A few days into Sun n Fun 2022, Mr. Abid Farooqui, CTO of Silverlight Aviation, shared that Silverlight Aviation got into gyroplane manufacturing in 2016. They have manufactured about 60 of them so far, and have just started expanding outside the US into Taiwan and hopefully looking at Australia and New Zealand.
These gyrocopters are manufactured in Zephyr Hills, Florida. This gyrocopter is an AR1C configuration which is the convertible so you can fly with just windshields on like a motorcycle, or you could in the winter put the canopy on and fly with the canopy. It was primarily made as an open cockpit gyrocopter with a windshield, and then Silverlight added the canopy for its northern customers, so they can fly into the winter longer, to have more utility.
One variant of the gyrocopter comes with a Rotax 912 as a standard engine with 100 horsepower. The Rotax 914 if you’re going to be a little bit higher altitude or operating at a higher weight with a turbocharger. And then there is the Rotax 915 which has been fairly popular. When asked what kind of performance one might expect, Mr. Farooqui began by stating that “gyroplanes do not do vertical takeoff. I get a lot of questions about that. They look like a helicopter, but they still need runway ground roll, about 300 to 400 feet, and to clear a 50-foot obstacle, depending on the engine with a 914 (the middle engine) or with two people you will take about 1000 feet.” Realistically, cruise speed is anywhere from 80 to 100 miles an hour, range about 300 miles generally, and about 6 gallons per hour fuel burn.
In terms of cost structure/pricing, Mr. Farooqui stated that “with the 912 you’ll start a kit around $70,000 everything in there. With the builder assist, you’ll end up around $80,000”. He added that a lot of people come to the factory to build it with Silverlight, so they know that in two-weeks, they can come and it’s fairly simple. Silverlight helps them make sure they’re very consistently built. The 914 would be about a $10,000 upgrade, the 915 would be another $10,000, and then the canopy is another $10,500 upgrade. In terms of availability, presently, its approximately six months.
We asked Mr. Farooqui about training requirements, and he said that Silverlight does offer training through independent instructors at their facility. He recommends three hours of maximum flight time per day as the best bang for your buck in terms of learning, and to expect between 15 to 30 hours for training. If you’re a current pilot, you’ll probably need between 10 and 15 hours of transition training, most importantly, you should seek model-specific training, because tandem and side-by-side is a whole different ball game. He was emphatic that pilots do not skimp on training!
Mr. Farooqui shared that Silverlight has something new that’s in development, in beta testing, it’s called GWS which is the “gyroplane warning system” which they hope to offer as a standard option. It will start to warn pilots about blade sailing accidents or blade flapping accidents on takeoff, about getting behind the power curve, about punting risk. He added it will do a predictive analysis and provide a warning in your radio that you are getting into that danger zone, and you should do something about it.
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