Calidus

[aussie_paul]

I"m confused, I was under the impression that a good landing was one where you land on the mains with minimum roll and the tail does not come into contact with the ground. The only time I would want my tail to contact the ground would be in a restricted area landing as a matter of neccessity........ Have I got it wrong?Nope, a good gyroplane landing touches the tail wheel just before the mains so that if you are a little crooked the gyro will align to the direction of travel. Many people have said why don"t you have the tail wheel castoring? I would give the above explanation..Aussie Paul.

[blakemorem]

Rick don"t get confused your ok mate.Lets not start slapping instructors yet. I had a good instructor with a wealth of knowledge and experience. We may have missed the point, With all due respect Birdy lets keep your exceptional flying and dragging the tail down a dirt runway with a moderate headwind at just that. Firstly if we were to drag a tail down a runway you will do damage to an unprotected Stainless or aluminum keel no matter what the aircraft, Calidus Gmbh probably don"t bother mentioning this in the manual for obvious reasons. You know how to tease the rotors up and if you wait for it with full back stick if you may get hinging and if you are lucky enough to not hinge then when the rotor is ready to go you will probably bang the tail as soon as the front wheel pops cause you won"t be quick enough to catch it and if you get away with that still at full back stick it gunna get ugly...you will balloon wash off airspeed and drop like a bag of S@#T and have lots of scrap aluminum to clean up. Now if you had plenty of power on and say a moderate 25knot head wind you might vertical climb a few seconds before your brain says Something like throttle back a bit, forward stick and airspeed. You don"t need a tail wheel/pad to take off or land you have a rudder. Spot landing with zero airspeed is also not encouraged by instructors for instability, even with a moderate headwind. Short take offs can be done without sitting the or dragging the tail down the runway. If you want to drag the tail go ahead drag it just remember you have a lot of back stick going on and and could set you up badly for the unexpected. Fly it onto the runway and fly it off when your rotor is ready it will take off and land don"t anticipate be patient is what my instructor said so don"t slap him he"s a good fella with a lot of experience and knowledge I"m glad he tough me fly.All good Rick.

[birdy]

Im assuming your refern to the youtube flic Blake, if so, there wasnt a breath of wind that day, just thermals.Only other thing ill say is, you dont need to plant the tail at any stage of a short takeoff, and if your tail dont touch on landn, you havent landed as short as you could have.If your tail touchs, you know youv got the disc at the highest safe AOA for the shortest roll.The shorter the landing roll, the less chance of go,n legup.

[MadMuz]

Rick don"t get confused your ok mate.Lets not start slapping instructors yet. I had a good instructor with a wealth of knowledge and experience. We may have missed the point, With all due respect Birdy lets keep your exceptional flying and dragging the tail down a dirt runway with a moderate headwind at just that. Firstly if we were to drag a tail down a runway you will do damage to an unprotected Stainless or aluminum keel no matter what the aircraft, Calidus Gmbh probably don"t bother mentioning this in the manual for obvious reasons. You know how to tease the rotors up and if you wait for it with full back stick if you may get hinging and if you are lucky enough to not hinge then when the rotor is ready to go you will probably bang the tail as soon as the front wheel pops cause you won"t be quick enough to catch it and if you get away with that still at full back stick it gunna get ugly...you will balloon wash off airspeed and drop like a bag of S@#T and have lots of scrap aluminum to clean up. Now if you had plenty of power on and say a moderate 25knot head wind you might vertical climb a few seconds before your brain says Something like throttle back a bit, forward stick and airspeed. You don"t need a tail wheel/pad to take off or land you have a rudder. Spot landing with zero airspeed is also not encouraged by instructors for instability, even with a moderate headwind. Short take offs can be done without sitting the or dragging the tail down the runway. If you want to drag the tail go ahead drag it just remember you have a lot of back stick going on and and could set you up badly for the unexpected. Fly it onto the runway and fly it off when your rotor is ready it will take off and land don"t anticipate be patient is what my instructor said so don"t slap him he"s a good fella with a lot of experience and knowledge I"m glad he tough me fly.All good Rick.

[blakemorem]

Muz n Birdy rito I"m probly not me best at the moment just out of surgery for repairs to an old horse kick in face injury and on a lot of tabs and morphine blood etc, at the moment i don"t need a Gyro, Muz Quote I don"t think Rick was doing any instructor slapping? I need to word carefully here as i wasn"t implying Rick ***** slapping instructors or any one really just got to be careful blaming them for everything. You know about being responsible for your own actions. I"m not in the mind or mood of a 3 page essay in this subject couldn"t really give a dingos kidney. Just assuring Rick that his flying is good and not using exceptional flying as examples yes acknowledge Birdy about thermal and AOA on landing.Yous probably need to read back thru the posts to get my drift. Muz Quote If anyone bangs the tail as soon as the nose pops up, they must be being too savage with the stick so probably the pilot that does this needs to practice a little finesse?Muz Quotef a student cant/shouldn"t brush the keel on the ground in training, how can he/she learn how far the nose wheel can be lifted off of the runway to not touch the keel on the runway?...Now I"m confused Muz i sorta get the gist....How about too much BACK STICK BANG TAIL. As far as i know when front wheel pops up she"s ready to fly. I think we were talking about dragging the tail at some stage...anyway i just go on my training and advice I recall i was spotted short landing one day like almost spot and advised don"t want to see it cause near zero AS can leave you vulnerable.No tail touch AOA though. How about a campfire a good bottle of Rum and some Valium for the cranky old farts we could talk all night about this stuff.

