My gyro project.
Hi Rich,
The most difficult part of flying autogyros is getting them off the ground and high enough to recover until you can get use to how they handle. I have seen experience gyro pilots make 3 or 4 attemps to get the gyro flying and either ground loop or abort the take-off. If you're fortunate enough to have a perfect light steady wind, take-off is easy. However, that seldom happens so you have to learn to compensate. With a single rotor you need to hold a lot of up elevator when you first start your roll-out or the tail will come the ground and it will cart-wheel before you even get started. When the rotor is about ready for auto-rotate you ease off the elevator and let the tail lift. If the timing is off, either too soon or too late, it will roll over. Practice is the only cure. With dual rotors, one rotor will always speed up faster and it will either roll over on the ground or as soon as it lifts off. Stand straight behind and watch the rotors and use up elevator and rudder to get the slow moving rotor more into the wind. I have two other very experienced pilots at our club and I have tried to help them to fly dual rotors but they both gave up and went back to single rotors. Dual rotor gyros like to have a long fuselage and a larger than normal rudder. I converted a Dazzler to an autogyro and I can roll, spin, and loop and it does these things well because of the short fuselage. However, it would not be good for the first autogyro.
Hope that helps.
Phil