I used to ant one of those deathtraps sooo bad.
My grandfather got me hooked on the aviation bug when I was little. All the magazines he got had ads for "build your own Bensen Gyrocopter!" I thought it would be sooo cool to fly one to school. (and then you get a ten mile an hour cross-wind and never have to worry about school again.)

Don't forget its use by James Bond in the original "You Only Live Twice."

I'm pretty sure I sent off for one of these after clipping the ad out of Boys Life when I was 8 or so. It should be here any day now...

How's that thing on gas?

Looks like a propane tank stuck to the side there...

I remember reading something about these small helicopters and other personal flying vehicles in a book back when I was a kid. The book was one of those large coffee table numbers with lots of big flashy pictures about strange planes. It's been too many years to remember it exactly but it went something like,

"Anyone skilled enough to fly one of these knows better not to."

Comment on Not Quite a Jetpack, But the Rotorcycle Is Still Pretty Cool (1960) A few years back, that helicopter was pulled out of storage, cleaned up and painted. The engine, a small hand-cranked single-stage radial gas turbine, hasn't been run in decades, and probably won't be run again. Repair parts aren't available and few are fool enough to want to fly it anyway. The controls of the rotor are primitive, all cables and pulleys and levers. I understand it's now been sold to a collector, but can't confirm that.

Pah! I spit at your whirly birds.

Now this gentlemen, this is how you fly gentlemen. I long to own one, my heart aches for you!

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"Titan" engines of that family are still in production and are now used to start about a dozen different military helicopter models and fifteen or twenty fixed wing aircraft models, military and commercial. A lot of improvements have been made, but small radial gas turbine engines are a great way to get a lot of power out of a small light package.

Fuel efficiency sucks. And that thing that looks like a propane tank is actually the combustor, where the fire happens. The curvy tube below that is the exhaust duct. Should be about 1000 degrees F while under load.

Small engine production was broken off from Solar into a company next door called Turbomach. Turbomach was bought by Sundstrand Corporation, which was bought by United Technologies Corp. and combined with Hamilton-Standard (the air systems folks) creating Hamilton-Sundstrand Power Systems, still right there in San Diego.

@RayCeeYa: There are old pilots, and bold pilots...

You are right.. But i did like one model that had little pulse or ram jets on the rotor tips..

I used to play with hand gliders as a mechanic, and my bosses never wanted me to fly.. They are both dead, flying gliders.

You can see those in real life at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA. It's a pretty good museum, and right off 101 -- worth a visit.

Rrrrrotorcycle, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrotorcycle.

I like it!

Anything used in Road Warrior is a-okay with me.