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Helicopter Crashes Near Montreal, Killing Pilot


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Sad indeed. Our phone rang off the hook all day yesterday with people asking if it was one of ours.

 

Actually, it wasn't a helicopter but a gyrocopter. Eyewitness reports say the pilot made an agressive manoeuver on final and the rotor hit the tail. The gyro went down in a field just beide the airstrip and was completely consumed by fire.

 

The pilot's name hasn't yet been released.

 

 

carseat.bmp

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For those of you who are not familiar with Gyroplanes this machine has been killing pilots now for over a decade.

 

It is made by a company in Canada and they have no background in aerodynamics or flight training and are unwilling to change the design, so the RAF 2000 just keeps killing people.

 

The problem is the machine has a vertial C of G offset of around 12 inches above the propellor thrust line.

 

All it takes to power pushover ( Bunt ) is for the pilot to get into PIO ( Pilot induced oscillation ) or fly into a down thermal strong enough for the thrust produced by the propellor to push the rotor into a negative lift angle and you have another dead pilot.

 

There is a partial fix for the high off set thrustline and that would be to add a horizontal stabalizer in the propellor slipstream to counter the high thrustline and add some dampening to the pitch excursions.

 

However this company will not admit their design is flawed and continue to claim that a H.S. is as they call it only a " Gadget " and will not work on their design.

 

Rev.

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The man killed was the owner of a gyrocopter distributorship. The newspaper article I saw today stated he was one of only a handful of certified gyrocopter instructors in Canada. His company, Gyrotor, offered training as well as maintenance and storage for other gyrocopter owners...

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once more, i am dismayed at the media calling it a helicopter... <_< :down:

 

The media needs a course in transportation 101, I don't know how many times I've seen or heard the phrase "bus crash" only to find out it was a 12 passenger van, does a 12 pax van look like a 55 pax motorcoach?

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