Scratch Built Panther Autogyro Maiden

Panther Autogyro Maiden
One of Mike's winter projects was the Panther Autogyro that he built from plans. The designer, Richard Harris, is an Autogyro guru and has several designs to his credit. This design was published as a free plan in the English magazine RCM&E. Here is a link to the build thread:
And here are links to the plans:
The Panther is 41 1/2" long with a 46" diameter main rotor. Mike installed a Turnigy Aerodrive SK3-3542-800kv motor controlled by a Turnigy Plush 60 amp esc. The prop is an APC 13x4E, and the battery is a 4 cell 3000mAh Turnigy LiPo. With a fully charged battery the system produces about 530 watts of power. Pitch and roll servos are Towerpro MG996R's and the rudder servo is a Hitec HS-225MG.
The Panther is built from plans out of balsa, light ply, birch ply and hardwood. (Not strictly true since it is actually softwood, but the convention in the model aeroplane world is to call it hardwood!) Covering is iron on from HobbyKing.
In the maiden flight, Mike had to wrestle with getting the Panther trimmed out while trying to keep it in the air. There was a decent breeze blowing down the runway and as soon as he turned downwind, things went poorly resulting in the crash. None of us at the club, including Mike, has any experience with autogyros and we assume the problems arose from a lack for forward speed while flying downwind causing the blades to lose their speed and lift. If you have experience flying autogyros, we'd love to hear from you. Unlike planes, you can't back off the throttle when things are getting hairy and this is counter intuitive to all your flying experience.
Mike has already repaired the superficial damage caused by the crash and is waiting for some half decent weather to have another go at it. We're all waiting for some half decent weather to fly!!!!
Sorry for the shaky camera work, I haven't held a camera for a while and it shows!
Cheers,
Bob
Music:
The Royalty Free Music is from Jamendo at: www.jamendo.com
Artist: Zeropage
Name of Album: Ambient Pills
Song Title: Ambient Voyager
Link to Song:
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