Customer Reviews

Understanding the Gyroplane (569B)

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.....this is a book whose explanations are largely over-simplified, and in some cases not in accordance with good engineering practice.

Paul Bergen Abbott is an eminent writer on autogyros/gyroplanes - the aircraft type for which his colleague, the late Igor Bensen, coined the trademark "Gyrocopter". For many years he was editor of the PRA magazine, and did a stirling job, but I would suggest that this popular account is seriously flawed when it tries to explain aircraft flight principles. My own copy is full of pencilled corrections.

One example is the directional stability item in Chapter 8, which is based on a wrong assumption that applies in only one case. Misleading to the newcomer, and potentially fatal if used to assess stability.

A good read, but do not take the explanations too seriously.

The book is a bit oversimplified as far as explaining the priniples of flight, but I recommend it because it made learning those principles fun and easy to remember. If you are thinking about learning to fly a Gyrocopter, then this is a good first book to familiarize yourself with what is involved in the process.

Just taking a quick look through the book I found some errors; particularly about how lift is explained. The explanations are simplified to a point that an inexperienced reader may be able to grasp the point but I would not expect these explanations to provide a good understanding of the phenomena described.
The book may be a reasonable start to understanding gyroplanes but I would suggest that the reader also explore other sources.