Aero-TV: Sweet Little Gyro - The Affordable HoneyBee G2

[Music] Jim your name has been around gyroplane circles for a while now but we haven't heard from you in relation to the honeybee in quite some time the honeybees behind us are a generation too designed take our our viewers back and tell him how the honeybee originated the first one yeah I'm probably like most people most of the viewers that love gyroplanes as I bought my first Benson information package back in 1982 and I got it in the mail and open it up and fell in love with Oh pictures of him flying and all the various ways you could configure them and little while after that my the announcement of our first daughter was coming into existence and we just said well gyroplanes gonna have to hold off for a few years well as I started surfing the internet Paul what happened was I went to PR Arg and I found that they were giving away plans to the original gyro B from dr. Ralph Taggart so I like many others downloaded those print it out at all probably 70 80 pages and you know this is a very nice shadow plane but it kind of needs to be prettied up so what we did is we started putting it into CAD and started looking at it and found out that the contact email address for the gyro bee had an edu address which one that would being Michigan State University and I was smart enough to figure out that our Taggart and how to get ahold of him so I called main information switchboard and said I need to speak with mr. Taggart and I found him in the geological Department and made contact and from there Paul what happened was as we met on a Saturday morning and we had coffee and doughnuts in his home and Mason Michigan and he started talking to me about the next generation of gyro bee which ultimately became the honey bee the original honey bee gyro there's a number of gyroplanes with bee and the name what do they share in common well I think the big thing is is that part 103 criteria the original one came from Martin Holman which was the bumblebee and it had a smaller horizontal stab still powered by about a 40 horsepower engine but again Martin was true to the light disc loading and a few years after that dr. Tiger came out with what he called the gyro B and his used a number of components that were readily available from track manufacturing ken Brock and a few parts were his and he sort of had a steering system on the nose gear that was like a go-cart steering method when dr. tiger and I met in Mason Michigan and we started talking about the next generation of gyro be.we we did start talking about versus a go kart type steering we went to a regular triple fork for the nose gear and we came back to light fiberglass gear and triangulation for the main gear we got away from the brach tail which was fairly expensive very nice but much more than we needed to spend for that component and we came up with a fiberglass and foam with a Sitka spruce core and hardpoint tail which was lighter we had larger area and we also increased even at that time the horizontal stab which later became one of our trademarks we were committed originally to the Kawasaki power plan it was a 440 a and in spite of our best efforts we just could not produce enough thrust out of the Kawasaki and ultimately we end up going with a 440 which flew it the first prototype of the 440 was probably one of the best performing ultralights that we had made overall because it was so light and once we went to the heavier gear and so forth they did slow down a little bit and didn't climb quite so well but it was much more durable so the B now when you go from the honey bee to generation to B what we did is we increase the size of the horizontal stab a little bit more we still kept our traditional nose gear we still kept our original rudder pedal locations and we went to a curved overhead which gives us a little bit more pilot protection and there are other options that depending on your final weight as an ultralight can be into that basic g2 frame were true to the spirit of the stability and safety of the honeybee Integra released 9 sets a new standard with the easiest to use pilot interface in all of general aviation access to any of the least nines powerful capabilities as simple as pressing the desired bi-directional page key pressing the same key in a desired direction navigates to the clearly labeled tabs but no more guessing as to what a given pilot input would do avid ions Integra release 9 is the next generation and fully integrated flight deck technology and the easiest to use page and tab user interface is just one of the many benefits designed to make your flying easier and safer alright now since you bring up stability and safety a lot of people have heard a lot of things about gyroplane stability and how you achieve it and there are some competing schools of thought you you how do you reconcile this design with the thinking on centerline thrust and you know horizontal stabilizers well there are three things that we learn when we built the original B and that was we needed a light disk loading lighter being down in the neighborhood of one point zero to one point three any any B will fly great at that disk loading with light power we learned that plus the need for static thrust a standard 447 with a 60 inch propeller will give us 250 pounds of thrust when we went out to a 66 inch propeller we were getting 283 pounds of static thrust but the last thing we learned was that if you put on a fairly large sized horizontal stab the issues of Pio certainly and PPO virtually go away and stating some history if we look at the 300 approximate bees that are out there in the world either production built by gyro tech or built from gyro tech plans we don't