The east end of the sod runway at Bergeon Field, outside Mason. Picture shot from the Gyrobee using a hand-held, point-and-shoot, 35 mm camera.

If you are a gyro-watcher, the Gyrobee can be a pretty elusive bird. 90% of the time it is based at Bergeon Field, a beautiful 2500-foot grass strip, located about three miles west of Mason, Michigan. With very light fixed-wing traffic to contend with, we enjoy relaxed recreational flying over some very pretty central Michigan farm country. There are a lot of hot-air balloons most nice evenings as well as the occasional fixed-wing ultralight or powered parachute.

We do, however, have a pretty standard range of summer events we like to attend with the Gyrobee, most of which are within easy flying distance. Some of these for the 1998 summer season are illustrated below, along with events that are coming up and for which pictures will be added as the season progresses.

Mason has a very active EAA Chapter (#55) that hosts Mason Aviation Days each year at Jewitt Field, the county airport just south of town. This is a two-day event, which fell on the weekend prior to Mentone this year. Sunday is the "big day", with a Dawn Patrol fly-in/breakfast in the morning and a nice air-show in the afternoon. Since the Gyrobee is a pretty well-known aircraft in our area, we are invited to participate in the show whenever our schedule permits. This year, the Yankee Air Force, based in Willow Run, Michigan, flew-in three immaculately reconstructed war-birds - a B17 Flying Fortress, a B25 Mitchell, and a C47 Dakota.

I flew the Gyrobee over from Bergeon about 7AM to catch the very fine breakfast. The airport was very quiet at the time, with a little fog in the low spots as I entered the pattern. The view below was, with those three magnificent aircraft, like a trip back in time to an English aerodrome during the war years!

We kept the Gyrobee on static display throughout the morning and early afternoon and hung around to answer questions from prospective home-builders and gyronauts. All this time, the B17, the crown jewel of the Yankee Airforce display, was in a roped-off area so that it could be toured by paying customers. We decided it would really be fun to get a picture of the Gyrobee with this rare war-bird. The B17 crew, most of whom had served on B17s during the war, thought it was a great idea. We were able to wheel the Gyrobee into the cordoned-off area and a neighbor, Maggie Knust, snapped the picture shown above.

I served as narrator while Don flew the air-show routine and then departed for home. All in all, a memorable day!

With less than a week to go until Mentone, we experienced a crisis with our trailer that made it unlikely that we would be able to bring the Gyrobee. Jim Fields and the GyroTech crew, the creators of the new Honeybee ultralight gyro, saved the day by offering to take the Gyrobee down and back on their trailer, despite the fact that it would mean extra trips both ways!

The Honeybee and the Gyrobee were the only Bees on hand. A number of builders felt their projects were not quite far enough along, but, seeing some of the other partial aircraft on the field, many ended up wishing they had trailered in!

Lot's of Bee-builders were on hand to take notes, pictures, and shoot video, not to mention many who had seen the aircraft here on the Net but wanted to see it "live". The electric prerotator caught lots of attention and got many pilots thinking about ways they could do something similar.

Main engine running, the electric motors kick in and start the blades spinning. Holding the rotor disc level for 30-40 seconds provides the best acceleration, at which point you can bring the stick back to start taxiing to let the last of the motor run assist the relative wind. No mess, no hassle, and you are far from the motors while they are running! Photo by Paul Abbott.

August 8th was the date for the annual fly-in of the three Michigan PRA chapters - 63, 70, and 77! The Mid-Michigan Gyro Club (Chapter 63) hosted the event again this year at Maple Grove airport north of Fowlerville, Michigan. The weather for the preceding week was very bad with rain and thunderstorms each day. Saturday was supposed to be just as poor, but we got a slight break that was not predicted and the fly-in was a go!

I left Bergeon for Fowlerville about 11 AM with marginal VFR conditions and significant wind from the south. The flight is normally 27-28 miles, as the crow flies, but I had to use ultralight IFR (I Follow Roads), making the trip at 600-700 feet AGL with cruise airspeed between 47 and 52 mph. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, it was a nice flight and I arrived shortly after 11:30, having used slightly less than a half-tank of fuel. If you are interested, you can study the digital flight log for this particular flight. Look under Climb and Cruise Performance on the Rotax 447 Perfomance page.
 

Five flying gyros were on the flight line (Steve Lathrop's Bensen is covered up in the middle) with at least one more Bensen that stayed on its trailer.

We had a few raindrops just before lunch, so we covered the Digipod and the electric VDU hardware with plastic bags, just in case. Fortunately, no real rain materialized through the afternoon.

The only other gyro to actually fly in was Merv Read (Chapter 63 President) with his Air Command, who came over from Livingston County airport in Howell, about 10 miles to the southeast. The tarp on the seat is a hold-over from the same threat of rain that started us bagging everything in sight! In this shot you can actually see Steve Lathrop's Subaru-Bensen behind Merv's machine.

There was lots of good food and fellowship and enough demonstration flying to engage the non-pilot crowd! We did a demonstration spin-up with the electric prerotator and enjoyed the opportunity to get caught up on news from the other Michigan chapters. By about 2:30 it looked like the weather to the west was getting marginal so Don elected to fly the Gyrobee back to Bergeon. He had the advantage of slightly better visibility, but had to deal with stronger thermals and a slight headwind. The return flight took about 40 minutes and burned just over half a tank of fuel.

