Gyro flying school???

[birdy]

I'v only been in gyros for bout 10 years, and in communication with other gyronaughts [ on the web] for bout 3 years, and theres always been one common gripe with the gyro scene..........lack of dedicated instruction. I know theres a couple of [ supposedly] full time instructors around, but they also have the 'other life', and if your plans don't fit theirs, you gota wait.[ fair enough too]I'd imagine all other popular typs of aviation have sum sorta flyn school so why don't we??Is it coz we don't have the numbers of students to support a dedicated school or is it instructers are not willing to dedicate all of thier wakeing hours to teaching, or is it just too expencive?If there was such a school centraly located to the gyronut population, in an area where wether restrictions isn't going to be a frequent problem and had a full time instructer [ or two if nessasary], would students be willing to travel to it for instruction? If people would put aside a couple o weeks of their life to 'holiday' at the school, knowing that there is a dedicated man n machine ready and waiting for students, could it be made viable??Surely thered be sumone[ maybe a retiree] who'd take the oppertunity to instruct full time, and in the whole of Oz, thered be enough students to support it.Side lines to further support it could be a second hand gyro and parts wherehouse, maybe team up with another school of aviation, an advanced training thingy and it could be a ' home base' for ASRA.If you think this could be worthwhile and it would help the general gyro show down under, i'll be the first there to back it.If you think itd be too far for sum to have to travel if there was only one school then i think you gota remember, Oz is a big country, it takes time to do anythn here. So if your 'dedicated' to wanting to fly a gyro and there was a 'dedicated' school, maybe you'll make the effort.Just a thought.Ignorance is bliss............but only till you realise you were.You can always get the answer you want, if you ask enough experts.

[asra]

I agree Birdy that lack of availability to training seems to be causing our movement to stagnate. Instructing is a part-time local scene event in Victoria (when we have any Instructors that is) though my observations this is not inconsistent with RAA training that relies heavily on part-time Instructors. Full-time Ultralight Schools have sprung up around this State in the past but have usually faded away again. There is only one I know of at the moment in Victoria that offers choice of Instructors and Aircraft. A dedicated full-time gyro flying school would need to be financially successful which is quite a big ask of any small business these days. It would need to be located near a large population base and preferably integrated with other flying disciplines so as to get public exposure.I know the local U/L Instructor charges $140 per hour with $10 of that being allocated to comprehensive insurance on his aircraft. Any idea what the market is willing to pay to get good full-time instruction at a time convenient to them?Pete

[Brian]

Sounds like a great idea Birday and seeing you are in the centre of Australia, then I reckon you are the logical choice!!! Brian

[Des Garvin]

The above post by Dave is a very valid observation which I suport fully.A closer look discusion is the best way to put the viability into perspective.Start point is the operations manual states that an instructor is only permitted to fly in a gyro for 5 hours per day. So based on the going rates of current time of $120.00 per hour Plus fuel this comes to $600.00 per day. This is not much when you concider that there a number of employees who get that much money on wages with out the cost of running a machine. Then you have the number of days where the weather is unfavourable as well. So on average there would only be 4 days in the week for training. This Instructor is also required by his partner to spend family time with them. Well he/she has to have a life the same as the rest of us. Now concider what you the person reading this would understand about a business operation why would you be in a business to make a profit of coarse.How many of you readers would like to make a profit of around $30,000 a year. It will cost you at least $55000.00 to run that business with the fees, insurences,phone charges,premises etc each year. Not looking to good from this side of the picture.Now I will put the above aside and look from a potential students point of view.Ok I want to get myself up to flying, so I am a bit slow on the uptake with 27 hours of instruction required to get me there. With the operational manual stating the maximum hours per day being 3 hours for a student, that means 9 flying days. Then with our 4 day week that is 2 weeks plus 1 day for dule training. Now I require to do 5 hours in my machine to finish off which would be an extra 3 days at which our instructor gets $60.00 per hour. The ecconomics are looking a little on the poor side.I will leave this at this point for all to ponder over. And remember,What you focus on grows. Des Gravin

[asra]

Dave Stubberfield does this /1 hour training early morning then work at his engineering shop & 1 hour in the afternoon this gets most guys with there own gyro soloing in two weeks or so this is for 1 student at a time. As far as maximum 5 hrs a day dave has been at this limit for many weekends & feels this is his limit anyway as stress does take a toll [more with some students than others] Butch S.

