Gyroplane

Anyone can learn to fly a gyrocopter! Its only necessary to find a good Gyrocopter Training facility!
Here at the SkyRanch you will get the best possible flight training. Our background comes from international standards, like US, German, and of course, Australian standards. We are operating the Gyro's under ASRA (Australian Sports Rotorcraft Association).

The first thing that must be answered before we are to continue any further is, what exactly is a Gyrocopter? In it's simplest terms, the Gyrocopter is a light propeller driven aircraft that produces its lift from a rotor instead of wings, similar to a helicopter. They are not airplanes, they are not helicopters either, but they fly, and they do it in any way that's different, giving their pilots and passengers a flying experience they can't get any other way. They combine ease and simplicity of construction, modest cost and an unparalleled flight envelope.

The Gyrocopter is a fully functioning aircraft, noted by the Civil Aviation Authorities around the world as the safest Rotary Wing Aircraft, which through their ingenious design, manage to avoid some of the less endearing qualities of airplanes and of the helicopters.
The autogiros were the first rotary wing aircraft to fly successfully with sufficient control, and they have been around for decades. In addition to the name the autogiro, they have been known as "gyroplane", "autogro" and later "gyrocopter".
The design has inherent safety, better low-speed flight than airplanes as well as the capability of vertical take-off and landing.
To avoid any confusion, the gyrocopter does not fly like an airplane or a helicopter. Yes, there are some similarities, and even though it looks a lot like a helicopter, the gyrocopter has some flight characteristics of its own and the gyro flies like a gyrocopter.

The gyrocopter cannot stall, no matter how slow it's flying, the pilot can allways keep control. The gyrocopter will simply begin to settle and loose altitude at slow speed. Properly handled with an application of power, the gyrocopter can always regain flying speed or can be landed.
As a fixed-wing airplane fly's slower and slower, the pilot would become very concerned about a stall. At a slow enough speed the wing will simply stop flying. The airplane will fall until it regains enough speed to fly, or if it stalls near the ground, there is little chance of survival.
Since the gyrocopter does not stall, it cannot spin. A spin happens when one wing of an airplane stalls while the other keeps flying. While the gyrocopter won't stall or spin, it does not means it is "foolproof". The gyrocopter can be dangerous, just as cars are dangerous. Gyrocopters and cars are powerful vehicles that can easyly go up to 150 Km The Gyrocopter looks like a cross between an airplane and a helicopter. It has a propeller like an airplane to provide the propulsion, and it has a rotor blade, similar to that of the helicopter, and these rotor blades provide lift. So, like a helicopter, a gyrocopter generates the lift needed to fly by using rotors rather than wings but that is the one and only similarity they have. The main difference is that the rotor blades in a Gyrocopter are not powered. The rotor blades are on fixed pitch, made to spin by aerodynamic forces, known as autorotation.
In a gyro the rotorblades are powered by the passage of air traveling upward through the blades and the airflow over their surfaces. The lift this creates will become a self-sustaining force, which keeps the gyrocopter afloat.

But the difference is that the gyrocopter has a better safety record than cars and they also have a better safety record than factory built fixed wing airplanes.
The basic controls on a gyrocopter are: the cyclic stick , rudder, and the throttle. In normal forward flight, the cyclic stick controls your turns, while the rudder pedals control steering the nose wheel and rudder. Because the rotor blades on top are not powered, there is no need for a tail rotor to counteract torque as needed on a helicopter.
Since the gyrocopter is in constant autorotation, meaning the rotor blades are always spinning freely and creating lift. The Gyrocopter is always easy to land, even without the power of the engine behind the pilot. Unlike the fixed wing airplane, the gyrocopter will not stall.
While a gyrocopter looks like a helicopter, it has a very simple rotor head system requiring very little maintenance. Since the head is fixed pitch, very little can go wrong.