ORIGINAL: tintrax
With reference to my letter above I am serious about asking which way the water goes down the plughole!! Here at 43 degrees SOUTH latitude it goes down the plughole clockwise. To make sure I put a small piece of paper in the tub and watched it circle the plughole before disappearing. I have heard many times that the northern & southern hemispheres have different plughole rotation - is it true? Maybe someone can humour me and try it!
What`s this got to do with autogyros? Maybe not much! Cheers from the south Pacific.
CCW in the northern hemisphere. Coriolis due to the earths rotation. For a mental understanding think of the north pole, earth is turning, still looking water is turning with the earth, When released in the plug hole it accelerates. Conservation of angular momemtum takes over at the end and the spin rate increases as the mass gets smaller. South pole the direction is inverted to the person standing there looking. Any point above the equator there is a component of this spin in the CCW direction. Opposite below the equator.
Has no effect on a gyrocopter unless you see a bear while you are out flying and the bear is white.