[MadMuz]

Hi Blake, cool, wont go into it now..... you take care of yourself and get better and we can look at continuing later....hope all goes well for you..... let us know how you go and when you get over your surgery.... dang, those horses are dangerous, almost as dangerous as women

[mad max]

I"ve just skipped through those long drawn-out replies because I"m an impatient ******* but as I once said there are three styles of landings: sofcoc (mains first) hardcoc (tail wheel first) which gives you the softest and neatest landings and stifcoc (turn off the engine and touch like a fairy on the rear wheel. It seems the Europeans are mostly sofcoc pilots and make gyro"s to suit. Google: Engine out training with MAX TATE in nil wind

[RickE]

Not sure how often you land on sealed runways Max but i can assure you that you will only do it tail first once in the Calidus as the noise it makes is not good. Believe it or not we actually train to land mains first and keep the tail off the deck.Maybe neither way is right or wrong just different, if it means we roll an extra couple of feet so what.............

[MadMuz]

I"ve just skipped through those long drawn-out replies because I"m an impatient ******* but as I once said there are three styles of landings: sofcoc (mains first) hardcoc (tail wheel first) which gives you the softest and neatest landings and stifcoc (turn off the engine and touch like a fairy on the rear wheel. It seems the Europeans are mostly sofcoc pilots and make gyro"s to suit. Google: Engine out training with MAX TATE in nil windGeez Max, I have never heard anyone call you an impatient basterd..... usually it is more like #%$&&^*, &$%^#$$%$#, %$##$#$##$ or even $%$#@$#$ $%%$# %^^&&

[RickE]

I"m not sure Muz why they don"t have a tail wheel. Magnis do have a tail wheel but I"m not sure it is there as a landing aid or because the Magnis rest on the tail wheel when not occupied.I"m sure someone will tell me if I have got it wrong but isn"t the tail wheel a tool for telling you that you are at the maximum flare angle rather than trying to judge it as we have to.I will try and find out from the Germans why they don"t feel the tail wheel is necessary.

[Tim]

I have to agree with Birdy and Paul. In my opinion, the aircraft (just about any aircraft excluding helios) should not be flown onto the ground. For safety"s sake, the touchdown should be at the least forward speed as possible. A perfect landing should be one in which the pilot tries to hold the aircraft just off the ground for as long as is possible, and once the stick is full back the aircraft runs clean out of "fly" and gently sinks on and can no longer fly. In the case of a gyro, as soon as it runs out of "fly" and starts to sink on, the rotor speed has already started to deteriorate to below flying rpm. If the gyro is flown on, you still have full flying rotor speed and it can give some sphincter exercising surprises in the right conditions. (Especially for low hour pilots). Unfortunately many pilots nowadays are taught to fly on, including in fixed wingers. My instructor taught me to "stall" the plane just off the ground, for the simple reason that as it stalled and the nose wheel lowered, it took all the angle of attack off the wings and it could no longer fly. The Calidis is an unusual design in quite a few respects. It sits very nose low on the ground and appears to fly level in the air. It is not possible for me to comment on the landing attitude

[MadMuz]

As always Tim, excellent observation and advice..... agree totally. I reckon you should write a book... you seem to be able to cut thru the BS and convey the facts so well.... I would pre-order a few copies for sure

[gyroo]

Hi guys,Just jumping in to say that NONE of the Autogyro.de products - MT-03, MTO Sport, Calidus or Cavalon have, or have ever had, any tail wheels or tail skids.Just one more indication that they have always been intended to be flown almost aeroplane-style into nice green European pastures or on to nice long European runways. Long takeoffs and airliner approaches, etc, etc. Still, all their owners seem to like them, and no-one"s ever bounded up to me and said they need a tailwheel or a skid. The fancy European tandems aren"t my cup of tea, though, "cos a gyro should be able to be flown like a gyro should be flown - Max and Birdy style. Every gyro pilot should routinely do power-off flare landings to a near zero ground roll. Even when doing a close-in 500" agl circuit at a licensed aerodrome, the final turn should be taken at such a point over the runway to allow an un-powered final leg and flare to a near zero ground roll adjacent to a runway turnoff. That will minimise the risk of you being cleaned up from behind by a Metroliner carrying the afternoon papers up from the city.I don"t like that MT products can scrape their keel tubes. In my own personal opinion every gyro should have a non-castoring tailwheel, for the reasons proffered by Max, Paul, Tim, Birdy and - yes - even Mad Muz!! Mark ReganMelbourne

[MadMuz]

Just out of interest then Mark, If a person gets a gyro TA"d and the machine doesn"t have a tail wheel or the prop can stick up 150mm

[RickE]

I was going to leave this subject alone as I feel I am on a hiding to nothing but I feel the need to clear up a few points.I agree with Mark that we all should practice power off landings which I do, depending on wind conditions I can generally keep the ground roll to under two meters. I also do understand that if I had to stop shorter I would have to sit it on its tail.By the way I own a Cavalon with a factory fitted skid plate under the keel tube!