
These modern machines must be very overweight too and compensating with just shoving masses of power so massive high mast+massive prop all this complicates take off right? More torque effect on take off etc. Back to basics guys learn how the rotors wind up and progressively wind up.
Most guys need to taxi some distance to get to the end of the airstrip. Why the hell not do what we used to and wind up while taxiing? By the time you are at the end of the strip your blades are up to speed, what rpm - no idea because I was trained to look and see if they were ready in the glider. But you should advance slowly - you won't use much airstrip because you're going at a fast jog initially then just a little faster then the blades quickly accelerate and you can progress to higher power - GRADUALLY and in full control making only minor corrections so you get off flat every time. 3-5 hours and gyroglider doing a take off and landing every minute and you KNOW the correct attitude. Never saw a set of blades smashed at the club I learnt to fly and instruct at. This has poor instruction written all over it. In this day and age there is NO excuse for turning $100 000 machines into twisted metal NONE.
Want to see how you do it.
Turn off the sound horrible music no proper audio anyway.
th-cam.com/video/36ogAzGGyG4/w-d-xo.html
This was a mate of mine -passed a few years after this (not related to gyros). Steve here is taking off on the taxiway after hand winding in bugger all wind. Notice how slowly he is advancing? This does not use much runway. Yes there is a slight breeze but its not howling in still air he wouldn't be getting off that much slower he took off here often. Now show me one of these so called modern machines doing better in the same circumstances...Also note how little drama his take off is. Everyone trained at this club took off with that little drama. It was only latter while seeing other more poorly trained people that I saw dodgy takeoffs. I think this whole system that seems to have been accepted needs some looking into It smacks of dogma. I could be wrong but I think it might be possible to prewind to significantly lower initial rpm, then advance more progressively like this then get off in a more gentle fashion and avoid most of these accidents.

[@mikegoodrich1948]

Paul good video. I thought I understood that you were going to show us video of you taking off behind the power curve, did I misunderstand something?
Mie Goodrich

[@capecopters]

Coming soon, in the next day or two. I wanted to do some new footage for it

[@akscooby1]

@@capecopters Was wondering the same, will watch out for it