In my short few years of Gyroplane involvement I have been fortunate to travel the globe to meet with interesting people and get to fly in some of the worlds most interesting and challenging environments.

I certainly have not accumilated thousands of hours flying in straight lines, and doing long cross country flights, IMO a gyrocopter was not built for hours of boring straight line flying ..As I say one could use a screw driver to bang in a nail, why would you want to when you can use a hammer..so my opinion is seen as controversial and in the politics of Gyro In South Africa it would be fair to say that I'm not mainstream. I'm not one to be in the clique or circle of men who need to fly for 7 hours in a straight line and then sit down with a beer and debate on how wonderful that was. What they should be asking is how many landings do we as instructors do and takes offs in the same amount of flight hours. They will be surprised, and we can all agree that those two components of the flight are way more fun than sitting in a straight line hour after hour  

For me that type of flying is the most boring and the least demanding and I would rather mow my lawn or wash one of my sportscars after thrashing it to death like one would a Vegas hooker you just managed to find in your hotel room. 

I digress I thought I would share that I recently had one of the worlds most respected Captains in my humble Gyro and he was super impressed with how nimble and manurable it is.

I had the Great pleasure of hosting Captain Duncan Gillespie himself an ex Airforce Gun ship Pilot with thousands of combat hours in helicopters and now a respected airline captain where he pilots a BBJ for a Billionaire.

Duncan shared an afternoon with me wanting to explore what Gyro is all about after having a bit of a run in with a local sky god and fellow Gyro instructor who was very rude to him and has in the past done irreparable damage to Gyro in SA.

It will be safe to say that Duncan had a blast and went on to say if he did not own a Cub and a Bossbok he would certainly add a Gyro to his stable, this coming from a man who Captains a Boing 777 was very humbling.

I did not bother to show this Ace the limits of the machine ( a mistake so many instructors make when trying to impress anew pax) instead we just had a blast and I will add that Duncan is a natural and that he commented on how nice and stable the Gyro is.

Duncan has only good things to say about gyro and now often pops into the UK and goes up with a mate who also came to me from the UK and who operates the Cavalon. I will add that flight exp into another post going forward.

For a comprehensive list of my Gyroplane antic's your welcome to visit my linked in page where I often reflect on the events of the day.

Fly safe and enjoy  

linkedin.com/in/greg-vos