Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the response. I hadn't heard bout the two stage deployment you
mention. Seems to me you've have to have plenty of altitude to have time
for everything to stabilize inverted, then deploy the second stage to right
the machine before landing. I'm not sure I'd want to go through the flip
that would occur at that point! :-o Besides, it seems to me that gyros as
a rule, don't fly high enough to take advantage of that?

Of course, all it has to do is save one life to be worth it I suppose. At
least no one's been forced to find out whether or not this will work for
real, so far! :-)

Fly Safe,
Steve R.


"Kevin O'Brien" kevin@org-header-is-my-domain-name wrote in message
news:2006042216351550073%kevin@orgheaderismydomain name...
On 2006-04-19 00:06:18 -0400, "Steve R"
said:

From what I remember reading in gyro circles, one group was looking at
mounting the chute on top of the rotor hub, attached via some kind of
turn buckle. "Might" be a good idea but no one was brave enough to try
it out.

probably a bad idea on a gyro. Weight above the gimbal head plays with
flight control.


The only kit manufacturer that I know of that offers a ballistic chute on
their gyro is Air Command. It's been a while since I've looked at their
web site (www.aircommand.com) so I checked and a search showed that they
offer a ballistic chute option on their two place machines. The one I
saw for real was mounted below the gyro so if you ever set it off, you're
going to be coming to the ground, "inverted."

Larry Neal developed that, I believe, when he was working with AC (he also
centreline-thrusted their machines). Larry is now marketing his own line
of gyros, including one that's roadable as a motorcycle. He promises a
ballistic chute as a future option.

The way the Air Command chute works is in two stages, in stage one it
hangs you inverted, then when the rotation of the rotors is arrested, you
pull handle #2, releasing the low-down attach point, and you drop around
to normal orientation. No one has ever done it for real, and it has not
been tested AFAIK with models, let alone full size. In theory it would
work if everything went well and the pilot was conscious throughout.

You'd probably want to consider a possible inverted landing at about 20-22
fps and construct an appropriate roll structure.

A Spanish company that makes copies of the BRS chutes (under the "we're
too small to be worth suing" licence apparently -- BRS are a bit cheesed
about it) has installed some on gyros. I have seen this installation on an
RAF and it is conceptually identical to Larry's Air Command install. I
have heard that the Galaxy chute company, which I believe is Czech, has a
gyro chute but haven't seen how they do it.

I doubt the total number of ballistic chutes on rotorcraft worldwide
reaches double digits. I know none has ever been deployed in angre.

There is some talk that one of Larry's current dealers will assist in
developing the chute including full size tests. A test pilot would bail
out of a ballasted & instrumented gyro at altitude and then the ballistic
would be fired by remote control. Win or lose, this would gather useful
data, and it would be safe as the pilot would be down and away before the
chute was fired. The tests will be done overseas where regulators are more
cooperative and less timid than in the USA.


:-o I'm not sure I like that idea but it may be way better than the
alternative. Again, I don't know if anyone's tried this yet.

Ballistic chutes have been saving lives for two decades on ULs, almost as
long on experimentals, for five years on certified aircraft, and they're
coming on jets.

They would be big lifesavers if they could be made to work on gyroplanes,
as the most typical gyroplane fatal is a tumble from around pattern
altitude.

They would also have potential for life savings on helicopters -- look at
the double-fatal cop crash in Michigan last week. R22 went in vertically
after apparent loss of power for reasons yet unknown. Witnesses reported
he was hovering OGE at several hundred feet of altitiude. (Yes, he was
operating in a dangerous part of the performance envelope, but he couldn't
do what he was doing -- comb through a wooded area for a fleeing
convict -- any other way, really).

Of course, a chute isn't going to be much help on a fixed-pitch helicopter
like the original subject of the thread. A gyro is always in autorotation,
a helicopter has that option in most of its performance envelope,
including the part where you always fly unless you can't avoid it. With a
fixed-pitch helicopter, you are betting your life, or serious and painful
injury, on the reliability of that motor.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.