[asra]

[asra]

I think Birdy's idea is workable and should be expanded on laterally.The biggest difficulty is experienced by students from areas distant from a instructor. The student might travel over long distances to get training and go home after days of hanging around and sleeping in a swag with only one or two hours training due to the instructors occupation,the number of other students also hanging around and the weather. Then after months of doing this (if he hasn't given up and gone to fixed wings) he is told he flies ok, go home and break the rules. Do unauthorised hops and then circuits in a completely different aircraft by yourself. Go and learn to fly. Fixed wingers keep going to the school, flying the schools aircraft until they are signed off. What happens to a gyro student from Burketown? How does he get signed off? The big question to ask when thinking about the reasons more people don't learn to fly Gyros and setting up a training facility is; is it difficult to learn now? How can we make it as easy as learning to fly a fixed wing? Until this is addressed, only the most dedicated will persist and that means that gyros will always be an absolute minority in sport aviation.Yes, a school is a good idea. Now, we need maximum input from all of ASRA to make it work!Fish.

[Tim]

quote:Originally posted by Des Garvin Now I require to do 5 hours in my machine to finish off which would be an extra 3 days at which our instructor gets $60.00 per hour. Des, I am curious. Which Instructor charges you $60.00 per hour for you to fly your own machine?Pete, to the best of my knowledge, most instructors do not charge for "ground time"Tim McClure

[asra]

Dave,I understand that sumthing like you propose used to run out of Forbes. Steve England and sometimes John MacQueen used to run "camps". Either of those blokes could probably explain the pro's and con's. I think they were drumming up blokes from as far away as NZ. There was a tribe went from East Gippsland once, some time after I finished my training. Maybe it was the didjeridoo that put em off.

[asra]

What Birdy said is something that I have thought and talked about at different times with some friends.I have said to my wife many times that if we were to win the lotto I would build a large flying school for gyro's and all class' of ultralights and offer bording and training, as well as machines for sale or hire.With a large amount of money to start off with we should get quite a few years of business before we go broke.Pesonaly, I flew down from Townsville to Victoria to train with Mad Dog for 2 weeks straight. As far as I could see there was realy no other way to do this.Mad Dog charged me for flight time only, all talk time was free. I got to spend a lot of time with him and his lovely wife and gained a lot of valuable information from him during these times. Even when he draged me kicking and screaming over to his bowles club to drink port.I guess I am partly responsable for his roll-over, after all I did do a lot of very bad landings in his gyro, which I got abused for in typical Morgan style.I know everbody is different and we all live in different parts of this great country, but for people wanting instruction and they live a long ways from people prepared to offer this instruction, block time really is the best option. To spread your training out over long periods of time you start to forget things and loose the feel of flying, and this will make the whole process longer and more expensive. Graeme Monro

[asra]

Guy'sEverything you have said has great merit, however...................as training by instructors is basicly a labour of love on their part, (and can actually cost them money) I believe this continuous on going problem will persist ad-infinitum until the good pilots/flyers actually volunteer for the task, I also believe this should be done at the various clubs level, and also the club members (club together) and use the individual members (talents/trades), some may just wish to help financially to build a basic no frills two place trainer, and with everyone pitching in it will create a focused club all pulling together for an end result and with everyone learning something, and when finished, tested by the clubs most experianced pilots/flyers, the rest can then sit back and watch some or all of the testers "quitely" slip into the instructor role, however..................there will be no interest until there is actually an Aircraft being built or finished. I also believe that there is no point in just complaining about the lack of instructors or the distance to be travelled to them, this problem will not "just solve it's self" it has to be made to happen, and the quicker something starts the quicker the problem will be solved, to everyone's benefit.Pete Barsden

[Brian]

