CarterGyro Jump Takeoff Videos
Just a small entry for today, and I'm a few months late in getting to it, but I thought people might still find it interesting. I work for Carter Aviation Technologies, an aviation research and development company. One of our recent projects was heavily modifying an ultralight autogyro to retrofit it with some of our technologies, that we call the CarterGyro Demonstrator Trainer. To explain what we've done and how this benefits the aircraft, I'll just go ahead and quote our website.
To enable jump takeoffs, the aircraft has been modified with the Carter propeller & the two-setting Carter prop pitch control mechanism, the Carter designed mechanical pre-rotator, and the Carter rotor with automatic mechanical pitch control. For improved safety on landing, the aircraft now has the Carter smart strut on a Carter designed main gear, and a slightly modified commercially available nose gear with more stroke and a larger tire than the original nose gear.In the current configuration, the CGD/T will fly straight and level as slow as around 20 mph airspeed, can perform zero-roll landings, and can jump over 150 feet straight into the air.
Anyway, what's so cool that I wanted to link to were the videos on the website. Follow the link above to watch them. They're pretty damn cool, and show just what an autogyro is capable of performance-wise. Keep in mind that this is an autogyro, not a helicopter. The rotor is only directly driven by the engine while on the ground when the tires can take care of the torque, and is disengaged before the aircraft lifts off the ground - you don't need any anti-torque devices like tail rotors that way. The aircraft can jump about 150' straight up just from that energy stored in the rotor.