boB: Believe it or not, whilst I was down in Florida for a ride in the
Hummingbird, I stopped by the Mosquito guy down there for some photos.
While I was there he decided to fly his little bird so I stuck around to get
some shots. He circled the field a few times and buzzed us once and then
landed, got out and came over to me and said: " You want to fly it?" I
thought he was crazy. Let some yahoo get in a single seat helicopter that
weighed less than 300 # and go for a ride? He said take it around, I think
you can handle it. I got in the thing and the check out was "Engine 6,000,
EGT lesst than 1600 and he backed away. Knowing I was in a very light
helicopter and expecting the thing to be at least twitchy, I ran it up, felt
with the pedals to get the nose pointed and began to slowly ease the
collective up. The thing wanted to go sideways so I set it down and made a
small correction to the cyclic and again raised the collective. This time
the little bugger came up to 3' and just set there. Stable as a Huey. Less
than 15 sec later I was hover taxiing the thing all over the field. Set it
down, pick it up not problem. No nose wander, no sideways movement just a
very steady hovering little bugger. The blades were not symmetrical so I
expected to feel some varying collective pressure as the angle of attack
changed. I couldn't feel any change. I was impressed. However, with only
15 minutes of hovering about I decided not to put it in the air. Later
discussions with the owner showed that he had never had a lesson in any
helicopter. He had about 15 hrs TT at that time and was impressive in his
operation of the thing. Then I learned that there were two other guys
flying these buggers that had self taught with no prior helicopter
experience. Now it seems that some of them have taken some R-22 lessons and
found that the R-22 is much harder to handle.
I'm a 2 stroke phobic from my motorcycle racing days, but since they went to
the ceramic coated pistons, the Mosquito hasn't had any reported piston
problems. They are also working on using a twin cyl, turbo charged injected
4 stroke. I wouldn't mind having one with the 4 stroke.
BTW the Airscooter has no collective control. Autorotations are not
possible. We've been around the Ultrasports a bit but have no hands on
experience with them. At a recent event there were two flying quite a bit.
They did have to re-jet for the altitude.
--
Stuart Fields
Experimental Helo magazine
P. O. Box 1585
Inyokern, CA 93527
(760) 377-4478 ph
(760) 408-9747 publication cell
"boB" wrote in message
...
JohnO wrote:
One of the aircraft I had high on my list was the Mini 500. Thanks to
this newsgroup I've lined through that one.
Write 'helicycle' instead.
There are several videos of the helicycle flying and it looks very good.
Does anyone have any experience with the ultra sport helicopters?
http://www.ultrasport.rotor.com/ultrasport496.htm
or the Mosquito single place ultralight helicopter and the AirScooter?
--
boB
copter.six