"Interesting" incidents😳

[RickE]

I'm sure we have all had some pretty ordinary gyro experiences so to get the ball rolling I thought I would describe my worst one to date.
While returning home from Birdsville a couple of weeks ago in my enclosed side by side machine with my wife on board we got caught in a torrential downpour in some hilly country near Gunnedah. I tried to go under it with no success and with rising terrain and the weather closing in in every direction realised the only option I had Was to go through it. For about ten minutes we had zero visibility out of the windscreen as well as both side windows, all I could do was continue to climb following the GPS for track and the VSI for height. The other issue you have in an enclosed cabin is that there is no sensation of wind so when the yaw string gets waterlogged and sticks to the windscreen there is no way to adjust for yaw so I took pressure off both pedals to hopefully allow the machine to fly relatively straight without any input. Fortunatley I know the area quite well so I flew to the northwest of the airfield where I knew the terrain was relatively flat and descended out of the weather at about 500' AGL. The other complication was that there were three other gyrocopters also in the area heading for Gunnedah as well, they had taken a slightly different route and only had to contend with a light shower, I was monitoring them on the radio so I had a fair idea of their location.
Not a word was said in the cockpit during this drama but a couple of very relieved people were very happy to set foot on firm ground.
It was a poor decision on my part flying that day and another valuable lesson was learnt especially considering the responsibility of having a passenger.

[mad max]

Good on you Rick for telling your story. I could feel the stress and the joy when you got out of it. I personally like horrison gyro's for the odd occasion when you accidentally get in that situation. And yes, the last thing you want to do is have a chat under that stressful situation.

[tonydenton]

certainly a scary moment for you and your wife rick, I wouldn't of wanted to be in that situation as would everyone else. thanks for posting too, so seeing you have and it's there to talk about , it's not an uncommon story but usually heard from fixed wingers trying to get somewhere. max was right about your story , I was worried thinking of the rain sand blasting your prop and rotors , but anyway I always wonder did you or others [ I know you can't answer for others ] ever be able to fly up over the storm. obviously the storm clouds must get up fairly high for everyone to always want to get under them .
in saying that [ me being getting white knuckles on the control stick over 1000 ft AGL , in open frame anyway, ] I would not want to try the over the top option. I suppose I would look for a place to put it down and sit it out like a drowned rat.
I wished it hadn't happened to you but I'm glad it never happened to me either. .
recently ross m and I went for a fly where the day was beautiful we departed Elliott field , were heading to the coast for a short trip and flew into a lot of smoke probably from cane being burnt. [ no rain ] but poor visibility in front and I wondered how the hell I ended up in that situation.
I kept going because I could see through the smoke the farming land below and recognised where to stay away from zig zagging my usual route staying away from forestry land to the coast ,but only because I had flown it many times before. over at the coast it was all clear and good on the way back.
that was not nearly as bad as yours but bad enough me.

[RickE]

G,day Tony,
The problem with flying above the cloud is that apart from being illegal you cannot garuntee being able to get back down through it when you get to your destination. I like you have also been caught in smoke and had to once again fly by GPS out over the ocean where I knew it was safe to descend without fear of hitting anything, I descended out of the smoke that time at 300 feet agl.
I do a fair bit of flying and traveling and have gotten into a fair few situations that make you wonder why you do it, just have to make sure I don't push my luck too far.

[tonydenton]

ok rick, from someone that never goes too high I can see what you mean and never thought that far ahead, but I do know the flying through clouds rules.
now that I think back another time long time ago, there was some early morning fog and another gyro pilot that I do admit, I used to follow anywhere stupidly, said it will only be a few hundred feet high and it will clear soon [ by the time we get back ] and we took off, and yes I followed. well I can't remember how high I got and i was flying in and out of fog and in and in and out of fog, well it got to the point where it seemed I was in it more than out of it, once again looking down at the ground through the patches of "out of it" and I got back to the strip and landed . cursed myself for being stupid and went home.
for anyone that wondered , it seemed like at night if you wake and there is total blackness and you can't see jack sh*t but you know your eyes are open. well it was worse as I was in my gyro and the console was in front of me but ever thing was just grey. I wanted to reach out and touch it and pull the curtains back and let the sun shine. I gently pulled back on the stick and reduced my air speed knowing that I would stay level and maybe sink a tiny bit but stay level. so at always just in time, a tiny patch would clear to see the ground below . when I got back it was a nice landing as it was clearer on the ground than up there. .

[tonydenton]

made me think of some think else, one time in summer I was going on a looonnnnggg fly for about 1 1/2 hours this time [ bladder is only good for 2 hrs ] and trying to look after myself put some sunscreen on my face. my photo shows a helmut and a beard. about an hour into the flight on my way home 1 eye started to sting a bit. never thought what it could be but if I blinked a bit it didn't sting as much , so that was ok except the blinking wasn't enough after awhile and I needed to close it. well that was ok as I had another good eye under my helmut face shield and my glasses, struth right on cue my other eye started to sting , that's ok I can fly with 1 eye closed and the other one blinking I thought . as per the timing schedule the second eye was caning me and I wanted to close it longer than keep it open to stop it stinging too . WTF. at that time I still never worked out what was causing my eyes to sting not being a regular sunscreen user.
it would be simple to reach under my face shield to wipe 1 eye at time but I also wore gloves and they weren't design for sticking it in your eye .
ok multiple fast double blinking now that helped it sorted of flushed them a bit and I was closer to the strip.
another good landing considering my eyes were going off like a strobe light at a rock concert.
morale of the story , don't over do the sun scream if you wear a helmut and face mask and use gloves. made me forget about my bladder thou.

[tonydenton]

woo hoo loading photos is a lot easier too.

[Brian]

The situation Rick describes has caught quite a few out. Its always good policy of course is if in doubt, do a 180 * turn back into more favorable conditions. Just very pleased you didnt panic Rick & it all turned out well.

[Brian]

Gyros have it all over a fw due to lower airspeed & the fact that you can in a pinch slow down and do a near vertical descent but you do need the yaw string to verify what the gyro is doing
.Best idea is the 180 out of trouble
Just 2 years ago we had a double fatality due to lowering cloud base &rising terrain

[GyrOZprey]

I guess my boneheaded blunder into a formation flight of Stearmans .... on my very first "student pilot" foray away from my home-base airport would rank up there! (full details on the PRA forum!!!)

[tonydenton]

can you put up a link gyroZPREY.

[GyrOZprey]

http://www.pra.org/forums/showthread...d-Human-TRICKS!

Here's the link to PRA forum ... had to write it long hand ...as I can't log into ASRA on any other device I own ... this one thankfully held my last login open! ... I got into PRA forum on the big 'puter ... to copy /paste the link .... but i can't log into ASRA there ... this I pad won't let me log into PRA ... I KNOW MY usernames & passwords are good ... the whole online world is just NUTS!!!!

[tonydenton]

that's a good story to learn from . just goes to show how little things compound and make things worse . trying to put band-aides on band-aides instead of fixing the problem.

[GyrOZprey]

On my recent 3250 N-mile round trip to Florida & back - over the last month .... I always wrote my important frequencies with dry-erase on my windshield ... in addition to the full details of every airfield I passed within 5-10 miles, plus all the big airspace ( D-C -B & military ) approach frequencies to keep in contact with flight following - on a kneeboard! I had lots of comments about my big "dry-erase board" - easy to see - keep heads up! It's actually quite helpful now I'm going through my gopro vids ... to see which leg that hand-held camera shot was of ... the days flight notes up on the W/S!