JP Krucker's weight shift amphibious autogyro [video] | Hacker News Reader

JP Krucker's weight shift amphibious autogyro [video]

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Why aren’t there any autogyro drones? Since they don’t stall easily, I Would guess they have that major advantage over fixed-wing drones? Or maybe stalling is not a concern for drones and fixed wing is better in every other respect.

Well you could make a drone, but a lot of drones are used for hovering and an autogyro cannot hover. It's not a helicopter; it must stay moving forward eliminating alot of the current uses of drones.

The anti-stall feature(?) (there has got to be a better word for this) is great when there are people on board since it can save lives, but if it's a drone, then presumbaly it's unmanned and thus unless you are really worried about the equipment on board not surviving a landing I'm not sure what the benefit is.

I don't know what the overall efficiency of an autogyro is, I'm guessing there might be an issue there.

That said, if it were to build a flying-machine an autogyro is the only kind I'd be willing to get into and fly slowly over the water like JP does. Great channel btw.

The inertia of the rotor helps a lot stabilize an autogyro. You don't get the same inertia in a small drone. One can certainly invoque a square/cube law there.

There are scale model autogyros around the 1 or 2 Meter rotor diameter scale, but I haven't seen anyone do smaller - maybe there is, in ultralight indoor flying.

Looking at the video, that gentleman is one engine out away from dying in the tree tops.

He’s one failure away from death in general. That thing is a death trap in so many ways

Not an engineer, but what is wrong with it? It seems really on par with a lot of ultra-light experimental planes out there. It's obviously risky, but for what it is, it seems remarkably solid.

Flying low and not all that fast. To survive chopper failure you either need altitude or speed to autorotate and recover.

At low speeds it looks like he could just make an aquatic landing. Auto-gyros from my understanding naturally auto-rotate on engine failure so it should it glide down non?

That video scares me on multiple levels, but shouldn't an autogyro be able to slow down horizontally and autorotate to the ground? Still not great over forest though.

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