RS Gyroplanes Home | Galleries | Flight Testing | Sycamore-in-flight
The Sycomore twin seat gyroplane. Designed and manufactured in South Africa - this is a truly impressive-looking aircraft. It is clearly very well manufactured - some would say,over-engineered and it is a rather heavy machine.This becomes apparrent on take off in the midday sun of Northen Province when there appears to be a fairly lengthy take off roll,particularly near to MAUW.The controls are generally quite heavy,both in pitch and roll. The tandem arrangement cockpit however is very spacious for both pilot and passenger and the gyroplane comes equipped as standard with 'Gull-Wing' doors.However these are not required generally in SA,where extra air conditioning is at a premium and the aircraft flies very well with the doors off. Not so with the doors on however,particularly with the earlier models of Sycamore,since with doors on,there was some quite evident divergence in the Yaw axis.ChayAir,the manufacturers have attempted to address this by addining an extra pair of vertical winglets,between the existing ones and the tail unit - in order to give the whole more authority in the somewhat disturbed air which has to travel around the rather large cockpit/forward section of the gyroplane. The Sycamore is a very stable aircraft in flight and copes extremely well in the South African thermals. Chatair now make their own rotors for the Sycamore,after previously experimenting with different 'off-the'shelf' types.These rotors produce lots of lift,though a little shjort of perfection in terms of smoothness.They are however heavy and entire stable and predictable. All in all,the Sycamore is a very well made and stable aircraft and,powered by the superb Rotax 914 engine,should perform even better in our cooler much more dense Northen European air.
