Below is an unedited account of Ron Awads first test flight in Barry Kropelin's Gyrobee. Ron has over 300 hours in gyros and pilots a Dominator - which means he knows how a gyro should fly! The photo above was taken on the second day of test flights with the wind blowing at about 20 mph!

Got out to the airport this late morning and met Barry and his son Nick. They had the engine bolted back on - we had it off to replace the points in the ignition. They also had the rotorhead installed in the new cheek plates Barry made. We had to fiddle with and adjust the controls under the seat since at full forward stick the fork was hitting the seat bracing and not allowing the rotorhead to hit the forward stop. After we got everything tightened and safety wired down we hoisted it off the ground and did another round of hang tests. Got 10 degrees nose down both with fuel and without. Perfect!

So we took her out of the hangar and test fired the engine and ran it to check for problems. The engine was only making it to 5800-5900 Rpm so we repitched the prop. After two tries we got the engine to pull a steady 6500 Rpm static and were very happy.

So then it was time to beat the air up...... I wanted to first just taxi with the blades tied to check for steering and to see how it would handle. I made it about 1000 feet down the runway and turned around, it was a sweetheart on the ground. So then I got her parked in the grass facing into the wind and cut off the engine and got out and took off the blade strap.

I then got up on the seat and holding the stick slightly forwards with my foot I started the blades by hand - no Pre rotator on this machine!! - I didn't have to work too hard as the wind and my patting got the blades going quick! I got back down into the seat and buckled up, and reached for the pull starter and fired it up. I slowly made my way up onto the runway and slowly taxied building RRPM slowly, but because of the wind we had within 300-400 feet she was back on the tailwheel and it was time to give her some gas and go! Lift off happened at about 500 feet down the runway and I brought her up to about 5 feet and flew to the end of the runway and set her back down. Everything seemed great, plenty of power, ZERO stick shake and the controls seemed fairly centered.

The touch down and takeoff are slightly tricky, when on the nose wheel it tracks nice and straight with minimum rudder inputs, but once the nose wheel is off the ground the rudder inputs needed to keep her straight are much more, so if you allow the nose wheel to touch down while holding all this rudder input the gyro will kinda dart off one way or the other.

So I then slowly taxied back calming my nerves and got set up for crow hop #2. I never cut off the engine or had to pat up the blades as they were still spinning from the back taxi. I just slowly rolled back down the runway into the wind and in a unbelievably short distance I was back in the air again.

I know the wind today makes a big difference but for some reason I was able to get airborne with no Pre Rotator in less distance than I could get my Red Dominator off the ground with the same winds and with a 200 RRPM pre rotator......

So anyway I am off for the second crow hop, but mid way down the runway I just decided this gyro is flying too darn good to stop now, so added full power and up I went! I climbed to about 500 feet and made a few rounds in the pattern and found the gyro flys very nicely. Feet on or off the pedals, no problem. Cruise speed is around 45-50 Mph at around 5700 Rpm on the little Rotax 447 with my fat butt in the seat. I can't fly it hands off since we have no trim springs on it yet, I did relax back pressure a little and then speed built up rapidly. I am afraid to see how fast it would go now with no trim If I let go of the stick. ZERO stick shake, as in none..... I even looked up at the upper mast and rotorhead while flying and very little movement at all.

So anyhow I ended up with over a hour and a half on the Hobbs today, some of that time was ground running though. flew real good, much better than I expected and the little Rotax was more than enough power which I found a big surprise.

Only problems I see is we need a trim spring on it, the nose wheel may need some fiddle time to make it less twitchy as it comes down from balancing on the mains - although it wasn't bad at all and no worse than several gyros I have flown that have been flown for years like they are - and last the CHTs on one cylinder maxed out over 500 degrees at full power on climbout, the other cylinder was not much cooler. In level flight at cruise speed and Rpm it slowly falls back to the mid 400's. We are not sure why the hot temps, and have no EGT to check mixture, so this will be the hard thing to fix. Other than that it flew good and I am proud to say Barry did a fine job building this machine!