Training schools definately have merit, you need 2 instructors plus a two X 2 seater gyros and probably two weeks. The location has to be convenient as posible and offer low cost accommadation with reasonable facilities and somewhere where the ground school can be done. No use trying this in the summer and milder climates would be a help in getting the maxium amount of flying done per day.I found that learning to fly the gyro was a lot more intense than a FW and I needed a break after 30 minutes or so for a walk around/coffee and a think.I reckon 3 hours would be max for the average person per day.Its not dificult to learn to fly a gyro and if the CLT gyros fly like I have been told they do, then it should be a piece of cake !Untill gyros can be insured [for a reasonable cost] then I cant see any instructor hoping out of his gyro for the student to do his solo. The student needs to finish their training first before hoping in their own gyro and should be ready to start right back at scratch and work their way up under the instructors eye !Any student or person in a hurray to learn to fly a gyro should go and do FW.While a gyro is easy to fly ,they are very very diferent from a FW and this factor could result in more time needed to learn.While gyro can fly in nearly any conditions, windy weather is not the best circumstances in which to learn to fly. This is because gyros need to flown with "feel" and in winds, you wont have a clue as to controll movements.Probably most importantly, instructors need to be able to communicate/teach/assess and generally be a jack of all trades. There are many of us with a few hours and lots of expereince but can we actually be great instructors ??Hope my ramblings help !! I am tempted [slightly] to become an instructor when I get my 2 seater so I'm watching all this closely.Brian

[asra]

If it helps at all, I have a full blown Power point presentation called "Understanding the Gyroplane".

[asra]

Example A, me. Flown recreational aircraft for 14 years. Endorsments for passenger,cross country, radio. Have ASIC card and have flown into Licensed airfields and controlled airspace (with premission) without my head exploding.Even flown at Avalon airshow(still can't belive that someone would pay me for something that I would pay them for). Designed and built my own aircraft. If I had decided to take up Gliding, GA, Trikes or Ballooning it would be a simple matter of pick a school, pay money, get training, get ticket. But I chose Gyros!!! I,ve been a member of ASRA for over a year, but still no training. I blame no one but myself, because I was warned.In the gyro community we have the "Seniority rule". It seems that the longer you are a gyro pilot the more knoweledge you seem to automatically acquire. It even gets to the stage were it can sometimes have the power of veto over the laws of physics! So how do we encourage new people? We ridicule them by calling them "newbies" and "Jonny cum latelys", because they have to earn their seniority. It may not be the best way. How about we help them, encourage them, educate them! Now we can all pretent that our reputation comes from those stuck up GA pilots and that ignorant public that just dont know the truth, but consider this. For better or worse this forum is the public face of ASRA (luckily for me there is just enough good people to make me want to persist). I personally can see why so many people laugh and shake their heads at us.In short there is a huge supply of potential customers, with money to pay instructors, but why would they bother. It's an up hill battle to become a gyro pilot and a few at the top are helping, but too many are standing up there doing stuff all to help. Lack of training is my bigger problem, but I dont think it is the gyro comunities biggest problem.If we build it, they will come!I vote for somewhere in Victoria. Now I'm going out to the shed to work on the gyro. I check back in a day or two and see what flak I cop for airing my opinion.Daryl Patterson

[Des Garvin]

Tim.I am just stating sound business principals there for the purpose of the exercise, the instructor still has to live the same as you and I, food , house,phone calls, car, partner, etc, so being full time and on demarned like a full time business person the half rate is justifyable. Yes hyperthetics there Tim on my part.Pete Bradley, Having run my own business for 29 years I know from sound business experiance that the figures that come up in the way that you have depicted never eventuate so halving them is a hell of a lot closer to the realistic mark. Absolutly no ofence directed at your posting by me here. Those figures you gave is the same as I came up with in my inital guestimate.I agree that we the ASRA organisation do need a good full time training club somewhere.Pete Barsden's post is a suggestion in the right direction. We Yes that is every member and potential member of ASRA need to contribute to the setting up of a full time training school. Now to roll the ball into play let every one on this forum and as an ASRA member focus on what I can do to assist in getting the full time training school on the road.I will finish with the word REMEMBER,What you focus on grows. Des Gravin