Atom Special Autogyro

[Joker 53150]

I just saw the plans for this in RC Model World magazine, a British magazine that I think is better than any of the traditional US offerings. Looks to be very easy to build, and includes part numbers for the rotor head and blades so those can be purchased. The canopy and nose are made from shrunk-down 2 liter bottles. The wife and kids are asking me what I want for Christmas, so I guess my list is now a rotor head and blades!

 

[AkimboGlueGuns]

I assume balsa (as per usual). What is the rotor diameter?

 

[Joker 53150]

The blades are 44x450mm and the head is part number C30 from Hobby King. Yes, the rest of the craft is balsa/light ply. The plans are very basic, and I think you can download them but will see if I can find a source short of buying a copy of the magazine.

 

[AkimboGlueGuns]

I have faith in you. After all, you are doing some very good work on the cessna (which probably has worse instructions by several miles).

 

[Joker 53150]

Just about ANY build is easier than the Cessna! I talked my dad out of building that one, even though he really likes the Cessnas. He stopped by and checked out the build in person and decided it was beyond his ability at this time.

The Atom looks like a super easy build. If I had all the parts I'll bet it could be assembled and ready for testing in just a few days.

 

[stay-fun]

Nice! Have you flown an autogyro before?

I'd like to plug my autogyro build and flight here, because autogyros are pretty rare...

 

[Joker 53150]

I've never built or flown one before, and have seriously considered the Hobby King G2 for a while.

Nice work with you FT inspired version!

 

[stay-fun]

Oops late reply…

Thanks man! I can definitely recommend the auto-g(2) for training purposes. It probably handles crashes better, because it's smaller. The pre-rotator on that thing is nice to have, to get it started. However, the flight characteristics once airborne were much improved when I removed the prerotator. That is a significant weight difference! The only thing is that without the pre-rotator you'll need a slight breeze to get the rotor going.

Hand-launch ftw btw! But probably not for a machine the size of the atom...