Update on the Gyrator progress:

I completed the dieting process and the overall weight was pared down from 20.4 oz. to 17.9 oz, a 12.5% reduction. 1.15 oz. of that was in the rotor blades by choosing lighter balsa, replacing the spruce L.E. with med. balsa and finishing them with a few coats of dope instead of film covering.

I gotta say it: floridagyro is the man! He touted the SG6042 blade airfoil highly and his posts convinced me to go to the trouble of trying to duplicate the airfoil as closely as possible in my new blade set. I modified the T.E. area a little to allow a more realistic thickness and printed out a paper top & bottom template which I CA'd to an old X-Acto razor saw blade. I ground the templates as accurately as possible, incl. the undercamber, thinking that a metal template would allow me to "scrape" the blade shape. That didn't work out but I was still able to carve & sand very accurately using the templates to check my work as it progressed. The bottom template was made to allow me to shape the bottom camber 1st with with the blade blank double side taped to my workbench, upside-down.

The rotor performance was DEFINITELY better compared to the old Clark Y blades. The blades were installed with the same incidence shims, same chord, same length. 2 weeks ago, with Clark Y blades, I had to run like heck to reach autorotation. This week in a 10 mph wind, I set it down on the ground and as I was unloading support gear, noticed the rotor had spun up almost to full autorotation speed on it's own! No running was required on the handlaunch, just a fast walk into the wind, lower the nose as I give it a gentle shove and it flies out of my hand!

The flight characteristics were great....good stability, good maneuverability, very little trim changes. I did touch & go's, aggressive banking turns, etc. Even though I have a servo on my flap channel to control rotor incidence angle, I never moved it other than a few little tweaks, just to see what happened. All pitch change maneuvers were completed with elevator control only and I found it was honest and authoritative, all the way down to touchdown with almost zero groundspeed. After further tests, are completed, I'm seriously considering removal of the servo (dead weight!) and making the rotor incidence ground adjustable only. The combination of rotor tilt coordinated with rudder to make smooth turns was (to me anyway!) beautiful to watch, considering my previous terrible experience with a coaxial rotor gyro I built back in the middle 80's.

One other trait was as Hal DeBolt noted: My rotor spins counter-clockwise and the final rotor tilt trim setting ended up leaning a little to the left! Go figure!