Things That Should Have Killed Us, But Didn’t

PT I Lou’s Gyrocopter

In law an attractive nuisance is something on an owner’s property that is likely to attract and harm children. The Aerodrome was virtually one, huge nuisance and the attraction was not limited to those of tender years. That we survived can be blamed upon our skills and intelligence-more likely it was dumb luck.

Texan Dave Fox, flight instructor to the Aerodrome stars, seemingly liked everyone he ever met and consequently had a vast network of friends.  A born problem solver, he was a maintainability engineer for IBM.  In the 60’s and ‘70’s IBM dominated the mid-Hudson economy and a good number of the Aerodrome stalwarts were part of Tom Watson’s white shirted, conservative tied, brilliant and well paid army.  It was at work that Dave struck up on acquaintance with Lou (we never knew his last name-it didn’t seem important.)

Lou was among the legion of non-flyers who had fallen under the thrall of Dr. Igor Bensen, Russian immigrant, engineer-inventor and, ultimately, Greek Orthodox priest.  In the quest to develop a flying machine for the untutored masses, Bensen had designed his “Gyrocopter,” a tiny autogiro that could be built by just about anyone, in their kitchen if necessary, and was reputed to be so easy to fly that the same anyone could do so safely.  The gyrocopter resembled a lawn chair with tricycle landing gear, a rotor, pusher engine and rudder because that, pretty much, was what it was.  Powering most of these contraptions was a surplus McCulloch 4318 aerial target drone engine.  The McCulloch was readily available and had the incredible horsepower to weight ratio of 1 to 1-seventy-two horsepower in seventy-two pounds, for which the user sacrificed luxuries like reliability and reasonable throttle control.  After all, they were designed to get the drone up to altitude quickly and were often shot down immediately.

Bensen cautioned that at least some instruction was necessary, but experienced autogiro instructors were harder to find than aluminum extrusions and McCullochs. Many builders, like Lou, arrived at the end of a parking lot (with thousands of employees, IBM had the region’s finest parking lots), McCulloch blasting and a lot of friends egging them on.  With Dave’s counsel, Lou intended to do some slow taxi testing and work his way up to bigger things.  However, the McCulloch’s lack of fine throttle control moved the process along and, autogiros are subject to a phenomenon in which lift suddenly increases and Lou was quickly a good 100 feet above the blacktop.  It turned out that Dr. Bensen was right about how easily his machine flew and when Lou instinctively came back on the power it settled to earth, happily before the end of the parking lot.

Lou was beginning to have second thoughts but Dave was having none of that and talked him into further testing at the Aerodrome where it was something of a curiosity amongst the antiques.  However, we embraced diversion and the gyrocopter appeared to have that potential in spades.

To prevent further premature ascensions, Dave suggested removing the rotor blades while Lou got the hang of the throttle and other controls.  On the first run it became apparent that, sans the drag of the rotor, the Bensen accelerated fabulously.  In fact Dave proclaimed it was a veritable rocket sled.  To Lou’s consternation Dave offered the experience to the rest of the crew and soon everyone from seasoned veterans to waifs innocent of the razor were careening up and down the runway.  This was not without challenge as the McCulloch continued to either run full bore or rough idle, and steering was an interesting.  At slow speed the nose wheel was controlled with axle extensions and so worked like a sled-push right to go left.  At higher speeds pilots transitioned to the rudder pedals -push right to go right.  Keeping the steering sorted out required some skill and not everyone was good at it.  Which led to an interesting discovery.  If you got the pedals crossed up just right, the rotor-less ‘gyro would dig in the nose wheel, lift the tail and spin around in whatever direction the rudder was aimed, sometimes almost a full turn, prior to slamming back down.  Lou endured this until he couldn’t take it any longer, decided to reattach the rotors and go for broke.

He started with a fast taxi to the north and all seemed peachy as his disappeared over the crest of the slight rise a few hundred feet prior to the dogleg branching to the right.  We assume that he went down the dogleg, reversed direction and we heard him come up to full throttle.  The next we saw of the gyrocopter, it topped the rise at a fair clip, rotors at speed.  At that point all of the abuse from the roaring up and down the rocky runway took its toll.  A brace on the rotor mast failed and the machine toppled to one side with blades, both rotor and propeller and other Bensen parts departing in all directions.  We arrived to find Lou, with minor scrapes and bumps, mournfully regarding the remains.

The next day Lou appeared with a trailer and loaded what was left of his pride and joy.  As he drove toward the end of the field, Dave, leaning against a lower wing, cleaned out his pipe, banging it against a landing gear strut, and drawled, “Ah believe a helleecoptah maht be safuh in a crash.  Y’awl ah in the middle an’ the pahts all go somewhah else.”

Lou’s trailer turned the corner.  I don’t recall that we ever saw him again.

For those interested, at the time of this posting, there is video of the McCulloch on a test stand at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Bs3-mwEYA   Peach State Rotorcraft has some video of a McCulloch Bensen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJC5HkkrOqs  If you look carefully you can see the hinky nosewheel steering.