Sun-n-Fun Intro For Super Sky Cycle - Super Sky Car Will
Follow
By ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
Are you ready for something different? Larry Neal has been
thinking about flying cars. He's been thinking about them seriously
for well over ten years, and all that time he's been quietly --
almost surreptitiously -- acting on those thoughts. We've known
Larry for years, and we've been hearing him say all along that his
ultimate plan for his Butterfly series of gyroplanes was to have a
convertible road/air machine -- but we never took him all that
seriously. After all, when I wrote about flying cars for my blog, I
called the article "Lying Cars." Projects either were technical
successes that failed as businesses, or businesses whose
seriousness about actually making a product, as opposed to milking
generations of stockholders, was in doubt.
Now, I have great confidence in Larry's integrity, and his
technical ability is illustrated by his patents, by his work as
chief test pilot for Carter Aviation Technologies, by NASA's
interest in his work, and by his longtime activity in the
ultralight and sport aviation community.
We caught up with Larry by phone as he worked late into the
night getting two projects ready to introduce at Sun-n-Fun -- the
Super Sky Cycle and the Turbo Golden Monarch. The former is, as the
name suggests, a roadable single-seat enclosed gyroplane which
readily converts into a roadgoing vehicle, licensed as a
motorcycle. The Turbo Golden is the latest iteration of Larry's
unconventional two-seat tandem training gyro, but with his ultimate
plans for it, we're probably going to have to redefine the
fire-breathing Turbo Golden Monarch as conventional and the
ordinary Golden Monarch as... dullsville.
And then there's the business plan, which is as innovative as
the gyroplanes themselves. But let's begin with the first big news
coming down the pike (literally): the Super Sky Cycle.
The Super Sky Cycle
"I first conceived this product in 1994, but I didn't tell
anybody," Neal told me.
Ah, I understood why. "You were afraid they'd think you were a
crank?"
"No... not really. I was afraid they'd steal my ideas before I
was ready to go to market."
I listened carefully for the sound of paranoia. But now that
he's ready to go to market, Larry is open about what he's doing --
as wide open as the skies of the West where he works. Paranoids
don't relax like that. Larry never hesitated to answer or steered
me away from a line of questioning, so if something is missing,
it's because I didn't have the wits to ask him.
Everything Larry has done, from that day in 1994, to the
official introduction of the Super Sky Cycle, coming at Sun-n-Fun
April 13th, and on into the future, is aimed at making dual-mode
transportation simple, safe and affordable.
When Larry bought the rights to the popular Falcon ultralights
in 1997, he did it because he loved the planes, sure, but he also
was thinking of the suitability of parts of the canard design for a
roadable aircraft.
When Larry was poring over the history of the designs of
jump-takeoff-capable gyroplanes, he did it because he knew a
roadable aircraft would be most useful if it didn't always need a
large runway to take off.
The Super Sky Cycle is the first culmination of these years of
research and design. The Sky Cycle wraps the skeleton of a Monarch
gyro in a sleek composite covering, and replaces the small wheels
with three large motorcycle-type wheels. The Monarch G-Force
landing gear, in either of two strokes, is retained. The Rotax
engine that makes it fly also, through a simple clutch, drives the
rear wheels; the front wheel is, in essence, a motorcycle fork. The
builder takes the machine to the Registry of Motor Vehicles in his
jurisdiction when the road-going parts are complete, and registers
it as a motorcycle. Then he completes the machine with the flying
gear, and registers it with the FAA as an experimental
aircraft.
In the US, you will
need to have both a state motorcycle license, and an FAA airman
certificate, to operate the Sky Cycle. At first a private pilot's
license in the rotorcraft class and gyroplane category will be
required. It is possible that Sport Pilot privileges may cover the
Sky Cycle in the future, but they don't now.
Larry envisions large numbers of these aircraft used for
commuting. You wouldn't need a large runway, more a sort of an air
park where Sky Cycles could land and take off, and convert from
terrestrial to aerial mode and back again.
To do that, you land, stop the rotors, and fold the mast. The
current experimental Butterfly models include a folding mast, which
has until now been billed as enhancing one's ability to store the
gyro in a conventional auto garage with the normal low door. It
certainly does, but the real reason that design feature has been
there is in order to enhance the flying car. The mast pivots in two
places. The rotor head and blades remain parallel to the ground
plane, but the mast folds down parallel to the ground plane itself.
A simple clutch disconnects the propeller while in ground mode, for
safety.
The Rotax 582 motor can drive the Sky Cycle at speeds up to 60
miles an hour, through the 9 1/2 inch rear wheels. (Larger, 16",
wheels may be available optionally for unimproved fields). The Sky
Cycle has only one seat; the pilot/rider controls it on the ground
using motorcycle style handlebars.
Of course, with the Fly-Drive convenience of the Sky Cycle, the
commuter air parks that Larry imagines need never happen. As his
business plan puts it, "The Super Sky Cycle can land virtually
anywhere, even at an airport, and drives home or to an appointment,
where it is easily parked in a garage or normal parking space."
Even at an airport, he says.
Rolling Jump Takeoffs
Along with an easy conversion from roadgoing to flying machine
and back again -- you can land, fold the mast and blades, and drive
home to the garage -- a critical component is jump takeoff
capability.
But zero-speed jump takeoffs as he does them in the CarterCopter
Technology Demonstrator are, to tell the truth, pretty demanding in
terms of pilot skill and workload. That didn't fit Larry's
conception of a flying machine for Everyman. "This machine is not
meant to do a standing takeoff." So the Sky Cycle's jump capability
is meant to be used with some forward motion, to shorten rather
than eliminate ground roll; and it's been made impressively
simple.
"There's a button on the dash," Larry explains. Push button,
prerotation begins and the blades are hydraulically depitched to
zero drag, which is an incidence of minus two degrees. The belt
driven prerotator spins the blades to above flight RPM, using only
about 15 HP from the motor. As the aircraft moves forward, easily
accelerating (at effective zero pitch the drag of the rotor is
greatly reduced), the pitch mechanism releases the hydraulic fluid
in the cylinders, and the rotor is springloaded to normal flying
incidence of plus two and a half degrees.
Specific Training Required
The Super Sky Cycle is not something that any schmuck can
operate without training. In fact, even an experienced airplane or
helicopter pilot needs specific instruction to be able to operate a
gyroplane safely. Larry plans to make that happen by spreading
instructional centers and dealerships like inkblots over the
nation. You'll also need a motorcycle license, as mentioned above,
to operate the vehicle on public roads.
And yet, for all its sophistication, with its sleek enclosed
body, lift-providing stub wings, 7.5-foot-wide G-Force Magnum
landing gear with a 22" stroke, depitching prerotator, rear-drive
suspension -- it is at its heart a Butterfly.
And in the next installment of this story, we'll tell you about
the modular concept that allows an ultralight Butterfly to
metamorphosize into a Monarch or Super Sky Cycle, about the Turbo
Monarch and what happens when it gets the Sky-Cycle treatment, and
about Larry's innovative business plan. We'll talk about some of
the devilish details, like financing and insurance. And we'll wrap
with Larry's take on what's in store, next.