First Flight: Russian Sparrowhawk

"We made it happen! The first SparrowHawk autogyro is flying in Russia."

Those words from Alex Lameko, the AAI dealer in Russia and the man who, with a little help from his friends, built the first Sparrowhawk to fly in that country.

Here's his story:

Three months of interesting job and - this is it! Don't be surprised with "strange" pitch angles of the aircraft at take-off and landing - they are intentional. I will tell you about this some other time...

The Sparrowhawk was assembled according to AAI drawings and instructions, although we did move the rotor brake lever. We installed it on the center mast, between crew heads. This was done for a number of reasons:

• There were too many controls in the center part of cabin -- it just didn't seem practical. Since the rotor brake isn't used in flight, we decided it could be moved away from the pilot's immediate operational area.
• This mod shortens the brake cable though this reason has not very big practical sense - you save maybe one pound of weight and make lever operating just slightly easier.
• Putting the brake lever between pilots' heads gives you an excellent place to hang headsets. (Man, I LOVE Russian engineering! It's the ultimate in get-it-done practicality! -- ed.)

All other parts of aircraft were assembled without any other major mods.

We measured static thrust with 72" WarpDrive and then with 69" Lugansk prop. We found that Lugansk prop works slightly better and we can save 17-18 lbs weight by using it. We installed Lugansk and got 280-285 kg static thrust on it.

Empty weight (complete with oil, coolant, radio and headsets) is 380 kg. The only additional things we've installed are Icom A110 transciever (heavy thing -- when I ordered it I simply missed it's weight. It has a speakerphone and amplifier inside, which, of course, is absolutely unnecessary in gyro), Flightcom mc403 intercom and a couple of simple Flightcom headsets. Putting antenna in front of windshield we also got a good point for slip strip.

Hangtest showed (20 kg of fuel):

• 5.5 deg (nose down) - pilot 65 kg
• 6.5 deg - same pilot plus 75 kg co-pilot
• 7 deg - same pilot plus 95 co-pilot

All rotorhead and controls stops were adjusted according to AAI recommendations.

Prerotator gave us solid 180 rrpm (+15 deg C OAT) after some minor adjustments.

Prior to install the rotor we make some driving training to become familiar with throttle, brakes and pedals.

The test pilot was Dmitry Rakitskiy, that same macho man who performs Dominator and Hunter flying in locally popular videos. I played the part of ballast in the right seat and a voice, helping watch the dials and calling out things like, "airspeed 80... 85... 90... 120... 110." This is our old practice which helps to make testing more effective since test pilot can concentrate more on other details of flight envelope.

The weather was almost ideal: +15 deg C OAT, 55-60% RH and 5-6 m/sec steady winds along the runway. The runway, about 90 km from Moscow, was 400 meters long and 200 meters above sea level.

With help from the wind, we got 200-210 rrpm on prerotator and tried some times to spinup rotor on low roll speeds. The rotor reacts very well, without any tendency to flap. It takes some 30 to 50 meters of roll to spin it up to 260-270 rpm.

Right after take-off, the aircraft seems lazy at low airspeeds. It becomes much more friendly somewhere between 50-60 km/h.

That day we flew at no more than 120 km/h IAS and I was surprised that it flies this airspeed at only 4000 engine rpm. I'll check to see if things really are that good.

Rotor rpm were 300-310 @ 560 kg take-off weight.

Another pleasant discovery was that the rotor (fly from the box - literally) is very smooth. No uncomfortable shake at seat/cabin nor in the sticks. And we didn't note any tendency to yaw which was mentioned recently in a forum here.

FMI: http://twistairclub.narod.ru/spawk/shfirst001.htm