How a Gyroplane Flies

The fidget spinner is one of the simplest toys. Who invented it? No one knows. Presumably, fidget spinners appeared in ancient China at least 5000 years before Christ. Even a preschooler can make such a toy - take a square sheet of paper, make four cuts from the corners to the center, carefully fold, glue and pierce with a nail or pin. That's it, the toy is ready!

Just over a hundred years ago, in 1920, Spanish aircraft designer Juan de la Cierva was building a heavy airplane for the army. And things were going very badly for him. During takeoff tests, the airplane designed by the inventor did not have time to gain the necessary speed, and there was a fall. The plane crashed and the test pilot was killed.

De la Cerva decided to come up with a way to prevent the airplane from falling when it loses speed - but no solution came to mind. Attach a giant parachute to the airplane? But this parachute would simply not have time to open! And then the designer's eyes accidentally fell on a children's toy - a chopper.

"Turning a propeller with an engine," de la Cierva thought, "creates thrust. But what if we spin the propeller not with an engine, but with a rush of air flowing toward the aircraft, like a child's fidget spinner? Will this create thrust?""

The aircraft designer was an active man and literally in a couple of hours he made a model of an air propeller. He fixed the propeller on an axle, without a motor, and installed a dynamometer on the other side to measure the force. Then he took an ordinary room fan, turned on and directed a jet of air to his model. The propeller began to spin, faster and faster, and the dynamometer arrow slowly moved to the right.... I've got it! I've got thrust! It remained to be seen whether this force would be enough to keep a heavy airplane from falling.....

De la Cierva went to work on the calculations. He was surprised to no end - the figures showed that the thrust force when the propeller was unwound by the air flow was very good! So, in order to save the airplane from a crash as a result of a fall, it was necessary to fix a horizontal propeller on top - without an engine, just freely rotating on its axis. As the airplane moved forward, the propeller would spin up and create a thrust force that would keep the airplane from falling and crashing. In case of loss of speed, the airplane will just smoothly and slowly descend to the ground!

A solution had been found. De la Cierva named the invented construction "autogiro", from the Greek words "autos" - that is, "itself" and "gyros" - "rotating". The word got into Russian through French, and therefore turned into the rather clumsy word "autogyro".

When asked "What is a gyroplane?" one boy replied, "It's the grease used to lubricate cars." Funny, isn't it? And another word for the name of this flying machine is "gyroplane". However, blueprints and calculations are one thing, but the finished flying machine is quite another.

The appearance of the gyroplane caused bewilderment and even laughter among pilots and aircraft designers. Outwardly, it looked like an airplane that had had its wing sawed off and replaced with a helicopter-like propeller. And when the audience also learned that this propeller simply rotates freely and is not equipped with an engine, they refused to believe that this "not a mouse, not a frog, but an unknown animal" is able to take to the sky.

However, the pilot came, sat in the cockpit, started the engine (ordinary, like an airplane) and released the brake. During the run-up, the large propeller would spin up - and suddenly the machine would rise smoothly into the air!

Further tests showed that the gyroplane had quite good flying qualities. The gyroplane was really not afraid of losing speed and falling. Even if the engine failed in flight, the gyroplane would simply descend to the ground slowly and smoothly, as predicted by the designer's calculations. The gyroplane could take off at 30-40 meters and land on a patch of ground.

In the 1930s of the 20th century, many countries around the world began to build gyroplanes, including combat gyroplanes. For example, the A-7 gyroplane created in the USSR by aircraft designer Nikolai Kamov took part in the Soviet-Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars as an artillery adjuster, scout and night bomber.

But why was such a remarkable flying machine not developed further? Why are gyroplanes hardly used in modern aviation? The fact is that in the 40s the gyroplane had a very serious competitor - the helicopter. A helicopter uses an engine to spin the main rotor.

On the one hand, the design becomes more complex and expensive, but on the other hand, the helicopter gains completely unique capabilities that are not available to either airplanes or gyroplanes. For example, the helicopter can "hang" in the air motionless, which is, for example, indispensable for rescue operations.

In addition, the powerful engine allows the helicopter to lift a much larger load. And a large payload is not only an opportunity to carry more and farther, it is also an opportunity to equip pilots with a closed comfortable cabin with heating and wind protection. For a gyroplane, however, "extra weight" is an insoluble problem. The spinning of the main rotor by the rushing airflow is simply not able to provide the required power.

Nevertheless, gyroplanes are popular in modern small aviation. For air transportation of one or two people or small cargo, for photo or video shooting, for sports and tourism, the gyroplane is very well suited.

A gyroplane does not require an airfield (as an airplane does), and it is ten times cheaper and easier to maintain than a helicopter. The design of the gyroplane is so simple that there are even kits available for self-assembly of this aircraft - you can see that this is simply impossible for an airplane or helicopter.

Perhaps in the not too distant future, the gyroplane will become a common mass air transportation, a reliable and convenient "aeromotorcycle" for rural areas - no less widespread and affordable than a conventional car today.