Now I don't usually post pictures that show gyros as "little dots" up in the sky, but I will make an exception here since I am still getting so many questions about substituting a larger engine for the "little" 447. I don't know how many times I have to repeat it, but "conventional wisdom" does not apply to the Gyrobee. Here is a 130 mm telephoto shot of Don, shortly after lift-off. He drove on down to the end of the active with the blades stationary. Once he arrived, he started the electric VDU prerotator and proceeded to do the entire spin-up sequence during his takeoff run!

A gyro with light blade loading, like the Gyrobee, cannot be compared to a standard single seat machine! Despite running 40 hp, with a 190 pound pilot, full fuel load, and 85 degree weather with humidity to match, the Gyrobee will always match or exceed all but the "hot rod" machines in takeoff performance!

Another shot with the same telephoto lens, some 15-20 seconds later than the previous photo, provides graphic evidence of the Gyrobee's takeoff and climb performance. You guys should stop worrying about the little 447 and just finish building!

 Each summer, Aero Sports Connection (ASC) sponsors the KIMO (Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio) Nationals ultralight competition. While it is a competition, it is also a premier ultralight social event, with fixed-wings, trike, and powered parachute aircraft and some of the finest pilots in the region. The event is held at Brooks Field, in Marshall, Michigan, about 36 miles SW of Bergeon Field. This year, it was held over Labor Day weekend and we flew down on Saturday. I flew down and landed with just 1/2 inch of gas in the tank as a result of a 20-22 mph head-wind. I have the digital flight log and will probably prepare a page on the flight since it illustrates some of the strategies that can help when trying to get somewhere on just 5 gallons of fuel.

You don't often see family in my flying pictures because they tend not to come to these events! They did show up this day, even if it was probably an excuse to go shopping in Marshall! Alison is manning the camera, and thus out-of-sight, but that is the grandpa gyronaut in the middle with little Tori, our first granddaughter. My #2 daughter Heather is on the right with Vinnie, my son-in-law, on the left. Some of you guys will remember Vinnie from the Mentone work-day over the Memorial Day weekend! Alison doesn't take aircraft pictures, so a partial glimpse of a nest of powered parachutes in the background is as good as it will get!

We had a ball down there and, when Don made the return trip, he ended up with a half-tank reserve, courtesy of a tail-wind!

The best Dawn Patrol in the state! Typically 350-450 aircraft arrive in less than two hours. Getting a little gyro in without becoming a Cessna hood ornament is a real challenge! This year turned out quite differently from most. We usually have significant morning ground fog in mid-September and this time was no different. It was VFR at Bergeon Field, however, and a fine morning for flying. I had the aircraft radio installed for the trip and, by the time I was half way there, the word was that Maple Grove was IFR with solid fog and aircraft were diverting to fields to the west. While some of the low fields were full of light fog, all the hedgerows were clearly evident and visibility at 700 feet was superb! I figured it would have to burn off before I got there and continued on my way.

As I passed Webberville, all I saw in front of me was an opaque white wall, extending up to 400-500 feet. Once over that wall, you couldn't see the ground at all! Getting into the airport was absolutely impossible and, even if I could have pulled it off, I would have set myself up for at least two FAA violations - flying without visible contact with the surface and flying below VFR minimums. Turns out several aircraft did get VFR violations that morning, so it wasn't idle speculation!

Webberville was still clear and that was the area where Don and I had flown our old Quicksilver from 1981-1983. The old ultralight strip at Don's family farm was long since back to beans but I knew that a neighboring farmer, Ron Hamlin, had a nice runway at his place, about five miles south of town. With Fowlerville weathered-out, I turned back toward Webberville and headed south. I located the Hamlin farm without incident. As I turned on my downwind leg, I was sharing the air with a good-sized flock of Canada Geese, not more than a hundred feet off to my right! It was a spectacular sight that reminded me of the movie, Fly Away Home. The geese ignored me completely as I started descending and turned underneath the flock onto my final. I landed without incident, parked the Gyrobee, and headed up to the house to see if Ron had the coffee on! He did, and eventually Don and I got hooked up via cell-phone.

We eventually made the breakfast by doing the final lap in the car. The airport had opened up while I was waiting for Don, but the planes were stacked up eight or more aircraft deep when they finally were able to start coming in and that seemed to us to be too much traffic to deal with. Later that morning we came back to Hamlin's, fueled up the Gyrobee, and Don had a nice flight back to Mason. This was the first time I have ever been weathered-out at the far end of a cross-country flight, but it all worked out because we had identified available fields in case we ever had to divert!

Usually, with the onset of colder weather, the Dawn Patrol at Maple Grove is our last opportunity to fly into Fowlerville before the onset of winter. However, Chapter 63 meets at Maple Grove on the second Saturday of each month and the forecast for October 10th called for clear if chilly weather. Jim Fields and I hatched up this scheme to fly both the HoneyBee and Gyrobee over to Maple Grove airport for the club meeting! The result was one of the best days of flying I can remember, but it's too nice a story for one paragraph. Check out the Bee Invasion page for a more detailed account.