After our Around Australia flying adventure earlier this year, I followed the invitation of Otmar Birkner to design and build my “Pocket Rocket” Gyro at the MT-03 factory in Hildesheim, close to Hannover, in Germany. The concept was to spend only 2 weeks, including test flying of the finished machine. No time to spare….
Otmar Birkner employs 34 full time workers, now producing 4 Gyros a week. Since 2003 he has built over 300 Gyros. These have been delivered to Germany, France, UK, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria and Russia.
The whole fleet so far has accumulated around 90,000 flying hours.
The 8,000 square metre factory at the Hildesheim airport includes 4,800 square metre production space which is worth around 2.3 million Euro !
Otmar’s goal is having fun in life, and work plays a big part in this. Flying Gyros and focusing on leading Gyros away from a troubled past and into a respected position in Aviation that they deserve is also what Otmar calls fun.
These Gyros are far removed from the build it from plans and teach yourself to fly machines from years gone by. The MT-03 is a fully certified aircraft, and even the German Police is running a test program for observing traffic, and some other jobs. They want to replace some Helicopters, as money is tight, and Gyros fly for a fraction of the cost

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I’ve always wanted to build my own special Gyro to fly cameras.
In the past I have worked on Documentaries for German TV productions. I used an open frame Gyro to fly a camera through Mongolia. Unfortunately this Gyro was not perfect for the task. In one incident , the main axle broke during taxi, damaged the plane, and almost killed me as the aluminium mast snapped off right behind my head !
This is just one of the reasons I wanted to go ahead with a stainless steel frame . As I’m the Australia importer of the German MT-03 Gyro I’m a great believer in this engineering.

Otmar invited me to use his factory during the 2 weeks business holiday. The perfect opportunity, to use his entire factory, with all the tools, and materials.
Porsche has also ordered 3 MT-03’s for the very same reason, to use them as camera platforms during the Rally Cayenne which is an arduous off road race from Moscow all the way though Siberia to Ulaanbaatar. Otmar was keen to see what I was going to design.
The idea was to use standard parts, as they are well engineered, certified, tested and available.
I don’t need a break down somewhere in a remote desert with a film crew depending on me.
The concept was simple: light weight, powerful, reliable, no fairings, smooth running rotorblades, and the main thing, small for transport.
Otmar picked me up from the train station in Hildesheim and after a warm welcome he introduced me to his wife, and his 2 lovely kids.
When he showed me the factory, I must say, I was more than impressed.
The MT-03 is manufactured within the 3 main buildings. Auto-Gyro produces all parts in house.
There are CNC mills, CNC lathe, TIG welding places, a huge area for the fibre glass work, a paint, cabin, electrics, and pneumatics area, and one building for the assembly of the completed Gyro.
Like expected, all in good old German perfection.
2 weeks to design, and build a Gyroplane. Time was short, so no time to lose.
We started the next day at 0600. The frame was obviously number one. Otmar had a spare frame for me. Perfect. I cut it into bits and pieces, and worked my way through. The main thing was to cut the mast and the keel off.
The mast, keel and undercarriage can be removed for transport. I need it as small as possible as airfreight is charged by volume. Weight is not the problem. It’s the size that matters.
Two days later and the frame looked like a Gyro frame again, so we sent it away for electrolytic polishing.
E-polish takes two days, so I had plenty of time to get my ‘transport” axle organised, not to mention all the other parts.
To walk through the shelfs, grab what you need is absolutely fantastic. Everything is organised, every single part has an ID number, and is packed as a unit.
Days go quickly, even if you start at 0600 and finish around 2200.

When I got my frame back, it took me another 3 days to prepare the frame for the engine. There is a lot of thinking involved, standing in front of the plane and think: how the hell could I attach the throttle, brakes, or the camera mount? As it is not a standard MT-03 a lot needed to be re-designed. The other half-ready Gyros help a lot to get ideas, but still, how can I do it?

I spent the weekend organising the engine. I purchased a Rotax 914 turbo, as I plan to fly in density altitudes above 10,000 ft.
2 days later and the engine is installed, and the first test run was positive.
The factory came back to life, as the holidays were finished.
People were now everywhere and the quiet and peaceful factory got very busy, very quickly.
The tail unit needed to be cut off as the horizontal stabilizer is far too big for my transport box.
After 12 days the Pocket Rocket was finished, and the first test flight was quite funny. So much power for such a light machine... climbing with 4500 rpm, and cruise at 3500 rpm...
The weight and balance is still acceptable as there is no fairing and the tail unit got a bit heavier due to the detachable fins.
There was no need to track and balance the rotorblades, as I have my own Vibrex tracking computer here in Australia. With this computer I can track and balance the rotorblades on the aircraft during flight. There is no trial and error anymore. The information given by the Vibrex tells you exactly what to do.
I packed the Gyro for transport, and used up my last day taking photos, and shooting some video footage in the factory.
I think it’s good to show the customers where the MT-03 was born.