have a single fatality listed with NTSB nor do we have any fatalities of or incidences of pio so coming to the G 2 side of it what we've done is we've maintained the commitment to a horizontal step and a large one at that but what we've done in terms of the placement of the thrust line and of the horizontal stab as we followed dr. Taggarts like you can look at I think it's a gyro b.com but you can see his formula for calculating vertical center of gravity or centerline thrust issues and there's a discussion on there that he had with dick de Gras and then he explains through mathematical equation why the typical B is in fact a centerline thrust machine and we've really followed that formula another gentleman that's been extremely helpful is suketaro maki out of finland he's done an awful lot in the world of gyroplanes to establish formulas outside of the normal general aviation formulas for vertical and horizontal tail volume coefficients so between Jukka and dr. Taggart we really fit right in with their mindset and design philosophy and it established a very stable and safe gyroplane tell us about engine choices here a lot of people who are used to looking at what's currently on the market would look at a two-place tandem gyroplane and think 90 horsepower is not enough you've got light disc loading which helps you but tell us about this Suzuki powerplant yeah the Suzuki that we're using is a 1.3 it's a BB which gives us four valves per cylinder it gives us a hemispherical head which has been very very successful in the Suzuki line it burns three gallons an hour and Static produces 550 pounds of thrust and the key to a light gyro in a light gyro that performs well on lower horsepower is a light disc loading in an efficient structure the structure are going to see way six hundred and thirty seven pounds empty and if you look at the power-to-weight ratios static thrust we're very consistent with a 40 horsepower ultralight at a disk loading of 102 one three when we put 90 horsepower static thrust at 550 in a similar disc loading because of the larger disc we're certainly not out to set speed records but we do want to be up in the neighborhood of seven eighty miles an hour and straight level cruise and that'll be pretty consistent from the two-place over even to the experimental and the ultralight versions now another moment of freedom from serious aircraft freedom through safety perhaps the ultimate freedom is confidence assurance and peace of mind we design it into every personal aircraft we build it's the security that comes with knowing you're flying the plane with a parachute the breakthrough concept that launched the Cirrus phenomenon tell us about the one place powerplant first of all the one place shares a lot of commonality in its front in to the front seat of the two place in terms of the the layout and the spacing and what a pilot will see getting out of the trainer sure you know one thing we've learned over the last 13 years of sales and engineering on senior levels with new product design is how can we create a modular situation that's expandable so as you see the nose gear of the two place you see the nose gear of a single place experimental the two place is literally built with a stretch for the back seat so the front seat in the two place in the front seat in the single place or only seat in the single place are absolutely identical they share a same common gear they share the same common armrest they share the same common nose gear spring linkages from the rudder pedals and it gives us economies of scale that allow us to be competitive both on a financial level as well as operationally in packaging and illustrations for kits and builder instructions the tail from either aircraft are absolutely identical and what we do on the single place or the experimental version is we take the same basic plating strategies and we use lighter materials in both round tube as well as some honeycombing on some of the channels we're going to have about a 60 pound chassis when it's all said and done and we started adding purchased goods or purchase components to that aircraft what are you using for power on the single place experimental and then on the ultralight on the experimental we've got a number of choices for 47s are still available we love them I wish that Protex would make different decisions about deleting those from the line so you can do a 447 currently you can do a 503 an MZ 201 will work on that aircraft as well as an MD 202 we're having discussions on the experimental side for some four-stroke power plants even as late as of today but we haven't made any decisions as far as what those four stroke options will be when we go to the ultralight again I love a 4 4 7 with a 66 inch prop our limitations in weight will get us 447 503 and hmz 201 there is another 50 horsepower four-stroke that we'll be testing in the month of September more than likely which produces 260 pounds of thrust and burns a gallon and a half an hour so we can take the legal 5 gallon tank and we can fly for 3 hours which is unheard of before on a 5 gallon B so we've got lots of engine options to choose from what we really want to do in this process is get to know the customer and their needs find out their long-term vision and goal for their particular be keep them out of trouble as well as help them be good be pilots with their short-term choices [Music]

Channel: Aero-News Network

Views: 141,734

Keywords: Oshkosh, Airventure 2010, Airventure, Aero-TV, Aero-News, Honeybee, Gyro, Honeybee Gyro, Auto-Gyro, Gyroplane, gyrocopter, rotorcraft, aviation, pilot, Paul Plack, Ultralight, G2, Dr. Ralph Taggart

Id: aCyeduaR778

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 25 2011