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G"Day Gents,Had to copy and paste this post by Doug Riely ex US Forum.This guy knows his stuff and is always putting forward balanced and positive stuff. Ex Instructor........................................ ........... .....................................These discussions always end up polarized to the point of silliness.The "get the design right" school of thought (in its unguarded moments, anyway) claims that instruction does nothing for safety. The "training is everything" school claims that lousy designs and well-engineered designs are equally dangerous (or safe). You just need training, training, training.Both positions are based on grains of truth. In their extreme versions, both positions are also ridiculous.The "get the design right" school understand the science. A gyro isn"t a pendulum, it isn"t a weight-shift device and it isn"t pulled or pushed by a rope. These things are facts.A more critical fact for all of us is that a gyro with a proper H-stab (not one the size of a cedar shingle) is practically impossible to PIO. The frame follows the direction of travel. You have to work at it to make it bob. A no-HS machine begs to bob. Another critical fact from the design side of the debate is that a machine without HTL WILL NOT PPO. I didn"t says "resists PPO." I didn"t says "is less prone to PPO." I said WON"T - no way, no how, never. That alone makes a properly-designed gyro a whole WORLD safer than the typical botched shade-tree job -- whether flown by a well-trained pilot or by some damn fool who just jumps in. Even the damn fool has a better chance in the PPO-proof machine. None of this tech stuff means that teaching yourself to fly is really safe. There"s a dozen OTHER ways to screw up besides PPO and PIO. A good instructor also will pass along a world of technical knowledge. Structured learning is a much more efficient use of your time than trial-and-error learning (even if, like me, you"re lucky and don"t crash at all in the self-teaching process).So good instruction is a very good thing. Propaganda disguised as instruction is another story. Too many gyro instructors have wasted their credibility by shilling for lousy shade-tree designs. Some of them were commissioned salesmen with a conflict of interest (their financial gain vs. the student"s safety). Others weren"t even that -- they just absorbed the shade-tree nonsense and passed it along to the next generation. That kind of "instruction" does harm. It sends students off to shop for an aircraft armed with misinformation about the nature of PPO and PIO (namely, that they are the pilot"s fault, because all gyros will do these things). At that rate, the student is apt to make a deadly choice. He"s also apt to think that "real men," with practice, can handle an unstable aircraft in turbulence -- which leads him to bad aviation decision-making.Good design and good instruction are sides of the same coin. Choosing which we "really" need is like trying to decide whether the left wheels or the right wheels of your car are more important.Last edited by Doug Riley : Yesterday at 06:26 PM. ...Followed by Good PRACTICE. ;DMitch 